Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

The Screening by Jehane Sharah

Australian writer Jehane Sharah currently lives in Washington, D.C., but this evocative story (her first professional fiction sale) is set “down under,” a few hours from her native Canberra. She is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, where she also teaches English 101.

Ray rarely paid much attention to the conversations between his wife Patricia and her best friend Jolene, whose voice reminded him of the harsh cries of the sulphur-crested cockatoos that attacked their plum trees every afternoon at dusk. But today they were talking about the murder. The DNA screening.

The three of them sat round the table in the living room. The doors to the back deck were open and a slight breeze rose up from Twofold Bay below. Jolene came over for drinks every Thursday. “Sundowners with a view,” she called their get-togethers. But two days ago the Rural Fire Service had lost control of a back-burning operation and now the eucalypts that dotted the gully all the way down to Cocora Beach were charred and lifeless.

“It’s sundowners without a view for the next few months, I’m afraid,” Patricia said, opening a bottle of chardonnay.

“Bloody idiots. It’s lucky they didn’t start a full-blown bushfire,” Jolene said, unwrapping a box of Camembert and placing it on a cheese plate. “Hey, did you see the article in The Magnet?”

“I know. Can you believe it? Every man — every single man!” Patricia said.

“And boys too,” Jolene said.

Patricia nodded. “Boys over the age of fourteen. Or was it sixteen? Gosh, imagine if it was a kid who did it. Just terrible.”

She placed a glass of wine in front of Jolene and turned to Ray. “Do you want chardonnay or beer, love?”

Ray was staring into the distance, studying a white dot circling over the bay. A white-bellied sea eagle, maybe, but he’d need to get his binoculars out to be sure. He wondered if he should tell Patricia what he’d done.

“Hello? Earth to Ray?” Patricia rolled her eyes at Jolene. “He’s been like this all day. Don’t know what’s got into him.”

Ray glanced up. “Hmmm? Oh. Beer, thanks, love. But I’ll get it.” He stood up with a slight groan and walked over to the Coola Can fridge that Patricia had got him last Christmas and slid the top off, grabbing a can of VB from within.

“Hmmm,” Jolene said, her tongue trying to navigate the water cracker she’d just stuffed in her mouth. “You wouldn’t believe Stanley down at the RSL club last night. Drunk as a pissant, he was. Kept saying, ‘No one’s getting their hands on my DNA.’ I don’t think he even knows what DNA is.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Patricia said, pursing her lips.

“That’s exactly what I said,” Jolene said, nodding.

“That poor girl,” Patricia said, talking to herself more than to anyone else. “Seventeen years old.”

Ray sat down at the table again. He opened the can of beer and took a sip, then put it down and fiddled with the pull tab. Did he have reason to be worried? He wasn’t sure. Suddenly he became aware that his right leg was jiggling up and down. He put his hand on his knee to calm it.

He looked at his wife, who was becoming more and more animated as her wineglass emptied. He tried to imagine her reaction if he told her, the expression on her face. He cycled through the possibilities of shock, disbelief, and anger, but none of them seemed quite right. No, she would look at him with disappointment, he decided, and he didn’t think he could bear that.

“I just don’t understand the logistics of it, though,” Patricia said. “I mean, what if it was a tourist or someone just passing through town?”

“Well, now the police from Sydney have arrived, they might start making some progress,” Jolene said.

“I didn’t think Bob would be able to manage a case like this on his own, no offence or anything. I mean, he’s a nice copper and all, but a murder? Well, he can barely solve a break-in,” Patricia said.

“Oh, you leave poor old Bob alone,” Jolene said, giving Patricia a friendly slap on the shoulder. “He helped Customs bust that abalone racket last summer. But you’re right. Murder’s a different kettle of fish.”

“Abalone... kettle of fish! Oh, you’re too funny, Jolene.”

Jolene looked at Patricia blankly and then her eyes widened. “I didn’t even realise what I was saying!”

They both collapsed over the table laughing.

When Jolene finally stopped snorting, she turned to Ray. “You’re awfully quiet there. Feeling nervous about the screening, are we? Got a guilty conscience?”

