Leave Her Hanging: A Noir Thriller

Chapter Five

Ella’s house was an old two-storey townhouse in Sandringham. It was a bad house in a bad part of the suburb. A year ago the cops had raided the place two doors down and busted up a P lab. There’d been kids living in that house, a baby, even. All of them breathing in those meth fumes. It was messed up.

The street was quiet now, with only barking dogs and a crying baby to give it some life. I kept my hands in my pockets and my head down as I walked. I turned off the street, went up the driveway. Beneath my feet, weeds fought their way through the cracks in the concrete. I knocked on the front door with the peeling white paint and waited.

Nothing for a while. I tried the doorbell even though I knew it didn’t work and then I knocked again, louder this time. More waiting. But the third time did the trick. A silhouette appeared behind the frosted glass, staggered closer until it filled the pane. The door creaked open to halfway.

“You,” Ella’s mum said.

“Mrs Lewis,” I said. “I’m sorry—”

She flung the door open wide and fixed me with a stare that’d fry an egg. She had Ella’s hair, but right now it was a tangled mess, looking more like a tumbleweed out of some old spaghetti western.

“You little shit,” she said. Her face was lined with too many crevices for her age. “How dare you. How fucking dare you.”

My guts felt like they were filled with lead. “Mrs Lewis…” My tongue was too big for my mouth. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. I know you don’t like me, but I loved Ella, and—”

She staggered forward, coming so close I could smell the cigarette smoke and something else, booze, maybe. If I’d been able to back up without going down the steps, I would have.

“You did this,” she yelled. “You! We were doing just fine, and you had to come in here where you weren’t wanted and fuck everything up. You nearly murdered my husband. You broke our family apart. And look at what happened!”

I wanted to look at my feet, the ground, anything but the pain streaked across Mrs Lewis’ face. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. “This isn’t about me, and it’s not about your husband,” I said. “I came here about Ella.”

“Mum?” came a voice from the hallway behind her.

She spun and snarled. “Go back to your room. Now!”

The shadow hesitated, then scurried away.

“Please,” I said. “Had Ella been acting strange lately? Was she depressed?”

“Piss off.” Mrs Lewis began to close the door.

I jammed my foot in the door. She stared at my shoe for a moment, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Then somehow her face got even wilder.

“Maybe you could just let me look around in her room,” I said. “Just for five minutes. I won’t make a sound, you won’t know I’m here. I just need to understand. Please.”

“Get out!” she screeched. She stomped on my toes. It hurt like hell even through my shoes. I jerked my foot back instinctively, then tried to shove it back in place. Too late. As soon as it was free, she slammed the door shut. I could make out the sound of locks clicking into place.

Damn it! I pounded on the door with my fist. “Mrs Lewis!”

Her silhouette stood there behind the glass for a moment, and then she turned and stomped away.

I slammed the door once more with the palm of my hand, hard enough to make it shake on its hinges. All I got for my trouble was pain pulsing through my wrist and a taste of acid in my mouth. I turned away and grabbed my hair with both hands.

“Fuck!” I screamed at the neighbourhood. The dog started barking again.

I sat down on the front step of Ella’s house, my head in my hands. The funny thing was I would never have acted like this back in the old days, before I started going out with Ella. She was the impulsive one, the one with the crazy plans and the mischievous grin and the passion. She brought those things out in me, things I never thought I had.

“Goddamn it,” I said. I wasn’t getting anywhere here. Maybe I could ask around at school tomorrow, see what I could dig up. Maybe talk to Raj. He wasn’t part of Ella’s crew, but he knew everyone, every bit of gossip. He was a walking Facebook. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

I got up, cast one look back at the door, and started down the driveway. I’d just reached the street when I heard the door creak open again.

“Spade?”

I turned back to see a skinny little twelve-year-old boy hurrying bare-foot down the driveway towards me.

“Hey, Max,” I said.

Max glanced back nervously at the door and looked at me. He had Ella’s eyes. “I heard Mum yelling at you.”

“Yeah, I expect you did.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

He nodded. The kid’s face look tight, like he’d spent the last few days crying so hard he’d become dehydrated. “It’s not your fault.”

“Well, maybe.”

He shrugged. “I found her, you know.”

It took me a minute to work out what he was saying. “You found her body?”

He nodded.

Jesus. What do you say to that? I wanted to hug the poor kid, but I got the feeling that’d make it worse, make him feel weak, like a baby. So I kept my hands in my pocket and my trap shut.

“You wanna look in her room?” Max said after a while.

“I don’t think your mum’s going to let me.”

“She’ll be asleep by ten. I’ll unlock the back door for you. I’ll still be awake.”

Christ, this kid. I wanted to take him away from this shitty neighbourhood, take him someplace nice. Maybe not my place—my place wasn’t much better than this—but somewhere he could be free. Instead I just said, “Yeah, that’d be good.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Ten o’clock.” He glanced back at the door again. “I have to go.”

“Yeah.”

He trotted back up the driveway, stepping carefully around the sharp edge of a broken cobblestone, and eased the door open. His mum was yelling at him again before he’d even closed it.

~~~

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