Page 27 of The Sirens

26

LUCY

SATURDAY, 16 FEbrUARY 2019

‘Police!’

Lucy is frozen, pinned in place.

She knows, in some distant part of her brain, that she must walk across the room, that she must open the door and talk to the police. But her body seems to have forgotten the precise order of movements necessary. Her lungs empty of air.

Dora Maar is scratching at the door, tail rigid and ears flat against her skull.

To steel herself, Lucy imagines what will happen next: greeting the officers, offering tea or coffee, a place to sit. She imagines folding her hands into her lap as they speak.

Your sister , they will say, Jessica Martin. We have found a body and we have reason to suspect it is her. She imagines her sister, a pale spread of limbs at the bottom of a cliff. Washed up green and gleaming on some distant beach. She imagines that the sea has taken her again and spat her out, an animal rejecting its young.

The knocking comes swift and hard, the door rattling with it. The officers are growing impatient, she can hear snatches of their conversation. The words warrant and reasonable cause and suspect. Oh God, what if they suspect Jess has been murdered ? That foul puddle of urine in the toilet. Perhaps Cliff House is a crime scene and Lucy has been here for days, touching things, polluting evidence. What if Jess did not leave voluntarily, what if she was missing – and Lucy did nothing because she was too consumed by her own problems, by what she did to Ben?

Nudging Dora Maar aside, Lucy takes the chain off the door then flings it open, letting the storm pour in.

The two officers – a man and a woman – wear fluorescent rain jackets, their hats marked with the insignia of the NSW Police. A radio crackles in time with the storm.

‘Miss Martin?’ says the woman, and Lucy nods. ‘Can we ask you a few questions?’

But they’re already moving inside, Lucy pressing herself against the wall to make way. They smell of rain and stale coffee. She knows she should say something but her tongue seems to have swelled, her brain emptied of everything but: my sister. My sister is dead.

‘Can we sit?’ asks the male officer. He’s older than the woman, her father’s age.

Lucy ushers them to the couch, moving aside Jess’s diary, a blanket covered in Dora Maar’s hair. She sees the way they look around the cluttered room, at the tarp-covered hole in the floor, the mould-patterned walls. She sees the raised eyebrows, the shared glances.

Lucy stands opposite them, head bowed, readying herself for the blow.

The woman shifts forward, crossing one leg over the other and clearing her throat. More static comes over her radio: she silences it.

‘So, Miss Martin …can we call you Jessica?’

Lucy’s head snaps up. Her lungs reinflate, her tongue shrinks in her mouth. Brain is reconnected to body.

Jess isn’t dead. Jess isn’t dead. The police are looking for Jess. What has she done?

‘I’m not Jessica,’ she says quickly now. ‘I’m her sister, Lucy. Sorry – I thought you were here because something had happened to her. Is Jess OK?’

The woman’s eyebrows lift in surprise. She adjusts her body on the sofa, writes something in her notebook.

‘I see,’ she says. ‘And I take it your sister isn’t here right now?’

Lucy shakes her head.

‘Right. And when did you last see her?’

Lucy’s mind races. Why are they looking for Jess – what do they want? She searches their facial expressions for clues – the male officer has a nerve pulsing above his eyebrow, the woman stares at her, impassive, waiting. She barely seems to blink.

‘I don’t understand,’ Lucy says. ‘Is my sister in some kind of trouble?’

‘Why would you ask that?’ The female officer waits, patient.

Lucy chews at the nails on her right hand. Her heart is beating faster now.

‘Well …I guess I’m a little worried, given that you’re here asking about her.’

‘Do you normally live with Jessica?’

She looks at her hands, at the silver web between each finger. She notices, distantly, that the rash is getting worse. She wants to stretch the moment out, wants the opportunity to think. She should have offered them tea or coffee, bought herself a little time. It’s too late now: it’ll just seem like what it is. Evasion.

‘Not normally, no,’ she says, keeping her voice low, a whisper.

‘So, you’re just staying here, then?’ Lucy nods.

‘I’m going to ask again. Can you tell us when you last saw your sister?’

Her thoughts wheel like birds. What does Jess need from her, in this moment? Does she need her to lie, to invent some kind of alibi? If only Lucy knew.

But it doesn’t matter. That instinct for the truth is still inside her, beating hard as another heartbeat. She takes a breath.

‘I haven’t seen my sister for over a year,’ she says quietly. ‘I arrived on Tuesday morning and she wasn’t here.’

The officers exchange a glance.

‘You had an arrangement and she broke it?’ the female officer clarifies.

‘No,’ says Lucy quickly. ‘No – she wasn’t expecting me. She didn’t know I was coming. Her neighbour – Melody, in number two – told me she’d gone away.’

‘Thanks,’ the woman nods. ‘We’ll speak to the neighbour.’ ‘Do you mind,’ Lucy breathes hard, ‘please, could you tell me what’s going on? Has something happened to Jess?’

The male officer leans forward.

‘Does the name Cameron Hennessey mean anything to you?’

Lucy is sure that they’ll be able to see the jump of her pulse in her neck, the new flush to her cheeks. A cold certainty sweeps through her body: now, she has to lie. She fights to keep her face blank.

‘No,’ she says, furrowing her brow. ‘Should it?’

She is horribly aware of the books stacked on the table, A Wave of Dreams at the top of the pile . His name on the inside cover.

‘Jessica never mentioned him to you?’

Lucy shakes her head. This much, at least, is true. She only knows about him because she read Jess’s diary.

‘We urgently need to ask Mr Hennessey some questions in relation to an ongoing investigation. Now, we understand that Miss Martin and Mr Hennessey were previously in an intimate relationship – had been for several years. His car was found by a member of the public at a nearby location. So with your sister being unaccounted for, you can see why we have to investigate the possibility that they’re together.’

‘Sorry – an investigation into what?’

‘I can’t disclose that.’

Lucy’s mouth is dry, her skin prickling with panic. ‘Did he hurt someone? Could he have hurt Jess?’

The officers look at each other. The female officer turns to her, and for a moment Lucy is sure that she wants to say something, to provide some kind of reassurance. But then, thunder, the kind that sounds like the sky is being zipped open. Dora Maar darts under the sofa in fear. The house trembles, and Lucy sees the male officer glance nervously towards the window. The clouds are dense, veined and greenish, like some great creature’s wings.

The female officer closes her notebook and stands, brushing down her trousers as if to remove any trace of the house.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Well, thank you for your time. I’m going to leave my card here.’ She puts it on the table, right on top of Hennessey’s book. Lucy’s heart thuds. ‘And if your sister comes home, please ask her to call me.’

When, at last, the crunch of tyres on gravel has faded, disappearing under the weight of the storm, Lucy sits down again, trembling. She looks at her feet, notices that the skin between her toes is thicker, almost webbed. She scratches at a scaly patch on her big toe and pulls it off. The layer underneath is bluish and shining.

She thinks of what the officers said, that Cameron Hennessey’s car was found nearby. And she thinks of how she’d found Cliff House when she arrived. The hardened washing-up in the sink, the dirty plate on her sister’s bed, the urine in the toilet bowl.

Like Jess had run away from – or with – someone.