“Oh, don’t joke about it, that’s bad taste,” Patricia said. “Besides, he wasn’t even in Eden that weekend, were you, love?”

“Hmmm? No, I was sailing,” Ray said. “Lake Wyndham. Bob was there too, actually.”

“See?” Patricia said. “The perfect alibi.”

It was true. He hadn’t been anywhere near Eden when the murder happened. And yet something had been bothering Ray ever since he’d read about the DNA screening in the news the previous day. He picked up a knife and sliced it through the Camembert, placing a generous chunk on a water cracker. He looked at it and turned it around in his hands, then put it back down on the plate.

“I might go for a walk,” he said, standing up.

“Oh, there’s no need to get huffy,” Jolene said. “I was just kidding.”

“You’re all right, Jolene. Just need to get my daily constitutional,” Ray said, patting his stomach.

Patricia leaned towards her friend and momentarily lowered her voice. “Doctor says he has to lose weight,” she said. “Anyway, you know Ray — he’s never been much of a conversationalist. But I wouldn’t change him for the world.”

Ray smiled and leaned down to kiss his wife. And when he felt the touch of her hand on his cheek he thought he might cry, something he hadn’t done in thirty-six years.

“I’ll be back before dinner.”

Ray walked down the steps that led to Cocora Beach. When he reached the bottom, he made his way through the small playground and past the car park and stopped at the place where the concrete met the sand. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath, the smell of sea salt and spinifex in the air.

Cocora Beach was mostly deserted during the week, except for the occasional sunbather or lone fisherman. Ray liked to go there in the afternoons to relax, although as a steady, phlegmatic sort of bloke, he wasn’t normally vulnerable to life’s pressures. Today was different, though.

Like everyone else in town, he had been shocked by the murder of Abby Wilson, who had been found dead on the rocks at Aslings Beach by a recreational fisherman twelve days earlier.

Ray didn’t know the Wilson family well, but he knew of them, of course. John Wilson was a tradesman, his wife Rhonda a nurse at Pambula Hospital. Abby had gone to school with Ray’s daughter Talia, but had been two or three years behind.

Official details of the girl’s death were being kept under wraps, but over the last few days rumours so awful had emerged that all people could do when they heard them was wince and shake their heads. Raped multiple times. Internal bleeding. Her head smashed against a rock.

A mood had come over the town that Ray had never witnessed before. Things like that didn’t happen in Eden, one of the sleepier towns on the Sapphire Coast. But Ray’s memory was long enough to know that they did.

He walked along the stretch of sand to the far end of the beach, where an outcrop of rocks formed a natural shelter. A small white sailboat was anchored in the water and bobbed congenially at Ray as he passed, but it did nothing to put him at ease.

He sat down on a rock and pulled out his wallet and removed a folded-up piece of paper that was tucked inside. It was the article from the front page of yesterday’s Magnet, which Patricia had left in the recycling bin. He didn’t have his reading glasses with him, so he held the article away from his face and squinted slightly.

Ray paused at the end of the article and read the last sentence again. He folded up the piece of paper and put it back in his wallet.

Was Jeannie the cold case the article referred to? He had lived in Eden all his life and couldn’t think of any other crime it could be. There was the hit-and-run that killed the Jones boy a few years back, but they’d caught the man responsible for that — a drunk driver from Merimbula. Apart from that, what was there? Illegal fishing, abalone smuggling, and the occasional drug bust.

No, it was her all right, it had to be. It had finally caught up with him.

Ray looked out across the bay to Ben Boyd National Park, where they’d dumped her body all those years ago, and wondered how it could be that he hadn’t thought of her in so long. And suddenly he had a vision of her struggling under his brother Pete while Shane Hawkins and Darren Russell looked on, and he recalled how she’d turned her head to look at him and screamed at him to help.

For a long time afterwards, he had taken comfort in the image of him pulling Pete off her and telling Shane and Darren to go home, and holding her in his arms, whispering “I’m sorry” in her ears a hundred times. But today pretending was no use.

Why didn’t I do anything, Ray thought, back when I had the chance?

And he felt the darkness returning — the same sensation that had been ebbing and flowing in and out of him ever since he read the article the night before.

