Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

CHAPTER 39

Jeremy Cunningham, now looking very silly (costumed, even) in a policeman’s coat that was stained with someone else’s blood, gave a feeble smile and a weak shake of his head. He tried to say something – that’s ridiculous, perhaps – but it came out, well, choked.

Audrey looked as surprised as everyone else: she clearly thought the Sabres had followed through on their threats to kill her son. Jeremy had, like the Agatha Christie on the shelf, been hiding under a different name: Darius Crawford, the name he’d given himself as he acted out a bumbling local cop. His other alias, the one the media had given him, the Black Tongue, was the opposite of bumbling. He had chalked up five murders and one coerced suicide. Like I said, some of us are high achievers.

It’s not one of Knox’s rules, but you should never believe someone is dead until you’ve actually seen a body.

I addressed Jeremy directly now. The parlour show was over. ‘Green Boots had to be a local. It’s why you only showed the photo to our family, but kept it from everyone else, even Juliette, under the guise of preventing panic, because any local would have recognised him. All the staff are up here on the mountain for the season – they’ve been here for months. It might not be suspicious that there’s a new cop from town they hadn’t met, but they would recognise the sergeant immediately. That’s why you wanted him out of sight so quickly, locked away in the shed. And you took his coat, but you didn’t take his shoes: steel caps are a usual part of a policeman’s uniform, and the body was wearing them, but Erin stepped on your toe while chasing the truck, and it hurt, which means that you are not. You could have pretended to be anyone, really, but I think you wanted to be someone with the power to separate us. That’s also the reason you made the sergeant’s death such a public statement, so you could split Michael off. But you were nervous, too nervous, and every step you took that looked like legitimate police work – identifying the body, controlling panic – was instead to make sure your disguise held up. So, when a Cunningham asked, you showed us the photo. It looked like you were doing the right thing. You were really making sure we didn’t know the corpse’s true identity. That’s why you were nervous when we were around the body. I just thought you were squeamish.

‘But what you weren’t expecting was Lucy’s reaction, for her to recognise the victim as the policeman who’d given her a speeding ticket on the way up. When she stormed out, I thought she said, “You’re the boss”. But she actually said, “It’s your boss.” She hadn’t thought to accuse you yet – she was thinking aloud – but she knew something was off. She didn’t put it together until she got up to the roof and googled the Jindabyne police department. But by then we’d filtered off to bed and you’d followed her up there, and she didn’t want to die like Michael, so she jumped.

‘You lied about how you got here so fast too. You said you’d been on the speed radar all night catching tourists, but that can’t have been true because Lucy, at some point, would have surely spat on you over the ticket she got. More police were never arriving – you told us they were caught dealing with the roads, but how do two passenger coaches get up here and one police car can’t find its way when there have been two murders? Of course, none of this twigged at first. You seemed reliable. There were three sets of footprints to the body and only one back: enough for one victim, one arriving policeman and one killer who’d left. I thought this meant the killer had called in the body themselves, before’—I used air quotes here— ‘Officer Crawford had arrived, being the third set. I was right that the killer did call it in, or at least pretended to. Because no one else discovered the body, you discovered it yourself – it was part of your act. You went up there twice. First, with the sergeant, when you tied the bag around his head, walked him up there to die, and then took his coat, and then again in the morning.’

‘He’s on camera arriving much later.’ Juliette sounded unsure of my conclusions. ‘We both saw that.’

‘I think you’d been checking out the resort when you were planning to follow us up here. And the snow cam is on their homepage, so you knew the driveway was, in a way, monitored. I assume you attacked the sergeant on the road, where he’d have parked his patrol car to set up the speed gun. At the top of the hill you would have had mobile reception to check the website. I’d thought myself that if you really floored it, a car could skip the three-minute window where the camera refreshed. Then you just needed to go back later and make sure you were captured arriving at the correct time. It looks like you’re travelling towards the car park in the photo, sure, but your arm is over the back of the headrest. You’re reversing.’

