A kitchen knife claimed my attention, protruding from below her right breast, its dark handle bloodied but I noticed, curiously, little else on the front of her pyjamas was sullied. I remember the music machine was repetitively playing ‘Hotel California’. I dialled 000 and retreated, dazed, and confused to her front verandah and waited. Sirens heralded the arrival of ambos and cops.
It all started in October 2021. She bought the house next door; sharing a glass of homemade lemonade on our front verandah while waiting for her furniture van to arrive. It eventually did and her ‘… thanks for the drink,” were the last words we heard from her. No words; no loud, nor soft music, come to think of it; no conversations drifting over the back fence; gardening noises; no accidental flatulence; nothing. Absolute quietude, as though next door disappeared.
Her brother Charlie was in the street as I pretended to fiddle with the irrigation system. He said G’day, explaining that his sister had just bought the property next door. At that moment she came into the street. “This is my sister Jane.” “Janet” she corrected him, fumbling with an explanation that Jane was a bit too ‘Becky-ish’, too many negative connotations! I let that one drift back to the keeper and invited them onto the porch for a drink. I sensed a moment’s reluctance from Janet/Jane but she propped, a little nervously on the couch arm and pretended to sip the cordial.
“So where are you moving from,” I posed and while Charlie said eastern suburbs, she simultaneously proffered western. Again, the foot-faulting explanation of a couple of recent moves. The furniture van finally arrived and with palpable relief, she quickly disappeared. Charlie finished his drink and followed.
I was in the garden for the next couple of hours and saw some magnificent furniture being offloaded. Idle consideration of the western suburbs suggested the pieces were way out of their comfort zone; possibly more suited to the eastern leafy burbs. But it was time to take my sticky nose indoors.
Most mornings, usually before sunrise, I hear her gate noisily open, and moments later her old VW Beetle roundly churbles into life. At some stage during the day, it returns and sits quietly in her driveway, behind those noisy, locked gates. But that is it.
She has visitors: usually dark-suited types, short-haired or shaved heads, driving expensive European cars. I saw her brother occasionally, in the distance, but never to speak to. It sorta felt like we were beneath her purview, infected with some socially undesirable aura.
I was interviewed by the cops. I recalled hearing the deep-throated rumble of big bikes a few nights before I saw her front door uncharacteristically ajar: and the repetitively playing ‘Hotel California’ drifting softly into the street. I knocked, called out and tentatively ventured down the hall.
The Herald Sun was carrying reports of a witness-protection program gone terrifyingly wrong. They also reported a high-profile, criminal prosecution case collapsing.