Only a few times in his life had Ray felt emotion in any extreme way. When he was sixteen, his mother died. Lying in bed at night, his grief was so unbearable that he came to imagine it as a physical thing — a long, slim, rectangular box lodged inside his ribs. At times it felt so real, so palpable, that he believed a surgeon might actually be able to remove it. He would walk past the medical centre on the main street and pause, wondering if he should go in. Maybe if he begged hard enough, he thought, the doctor would cut him open, and then he would feel normal again.

Two years later, after Jeannie’s death, he experienced something just as acute, only it manifested in his body in a different way. Whereas the grief was a singular object, stuck inside the cavity of his chest, the guilt — or was it shame? — infected every part of his body. It was in his blood, his spit, his sinew. It made his hands and legs shake and it pinched at his bowels. It was like a black, inky liquid travelling through his veins and now it was back, snaking through his body, taking over every inch.

He could feel it rising up inside him now, tentaclelike, edging towards his chest. It wrapped around his heart and squeezed and for a moment everything was still.

Terrified, Ray reached out his hand and tried to breathe, clutching at the air. And then the liquid released its grip and his heartbeat returned with such resounding force that it thrust his body forward. Standing upright, Ray looked up at the sky, but the clouds moved too quickly and the earth seemed to tilt and all he could do was shut his eyes.

He saw a kaleidoscope of faces — Patricia, Talia, and Bob, then a blur of detectives he hadn’t met yet and journalists who would no doubt come knocking on his door — and he thought about what he would say, but even the truth sounded like a bad excuse.

And with Pete dead and Shane in jail and Darren last seen sleeping on the streets of King’s Cross, what was left? The DNA evidence, which would implicate him. And he thought about what life would be like for Patricia and Talia, who would probably never speak to him again, and he let out a small cry.

In the spring of 1980, Ray got a job at the local tuna cannery and saved up enough money for his first car — a beaten-up old ute that he bought from a bloke in Bermagui. He liked the freedom it gave him and felt a liberating sense of relief that he no longer had to rely on Pete for lifts around town.

One weekend he drove all the way to Sydney — the farthest he’d ever been away from home — and it was on his way back that he saw an Aboriginal girl standing on the side of the Princes Highway, just past Ulladulla, trying to wave cars down with a long, skinny arm.

No one was stopping for her, even though it was raining. Ray wasn’t sure if he should either, but then their eyes met and she smiled and he found himself slowing down.

“Where are you headed?” he shouted.

She ran up to the car, using her hands to shield her face from the rain. “Melbourne.”

Ray hesitated. “I can take you as far as Eden,” he said.

The girl looked doubtful. She was a skinny thing and her hair was wet from the rain, which had the effect of making her eyes appear larger than they really were. “Yeah?”

Ray shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

The girl opened the car door and slid in, escorted by the fresh, salty smells of spring rain and briny air. Ray looked down and saw that her skirt was damp and clinging to her legs. He suddenly felt awkward, not sure of what to say or do. He reached for the radio and fiddled with the dial, then turned the volume up louder, hoping this would circumvent the need for conversation. The sound of AC/DC blasting on the stereo wasn’t enough to stop her from talking, though.

Jeannie, her name was, from Lismore. Eighteen years old. On her way to Melbourne to look for work. She’d been in Sydney for the last few weeks but didn’t like it — everything was too fast, too crazy. No one ever stopped to say hello. So she decided to catch the bus to Nowra and hitch her way down south.

Sitting next to her, Ray couldn’t help thinking of a whirligig on a windswept day. She spoke quickly and moved her arms a lot and every time a new thought rushed through her she became even more animated, if that was possible. When she wasn’t talking about herself, she peppered Ray with questions — was Eden like the garden in the Bible and did killer whales really kill people and what was it like working at the cannery and how did they get the tuna in the tins? And even though Ray wasn’t trying to be funny, she laughed at everything he said and soon he found himself laughing too — buoyed, uplifted by her presence.

By the time they got to Eden, night was falling. In the distance, amid the darkness, Ray could see the lights of Imlay Street, and the giddiness that had gripped him for the last few hours began to wane.

“Where are you going to stay?” Ray said.