‘Jeremy? It can’t be.’ Katherine was peering at him like he’d come home from a desert island. Then she turned to Audrey. ‘How could you not know?’

‘The Sabres took him, Katherine. But there was no ransom – they wanted the photographs. The ones Ernest has been talking about. I didn’t know about the watch or anything . . . and Jeremy, if that is you, I tried – I tried to find them. They said they had to be sure I wasn’t hiding them. So they told me they had to’—she choked on the word—‘to be sure I was telling the truth.’ Marcelo moved towards Crawford/Cunningham (what’s in a name?), but Audrey took his hand. I saw her give it a squeeze and he let his arm trail behind him, like a pit bull restrained by a leash. ‘I couldn’t tell the police, not only because Alan was a policeman at the time, but also because I was worried they’d come back for Michael and Ernest. Our family had lost so much over these silly photos, I just wanted it finished. So I pretended. If it’s really you, Jeremy, I’m sorry. Are you sure, Ernest? Are you really sure?’

‘Michael told me Alan had tried to contact me first,’ I said. ‘I’d told Michael it wasn’t true, convinced it was a lie Alan had spun to build trust with him. But then I thought about it. Alan had said he’d contacted Michael’s brother. You didn’t know you were adopted until he approached you, did you, Jeremy?’

Jeremy swallowed hard. Chewed his lip. Said nothing.

‘But of course, Alan knew you were alive. Marcelo told me he didn’t have the stomach for killing – maybe he was the one who let you go? But you don’t remember any of that, so here comes a man you don’t know, talking about a family you never knew you were a part of. Mark and Janine Williams, they were heralded for their foster caring, and I’m thinking they took you in, but maybe you never knew you weren’t theirs. And I’m thinking you weren’t too understanding when you discovered they hadn’t told you everything. You wrote a letter to Michael in prison, trying to explain what had happened, who you thought you were, as you were piecing things together. But Michael took the name Jeremy Cunningham in the letter as some kind of threat.’ I’d asked Michael if there’d been a name on the letter, to which he’d replied, almost with a laugh, oh, there was a name . . . they were just trying to push my buttons. ‘It makes sense he’d think that, especially if Alan had told him anything about what the Sabres had done to our mother. He didn’t believe it, and I’m in the press as a family traitor anyway, so who else could you turn to? Someone close to him. Lucy.

‘Lucy was waiting for you to arrive, and when you hadn’t yet, she was worried that you might be Green Boots. Trapped outside in a terrible accident. I thought she was worried about the general police presence an unsolved murder would bring, which would be hard for Michael. But she was worried that, if you’d frozen overnight, it would ruin her plans to not only reunite you with Michael, but also take the credit for it. She’d tried to identify the body: she’d checked the guest lists before I did. She asked me if the body looked like Michael. Not if it was Michael. She was asking about a family resemblance. She was on the roof trying to get a text through to you to check where you were.’ She’d told me this weekend was her chance to give Michael his family back. She hadn’t been talking about herself. ‘Another reason why she was so devastated when she realised who you might really be, and what you might have done: she’d invited you up here.’

‘It’s just the way you planned it, Katherine.’ Trust Andy to steal my thunder. ‘It’s a goddamn family reunion.’

There was only the shriek of the wind while everyone digested.

Finally, Jeremy spoke. ‘This is not what I expected, being in a room with you all.’

His hand was gripping the mantle, clawing flecks of paint from it, as his eyes darted between us. There were too many of us between him and the door to escape, and there was a liberally iced window behind him. He could possibly go through that, depending on the softness of the snow below, but I felt confident one of us could grab him if he tried.

