[A continuation of my foray into crime writing…]

Chapter 1

Part 2

UNDER THE BRIDGE

The Guilt of Omission (part 2)

Saturday June 27, 1980

2pm

Hiking Trail enroute to Mt. Lofty

Lillie

Raindrops stung the frozen tips of Lillie’s fingers. ‘There’s no way I’m staying it’s raining, now,’ she said rubbing her numb digits then taking a few steps along the path. The further she could get from her guilt the better. No one need know. But what if they found out? What if Fifi showed the necklace and the detectives linked her to the man’s death?  Lillie trembled. She’d never get a job, a boyfriend; she’d lose everything—possibly even her freedom.

Fifi blocked her. ‘There’s a cave. You can shelter in that.’

‘What?’ Lillie recoiled. ‘With the body?’

‘It’s dead – just bones, it can’t harm you,’ Fifi said.

‘I’ve got a bad vibe, man! Bad vibes.’ Jimmy paced back and forth, swaying his flowing locks. ‘I’m not staying.’

‘I won’t be long, just thirty minutes at the most.’ Fifi stomped further up the track. The rain intensified, drops pummeling their parkas. She whipped around and pointed at Lillie and Jimmy. ‘You two stay here!’

‘No!’ Jimmy strode a few steps towards her and stopped. ‘Look, I really have a bad feeling about this.’ He looked back at Lillie.

Lillie froze to the spot like an ice-sculpture. A flock of black parrots shrieked above in the violet clouds. The birds dipped and whirled on the wind currents. Fifi’s words rang in her head. You have to tell. She knew deep in the emotion curdled base of her stomach, no one would miss that man, that horrible man. Wasn’t my fault, he deserved it. She reasoned and focussed on Jimmy shaking his pink fist at Fifi. The parrots circled above their heads, and as if bored with the rain, darted in formation south. With a dull throb of resignation, Lillie made her decision. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘Fifi, Jimmy, you stay here.’

‘I’ll come with you, Lillie,’ Jimmy offered.

‘No, it’s alright. Fifi looks brave, but she needs company,’ Lillie said.

Lillie forced her stiff legs to move, one foot in front of the other, each step she believed closer to a life with no future; her living death. She paced through the driving rain, down the path by the falls leading to the carpark below.

Lillie hopped in the car and hurtled down the winding road to Greenhill Road and then home. She had no intention of reporting to police. What if they suspected her?

7 Months later…

Mum was out cold, stone asleep on whiskey and an afternoon of television serials. Good, Lillie thought as she rushed to her room, pulled her sports-bag from under the bed, collected two drop-waist dresses, a pair of jeans and large tee-shirt from her wardrobe and stuffed them in the bag.

‘Bad timing,’ she muttered.

Winter had rolled into spring, exams, end of school celebrations and choices made that she had begun to regret. Like the body of that man, her friends’ father, who festered just beneath the surface of her conscience, another secret silently grew…

But she didn’t want to spoil Christmas, then New Year and plans for travel and seasonal work in Tasmania. She’d missed three periods.

 She fobbed off her friends telling them, ‘Yes, I did go to the police, but…you know, they have to keep it under wraps so as to not scare off the killer.’

However, she knew they’d figure it out and her image would be ruined. Francis Renard, the man involved in her bad choices and situation, wouldn’t want her in that condition. And she wouldn’t want him till death do us part—he was too much like her dead-beat father who abandoned the family long ago. She had to get away.

She moved the bed and pushed her fist through a hole in the wall; a hole hidden by an old Sherbert, the band, poster. She fished around before latching onto a small tin and pulled it out. Lillie opened the tin and then scraped out the notes and coins. ‘I have a ferry to catch,’ she said as she inserted the money into her purse. ‘All I wanted to do was have a quiet life with my friends. How dare that creep rear his bony head.’

She sat down at her desk, picked out a pale pink sheet of paper. She wrote, taking care to avoid the crimson rose in the corner:

‘Dear Fifi and Jimmy,

I have to go away for a while. I have a job in Tasmania. None in Adelaide, ha-ha.

I went to the police station again and reminded them of the bones under the bridge. The nice policeman took down my details—AGAIN! and accepted my statement and said he’d deal with it. So don’t worry, it’s in the hands of the police. They are going to keep it quiet because they already have their suspicions who did it, and they don’t want to scare them off. They reckon they’re getting close. So don’t tell anyone, promise, please.

Take care of yourselves. And look after my brother, Sven while I’m away. I will miss you, my friends.

Love,

Lillie.’

*[Photo 5: My black cat, Storm standing in for the fictional Moe © L.M. Kling 2024]

Lillie sealed the letter in the envelope and pressed the stamp of the queen in the top right-hand corner.

Moe, her black cat scuttled under the table as Lillie raced past and out the door. She headed for the cream and red Kombi parked around the corner at the end of her street. A man with dark curls and a pair of square, black-rimmed glasses, opened the passenger door. ‘Are you ready for a road-trip to Melbourne?’

Lillie panted and then caught her breath. ‘Yes, Francis,’ she said as she scrambled in. ‘Just need to drop by the letter box.’ She stared at the letter addressed to Fifi and Jimmy Edwards. She had another one for Francis Renard. And her mum and Sven, of course. She left that note on the kitchen table.

She planned to travel on the ferry from Melbourne, Victoria to Devonport, Tasmania, alone.

[…continued in a fortnight]

© Tess Trudinger 2024

*Feature Photo: The Crimson Rose © L.M. Kling 2006

***

Check out my other writing project, a speculative novel, Diamonds in the Cave on Wattpad.

The Wends, they were such a gentle group of people…until someone put it in their heads that there were witches amongst them…

Want to find out more? Click on the link to my story on Wattpad,

Diamonds in the Cave.