“Dunno,” Jeannie said. “I’ll figure something out — I always do.”

“There’s the caravan park,” Ray said, “or—”

Jeannie looked at him hopefully.

“Well, my brother’s out on the trawler till the end of the month, so you could always stay at my place, I guess.”

Jeannie clapped her hands. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll be out of your hair after one night, I promise.”

But one week later Jeannie was still there. Not that Ray minded — in fact, he found himself looking forward to seeing her at the end of each day. He worked the early shift at the cannery and would leave the house at dawn. In the afternoons, he would show her the sights — Saltwater Creek, Ben Boyd Tower, and the Bittangabee Bay Ruins — quiet places where it was unlikely anyone would see them together, because he didn’t know what people would say. Sometimes they would drive to Barmouth Beach for a swim. In the evenings, Jeannie would cook Ray dinner, and they would stay up late, talking and drinking beer. And every time Ray looked at her, he couldn’t help noticing how small and delicate her face was, and he would think how gentle you would have to be to touch it, to cup it in your hands.

For Ray, those days had a lovely, languid feeling, but they were tinged with something else — some worry or concern he couldn’t quite put his finger on, like lying in bed well past the alarm, wondering if there was someplace else you had to be. But whenever the notion started to take a clearer shape, it would slip away from him again and remain floating out of grasp.

“I should think about making tracks soon,” Jeannie said one evening. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

It was a warm night and she and Ray sat on the edge of the porch, their legs dangling over the side.

“Maybe you could stay,” he said. “There are always jobs going at the cannery — you could get a place of your own.”

Jeannie shook her head. “I want to give Melbourne a go. I’ve got a good feeling about it, you know?”

Ray took a sip of beer and looked up at the night sky. He wanted to put his arm around her and tell her how he felt, but he was worried it would come out all wrong.

“It looks like a storm’s coming,” he said.

Jeannie smiled and pressed her knee against his. “Have you ever thought about leaving?” she said.

“Me?” Ray looked at her in surprise. “Nah. I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could. You could come with me to Melbourne.”

And Ray, emboldened by the touch of her flesh against his, ran his finger along her cheek and kissed her.

That night, as Jeannie fell asleep in Ray’s arms, he imagined what it would be like to jump in the car with her and never come back. He felt guilty even contemplating it. Would his mother know, wherever she was now?

“I know you’re the youngest,” she had said when she lay dying in her bed, when the cancer had spread too far, “but you’re going to have to look after Pete now, keep him out of trouble.”

For the last two years, he’d done his best to make good on that promise, but there was no stopping his brother when he was in one of his moods. All you had to do was look at him the wrong way and that was it — if you were lucky, he’d smash his fist through a wall. If you weren’t, you’d cop a bruising. It was even worse if he’d been on the drink. One minute everything was fine, then something in his eyes would change and suddenly you were staring into a kind of no man’s land. In those moments, you never knew what was going to happen.

Ray held Jeannie closer and listened to the rain falling on the corrugated iron roof. He was close to sleep himself when something roused him — a car in the driveway. Drunk, rowdy voices. And it was then that he realised what had been troubling him for the last few days.

When Ray got home from the beach, he entered via the garage door. Upstairs, he could hear the sound of plates being placed on the counter, taps turning on and off, the oven door opening, the fridge door slamming shut. Normally he would go upstairs and help Patricia set the table, but he needed time to think.

He sat down on a crate and found that it was easier to concentrate in the cool, dank air. He would have to give a swab — after all, it would seem odd to make a fuss — and they would find his DNA inside her, he was certain. How long did he have then? It was hard to say. Maybe if he put the test off till the very last day it would give him enough time to get things sorted. Call the bank and make sure his finances were in order. Fix a few things around the house. Explain to Patricia.

“Oh God.” Ray leaned forward and rubbed his temples. There was a throbbing pain in his head. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “It wasn’t me.”

And jail, at his age? There was no way he would survive it. No, there had to be another way. Maybe if he left Eden, just for a while... but he’d need an excuse, a reason to get away for a couple of weeks. He ran through various different scenarios in his mind, but he knew that none of them would work. Then he thought about his cousin Marjorie in Queensland, whose health wasn’t the best. Maybe he could visit her. By the time he got back, they probably would have caught whoever killed the Wilson girl and he wouldn’t even need to give a swab. Yes, that was it — he would call Marjorie tomorrow to arrange it.