‘I . . .’ he hesitated. ‘I waited so long to meet you. I thought it would be different.’ He had the same wistful tone he’d used when letting me in to see Michael in the Drying Room. You really care about him, don’t you? . . . I didn’t really have brothers growing up. ‘I was always different when I was young. I never fit in. Got into fights. And then Mu—’ He cut himself off and I could see anger in the flare of his nostrils. ‘I thought Alan was a liar at first. I’d always called them my parents. I asked them, and they just . . .’ I could tell he was struggling with the memory. ‘They just admitted it. And these people, who I’d thought my whole life were my family, they looked so happy about it. They couldn’t tell me who I was. I’d had foster brothers and sisters, but the Williamses always told me I was theirs. They said they didn’t know anything more, that they’d taken me in without a name, when I was seven years old.’

‘Seven?’ Audrey gasped. ‘No wonder no one knew who you were. What happened to you in those two years?’

‘I don’t . . . remember.’ Jeremy looked like he was fishing for something that wasn’t there. Too young, too beaten, too abused, perhaps; those memories all repressed. The Sabres had been so scared Audrey would bleed their secrets that they’d told her they’d killed her son to be sure she wouldn’t double-cross them, but then they hadn’t had the gumption to do it themselves; they’d simply left him on the street to die. How long they kept him and how long he lived on his own is something I’ll never know. But how that experience might transform a young mind – well, I didn’t have to look far to understand. DNA testing wasn’t widely used thirty-plus years ago, and neither were missing persons reports spread across the infant internet. Hair analysis could match family lineage, but it never held up in court – just ask the Queensland detective who’d driven across state lines to accuse a Cunningham. Got into fights. Across state lines, Jeremy was a nameless child in a city he didn’t know.

‘But Alan said he knew who I was,’ Jeremy continued. ‘He said he’d kept an eye on me, that he’d looked after me when I was younger. He said he was supposed to kill me, but instead he let me go and I should be grateful for that. He knew the Williamses had money, and he wanted it for the photos that he said would help me find peace. But I told him to get lost, and the next thing I saw he’s on the news. Murdered.’

‘So you confronted the Williamses?’ I prompted.

‘These people that dared to say they were my family, they kept lying. They just kept lying, saying that they didn’t know who I was! I got angry and . . . I didn’t mean to . . . I found a way to make them feel what I felt’—he pulled at his collar, at his neck—‘and I just can’t breathe when I’m upset.’

‘And Alison? You tracked her down because of her involvement in the McAuleys’ case. How did you know about that?’

‘No. I tracked her down because I wanted to ask her some questions, to find out more about Alan. I understood she’d been his superior.’ The collar was getting a workout now. ‘I didn’t realise this was all her fault. She made my father, my real father, keep doing something that would get him killed, just to cover her own arse. I just wanted to ask her some questions. Honestly.’ He rubbed his forehead, ran his tongue around his teeth.

I could tell it was taking a conscious effort to disassociate himself from his actions, but that he believed his hand had been forced. It can’t have been that forced, seeing as he’d brought all the gear along with him to reconstruct an ancient torture technique, but I wasn’t going to correct him.

‘You all understand that, right?’ There was something sinister underneath his words, like he was appealing to us as equals.

‘If you’re desperate to belong, we’re all here.’ I spread my arms. ‘Why kill Michael?’

‘Michael was supposed to be like me.’ He said it mournfully. ‘I mean, one day there’s a man I don’t know telling me I’m a Cunningham, and then I’m seeing in the news that a Cunningham has killed him. Then I start researching Robert, and he killed that Brian Clarke, and I started to think that maybe I wasn’t so alone after all, that I wasn’t the only one who felt . . . different.’

‘That was when you reached out to Michael?’

‘He didn’t reply to my letter. I could understand why he didn’t believe me. So I needed another way in. His wife was much more willing. She told me when he was being released. About your weekend here. I couldn’t wait: not only would I meet Michael, but the rest of you as well.’ He was, strangely, smiling, reliving the excitement of planning out his first time meeting us: his real family. ‘But I wanted to do it right – I wanted the first time I met him to be just us, and I wanted to prove myself worthy of this family. When I went to the prison a day early, he wasn’t there. I rushed up here. The local policeman, he was parked on the wrong shoulder at the wrong time, and his sacrifice gave me the opportunity to show you who I was.’