Ray stood up and exhaled, and his breath came out as a laugh or a sigh or some mix of the two. It was as if a doorway had just opened up in front of him. He walked over to the corner of the garage, picked up his toolbox, and went upstairs, propelled by a newfound sense of optimism. Everything would be all right after all.

On his way past the kitchen, Ray heard Patricia humming an old country song she liked and the sound of her cracked voice made him smile. He wondered how many moments like this he’d let slip away unappreciated over the years and decided that when all this blew over he’d take her on a holiday. She’d mentioned something about a cruise the other day.

He turned on the lights to the back deck and stepped outside. He placed his toolbox down by the barbeque and walked over to a large white carton that was propped up against the far end of the wall. He tipped it over in his hands and proceeded to drag it across the wooden boards to the centre of the deck.

“What on earth are you doing?”

Ray looked up and saw Patricia standing in the living room, peering at him through the gauze door. She was holding a bunch of cutlery in one hand and some place mats in the other.

“You’re not putting up the shade cloth, are you?” she said.

Dozens of tiny moths had started to gather around the light above the door and Ray paused to flick one away from his face. “It’s as good a time as any.”

“But dinner’s almost ready.”

Ray opened his toolbox and pulled out a tape measure. “I know, love, it’s just that I promised to put it up ages ago and I never got around to it.”

A small frown formed on Patricia’s forehead. “I don’t understand. Bob’s going to be here any minute now.”

“Bob?”

“You invited him over for dinner, remember?”

Ray suddenly recalled running into Bob on Monday night. He felt his chest tighten.

“What’s the matter? Did you two have a barney or something?”

“No, it’s just—” Ray stopped mid sentence, trying to think of what to say, but it didn’t matter because at that moment the doorbell rang.

Patricia sighed and dumped the placemats and cutlery on the table. “I’ll get that,” she said, “and you put that bloody shade cloth away.”

Patricia kissed Bob gently on the cheek. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to get away from work,” she said. “Come in, sit down.”

Ray nodded and shook Bob’s hand. The two men sat down at the dining table and made small talk — first about the weather, then about the upcoming cricket match between Australia and South Africa. Ray normally felt at ease around Bob, but tonight he was conscious that everything he said sounded stilted. Patricia fussed around them, arranging place mats and cutlery, and pouring wine into glasses, before finally sitting down herself.

“So,” she said, “you’ll have to give us an update on the murder.”

Ray made a disapproving face. “Patricia, he can’t talk about the case.”

“Well, I’m not asking him to reveal anything top secret,” Patricia said pointedly. She turned back towards Bob. “Jolene and I were just talking about the DNA screening earlier. That’s big news, isn’t it?”

“You’re telling me,” Bob said, leaning back in his chair. “Although I’m not sure if it’s worth the trouble, to tell you the truth.”

“What do you mean? I think it’s a great idea.” Patricia said. “Thank goodness Talia’s away at uni or I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it in theory,” Bob said. “But half the town’s in a flap about it and now some upstart lawyer’s making a fuss about... now, what did he call it? Civil liberties, that’s it.”

“Civil liberties?” Patricia said, cocking her head. “The civil thing to do when someone’s been murdered is to help the police solve the crime.”

Ray cleared his throat to speak, but immediately decided against it. He stuck a toothpick in an olive and was just about to put it in his mouth when he realised that both Patricia and Bob were staring at him expectantly.

“Oh,” he said. He looked down and noticed that his leg was jiggling again. “I was just wondering—”

Patricia and Bob exchanged a quick glance. “Well, spit it out, love,” Patricia said.

“I was just wondering,” Ray said, trying to sound casual, indifferent, “about this cold-case business in the newspaper.”

As their eyes met, Ray thought he detected a flash of suspicion on Bob’s face. Could he know? He felt the black, inky liquid bubbling up inside.

“Hmmm. Well, these detectives from Sydney aren’t exactly keeping me in the loop,” Bob said, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “But it could have something to do with that murder back in the eighties.”

“What, here in Eden?” Patricia said, startled.

“Yeah. A young Aboriginal girl. They found her body over in Ben Boyd National Park.”

“And they never caught who did it?” Patricia said.

“No. From what I’ve read, the police at the time didn’t take it too seriously. I don’t know, if she’d been a white girl, it probably would have been a different story, but you know how things were back then.” Bob sat forward in his chair. “You’ve lived here all your life, Ray. You’d remember that case, surely?”

Ray felt as if his heart had come untethered. It was beating in places it shouldn’t be and the room had become uncomfortably hot. He looked around, wondering if he should open a window. “No,” he said. There was a pounding sensation in his throat and he had trouble getting the word out. “No.” He said it louder this time and shook his head, perhaps too vigorously, he thought.

“Ah well,” Bob said, picking up his glass of wine. “Anyway, the next couple of weeks are going to be a bugger. I thought I had my work cut out for me with a murder investigation. Now I’ve got to get every single man in town to come in and give a swab. It’s going to be like herding cats, I reckon.”

“Well, Ray can come by the station tomorrow and do his. Set an example.”

“What?” Ray looked at Patricia. His heart was thrashing and flipping, and his stomach had begun to churn.

“Well, we have to go to the Safeway anyway.”

“I can’t—”

“What, is retirement keeping you too busy, mate?” Bob said, laughing. “No, seriously, I’d appreciate it. A lot of the men in these parts look up to you, so you’d be doing me a favour.”

“No, I just — Marjorie, in Queensland...” Ray trailed off.

“Maijorie? What are you talking about? You’re making no sense, love.” Patricia looked at Bob and smiled. “Don’t worry, he’ll be in tomorrow afternoon.”

Bob winked. “If you worked at the station, Patricia, there’d be men lining up around the corner to give swabs.”

Ray stood up and swayed slightly.

Patricia, who had been giggling, looked up at him. “What’s the matter, love? You look clammy.”

Ray held out an arm to indicate that he was all right. “It’s nothing,” he said, but he could hear that his voice was shaking. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He made his way to the bathroom, touching his hands to the wall as he walked.

“I hope you haven’t picked up that bug that’s going around,” Patricia called out after him.

Inside the bathroom, Ray locked the door. He leaned over the sink and gagged but only a small amount of saliva came out. He splashed his face with water and sat down on the toilet seat. He tried to calm himself, but it was impossible. His kept thinking about that night. About Jeannie. Suddenly he saw a flash of Pete, drunk and leering, opening his bedroom door.

“What have we got here? Who’s your little friend?”

“Get out.” That’s what he had said back then and he found himself saying it again now. And as he said the words out loud, other memories started to return, beating down on him like waves in a squall: Jeannie startled, sitting up in bed. Pete pushing her back down again, unzipping his jeans. Shane and Darren licking their lips, like hungry feral dogs. Ray telling Pete to get off her and Pete turning, threatening him with a fist. And Ray walking away, not wanting to hear her jarring screams.

He saw himself walking over to the phone. He was going to call the cops. But on his way, he passed an old photo of his mother. Pete, a toddler, was sitting on her knee. She was beaming down at him, her eyes sparkling. And remembering how frail and skeletal she looked in those last few days, he went outside instead. He spent the rest of the night on the porch, and as he watched the rain wash over the escarpment below, he was sure it had taken some part of him with it — the only part he liked.

When dawn broke, when Jeannie’s cries had stopped, he thought it was finally over. But then he heard Pete swear and hushed voices coming from inside. Something wasn’t right. He made his way to his room, trying to think of what he could say — what he could do — to make things up to Jeannie. He opened the door slowly, warily. The first thing that hit him was the smell of sweat. His brother was walking around the room in circles, clutching at his head. Shane and Darren sat on the floor, looking dazed. Ray shifted his gaze to the bed — Jeannie was lying naked, bruised, and still, the sheets around her stained with blood. At first he thought she was asleep, but when she wouldn’t wake, he turned to Pete.

“What have you done?” he said. “What the hell have you done?”