Juliette and I swapped a worried look over the word sacrifice. Jeremy was talking exuberantly now, caught up in his own self-mythologising.

‘It also gave me the opportunity to get Michael on his own. And I could make my reasoning convincing because I knew he’d lied to you all about when he was released. I wanted to tell him straight away, but everyone was fawning over him and I knew that it was the only way we’d be alone all weekend. Then everyone started yelling and maybe my choice of clothing wasn’t as clever as I thought it was, because suddenly I had to help with everything, and Juliette was stuck to me like glue, or people would start asking questions. I couldn’t break off to get to Michael. It was only after you’d spoken to him, Ernest, that I could show him . . . to show him I belonged. To show him I was like him.’

Sofia’s theory held: The Black Tongue is announcing themselves. They want us to know they’re here.

Jeremy thought he’d found his place in a family of killers. The sergeant’s death was no more than a dead bird brought to a door by a feral cat. An offering.

‘But Michael wasn’t welcoming, was he?’ I countered. ‘He was horrified. It was clear when I spoke to him that he’d spent the last three years learning to live with the life he’d taken, and he’d come out the other side wanting to do better. To be better. But that’s not what you expected, was it? Did he make you feel like an outsider, all over again?’

‘He was supposed to be like me. You’re supposed to be like me! I tried to reason with him. I knew he’d tell you the first chance he got. And he knew – he had those photos Alan tried to sell me first and he knew who hurt me, hurt us, when I was a child and he refused to tell me. He said I’d just kill them, that he’d learned it wasn’t the way forward, and I realised he wasn’t like me at all. He made me feel alone, just like my fake parents did. Sometimes . . . I can’t breathe when people . . .’ He was pulling at his collar again. ‘The things he was saying. I couldn’t breathe . . . And then the woman . . .’

‘Lucy.’ I was surprised, and a little impressed, to hear Audrey correcting him.

‘I tried to figure out how to leave, but how could I when you were all refusing to go and I’m stuck playing the role of the police officer? And she figured it out. She’d been waiting for me, and I hadn’t shown up. Once she knew the first body was a cop, I was revealed. I begged her to keep quiet. I gave her a choice, you understand? She chose to jump.’ His voice had turned pitiful, begging. He really had believed we would be all like him, and he was shocked that we weren’t.

‘Why?’ That was Katherine, disgust on her tongue summing up the feeling of the room, ‘Why would anyone think our family was a place to fit in?’

‘Michael had no right!’ Jeremy was shouting now. ‘He had no right to tell me where I belonged. To tell me that what I’d done was wrong. The hypocrite!’ He spat the next words. ‘Look at yourselves. Cunninghams. You’re all killers, aren’t you?’

We all looked at each other. Andy went to raise his hand, presumably to suggest that he hadn’t killed anyone, but thought better of it.

I pictured Jeremy, sitting against the wall of Alison Humphrey’s thick-aired apartment, toilet door closed, looking at his trembling, ashen hands, having just learned about his real family. We were easy to research online. Everyone knew what type of family we were. Michael, Robert, Katherine – and later Sofia – theirs were all public incidents, after which they were reported as having blood on their hands. We were infamous, in the media and police circles. Jeremy had found us, steadied his hands and thought, I’m not so different after all.

There was a flurry of footsteps behind us. We turned to see Gavin, who looked surprised to see everyone so agitated. ‘Bags are ready,’ he said. Then did a double take. ‘Who died?’

This was enough of a distraction for Jeremy to move. We spun back to see that he’d knocked the grate of the fireplace over with a clatter and armed himself with the poker. Juliette moved towards him, but he swung it in an arc and she pulled back. He still had nowhere to go, but he was swishing the cast-iron weapon through the air with abandon.