He could see Pete’s mouth moving, but all he heard was a buzzing noise. At some point he must have asked the others to leave the room, because soon he found himself alone, wrapping Jeannie’s body in an old red blanket — he didn’t want them touching her again. And as the sun emerged from the Pacific, he and Pete drove in silence all the way to Ben Boyd National Park and left her body in the bush, the ground still damp and muddy from the storm.

Over the years, Ray had often consoled himself with the fact that he hadn’t been the one to rape her, to kill her. “It wasn’t me,” he would think. “It wasn’t me.” But now all he could see was that he’d walked away — walked away from Jeannie while Pete pinned her down, walked away from her body in the dirt. And in that moment, he decided that he wouldn’t walk away again. He would take the test the following day. He’d have enough time to get things sorted like he’d planned. And then what? Well, he’d have to wait and see.

For the rest of the night, Ray felt strangely calm. Bob received a call from the duty officer at the station and had to leave early. Ray and Patricia finished their meals and took their drinks out onto the deck.

He didn’t know how to broach it, he’d never been very good with words. “When I was young—” he said.

Patricia was resting her legs on his lap. She raised an eyebrow. “You were a real looker.”

Ray smiled and stroked her ankle. He thought about pushing on, about searching again for the right words, but instead he leaned over and kissed her on the lips, thinking that maybe it was better to leave it like this.

When Ray walked into the station the next day, he immediately knew that something was wrong. Bob, who was normally so convivial and full of cheer, stood behind the counter, stony-faced.

“So, you’re here to confess, are you?”

The words came as a shock. Ray hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. He thought he’d at least have a few days. The black liquid surged up, making his legs shake, and he thought for a moment his whole body might buckle. He rested his hand on the counter and opened his mouth to explain, but he could already hear how weak and feeble he sounded.

Bob walked around from the other side of the counter and slapped Ray on the back. “I’m just kidding, mate. You should see the look on your face.”

Bob, still chuckling, led Ray into a side room. “Hey, listen, you know how you asked me about that cold-case business last night? Well, it turns out the public-affairs unit in Sydney made a mistake. We only have permission to collect samples for the Wilson case. Anyway, it got me thinking — no wonder so many people in town have been nervous about the screening. Every petty criminal’s terrified we’re going to bust them for a burglary or a break-in. Apparently Stanley’s been in a right old panic.”

Ray’s mind was wading through Bob’s words, trying to catch up. “So—”

Bob put on a pair of latex gloves and told Ray to open his mouth. “So, the newspaper’s publishing a correction tomorrow,” he said, brushing a small cotton swab against Ray’s inner cheek. “It’s going to make my life much easier, that’s for sure.”

Bob placed the cotton swab in a paper envelope and sealed it. He removed the gloves and threw them in a bin. He looked at Ray and raised his eyebrows. “That’s it. You’re done.”

He wasn’t sure if he should ask — maybe it wasn’t a good idea — but he had to know for sure. “So, just out of curiosity,” Ray said, trying to feign indifference, “that cold case you mentioned last night?”

“Mate, we’ve got our hands full with enough cases as it is.” Bob showed Ray to the door and shook his hand. “Anyway, thanks for coming in. It’s stupid, really. I mean, you were with me that night, but what can I say? Red tape. Hey, let’s catch up for a beer next week.”

Outside in the bright light, Ray felt giddy — a rush of elation that he had to temper. He stopped and glanced back at the station. He knew there was no serious prospect of him going back inside, but he didn’t want to return to his car yet either. The black liquid in his veins was receding, and as it seeped away, he realised what it was — not guilt or shame, but rather fear. It was almost gone now.

He briefly shut his eyes. He could see Jeannie walking along the cliffs at Barmouth Beach and for a moment he thought she must still be alive — somewhere, though perhaps not here. She kept racing ahead of him — jumping gracefully from rock to rock — and every now and again she would turn to him and wave, except somehow he couldn’t see her eyes.

As Ray got closer, she smiled and held out her palm. He paused and looked down at her hand, though not because he was contemplating taking it in his. He just wanted to stay there a little longer, in that moment, pretending that he might. And then, leaving Jeannie standing on the rocks, her arm outstretched, he turned and walked away.

© 2018 by Jehane Sharah