‘I could have just left you here,’ he hissed. ‘Up until now, I might have. After Lucy, I thought I’d done enough to disappear. But now that I know that I was left to fight on my own. That I was abandoned, discarded. By you.’ He was talking to all of us, but glaring at Audrey. ‘At least we’ll burn together.’

He lunged with the poker, and everyone flinched, but he was plunging it into the fire. Using the rod as a lever, he flicked a giant, flaming log onto the carpet. It landed on the floor with a thud, sending fireflies of sparks into the air. We all held our breath. Juliette had told me her father built the guesthouse in the late forties, which meant it was held up by timber, shortcuts and asbestos: the walls may as well have been matches. Some of the carpet fizzed, browned, but it was too damp to catch; the log just sat there smoking. We all went quiet, Jeremy looking forlorn, the rest of us marvelling at how uninspired his getaway plan was.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, one of the books on the wall exploded. A single spark had carried, lighting the crisp leaf-dry pages.

It figured. These books were perhaps the only things in the resort, me included, that weren’t damp to their bones. I wish I could tell you the book that exploded was Jane Eyre (it would be fitting, considering what’s about to happen) but it just wouldn’t be true.

Once the first book went up, the rest went too, one by one, like popcorn in a microwave, jolting into flames as sparks leapt. Some, I suspected, seeing as it was almost spontaneous, merely caved to the peer pressure of the books around them. And then the walls were blazing. The floor steamed, drying out, and then glowing spots formed in the dry patches.

We all darted towards the door. Erin was first out. I hauled Sofia to her feet, draping her over my shoulder with my good arm. Marcelo was dragging Audrey, who was stunned and crying; they’d knocked one of the red thrones over, which had started a small bonfire in the middle of the room. Juliette was yelling, waving her arms. The flames had started in earnest now. Jeremy dropped the poker and slammed his elbow into the window behind him, shattering it. The air entered, feeding the blaze, flames tripling in size with a whoosh. F-287 was a blackened husk. Sofia and I weren’t leaving until Marcelo and Audrey got past, so I’d know they were safe. I’d lost sight of my aunt and uncle, but then I caught a glimpse of Katherine, moving in the wrong direction.

‘Katherine, just go!’ I yelled, but flames roar in a way I could have never imagined. Everything was drowned out by the consuming growl. I winced with the heat, knowing we were running out of time. Behind me the doorway was literally hissing with steam. Once the frame dried, it too would go up. And then the same for the carpet in the hallway, the banister, the stairs, and soon the whole building.

Marcelo was moving past me, Audrey now on her own. I ladled Sofia onto him and ran towards the window, side-stepping the firepit of the red chair. As I passed it, the bonfire dropped away entirely. It had burned through the floor, crashing into the level below us. If we didn’t move fast, that would catch too, race into the foyer and block us from the main door.

Katherine had reached Jeremy, who had one foot out the window. He’d knocked the sharpest shards from the sill and was getting ready to jump. Katherine reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, but Jeremy sensed her movement, spun and clutched her by the throat. She gagged, and he thrust her into the mantle, her head bouncing off the sharp corner with a crack. He squeezed harder. Katherine’s eyes bulged. I yelled again, but my voice dissolved as a surge of flame, fed by the wind, flashed and singed the side of my face. I smelled burned hair. I was too far away. Jeremy saw me, then looked back at Katherine. There was blood on the corner of the mantle. Jeremy’s eyes were merely reflecting the fire, but there was something ablaze in them all the same. He pulled Katherine’s head back, and thrust her again towards—

Andy’s war cry was so loud it conquered the howl of the fire. He’d picked up the poker and was at a run. Jeremy’s eyes widened. Andy pulled back his arm to swing – a long, wide arc, in a loose-hipped stance like he was teeing off the golf balls he’d never got to hit from the roof – and unleashed. The poker slammed into