Hindsight

By A A Bell

A terrific new contemporary fantasy series with a crime twist, where layers of history become visible ... military secrets, human mutation and the nature of madness.
'a rare and special tale!' AUREALIS XPRESS on DIAMOND EYES, winner of the Norma K Hemming Award 2011Mira Chambers has an infallible gift for solving mysteries ... but using it comes with a price.Determined to regain her independence after ten years in orphanages and asylums, Mira leaps at the chance to help her friend, Bennet Chiron, an enigmatic ex-con who risked his life to save hers. Mira plans to investigate the murder-robbery that put him behind bars for six years in the hope of clearing his name. But people are turning up dead under bizarre circumstances, and Mira discovers that she's being hunted by two old adversaries.Layers of secrets are about to be ripped apart ... is Mira the only one with a steep price to pay?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780730499312

A A Bell

A. A. Bell's debut thriller DIAMOND EYES was Highly Commended in the 2008 FAW Jim Hamilton Award, and both it and its sequel HINDSIGHT won the prestigious Norma K Hemming in consecutive years (2011 and 2012). She has also published non-fiction bestsellers about finance. A. A. Bell lives near Brisbane with her partner and children.

Book preview

PART ONE

Severing Serenity

Trust not too much to appearances

Virgil

ONE

Mira noticed the body on the beach from halfway across the new bay bridge.

Jogging across from Likiba Isle to the mainland, trying not to look like an escapee from the sanctuary, she wore a cotton sundress instead of a tracksuit and stayed alert to every sound in the rising fog, and every shadow. Dawn chased her with the first sharp blades of the day but as she drew nearer to the body, she paused with her hand on the damp rail.

Heights and bridges always made her sway. Her violet sunshades helped to some extent, the darker hues making everything appear more solid and real. Still, she couldn’t help the feeling that the ghostly bridge might evaporate out from under her at any moment, leaving nothing between her and the stunted mangroves that dotted the small cove and its crooked inlet.

Gripping her shades with one hand to prevent them from falling, she clamped tighter onto the rail and looked down along the small beach.

Through the violet haze, she saw a young blonde woman, much like herself, lying on her back, and except for one soggy jogging shoe, she was naked.

Mira clasped a hand over her mouth, feeling ill. The fresh corpse wasn’t the first she’d ever seen, but it was the first woman. Sunrise bathed the body in a soft ghostly glow, while the shallow waves of the incoming tide licked obscenely higher along the dead woman’s thighs. Semi-adrift against a patch of scuffled sand, her arm pointed above her head to a spilled bucket of fish, with a basket of tackle uphill and a long rod, still upright in the sand at the water’s edge. The line hung slack with the bait and hook bobbing at her knee, almost as if she’d caught and landed herself. Or perhaps netted. Her faux leather bikini was twisted around her mouth and head. However, it was the blast marks in her chest which had obviously put an end to her struggles. Three rounds at close range. Her hands were punctured and blown out too, as if she’d seen the shots coming and tried to shield herself.

A trail of scuffled sand stretched from the body to the bridge, disappearing below Mira into murkier shadows. Men’s voices came to her through the thinning fog too; the derelict tram bridge nearby was now muttering with local fishermen.

A violet seagull swooped down past Mira’s shoulder, startling her. It landed on the dead woman’s face and Mira hissed at it in reflex before she realised she was too far away, and far too late. The ghostly bird preened its wings, oblivious. Then rumbling beneath Mira’s feet, the long bridge trembled with the approach of a heavy rig.

Anyone who recognised her outside the walls of Serenity could pose a risk. Gate pass or no gate pass, the island sanctuary was still basically a psychiatric ward and it was unusual for anyone to make it so far on foot and alone at such an early hour, especially alone. Questions would be raised, and such delays were the last thing she needed today.

Glancing about, she calculated the chance of making a dash off the nearest end of the bridge onto the mainland. She might make it to cover in time behind a grassy dune, picnic bench or palm tree. Or she could stay and maintain the pretence of normality; just a local cane farmer’s daughter, out for a walk. Or perhaps a lost tourist. However, at such an early hour as 6am, she reassured herself it was common for delivery trucks to be as keen as she was to escape the compound after unloading; time enough for them to get through the security checkpoint and make it off the isle completely before any of the most dangerous clients were let out of their wards for morning exercises.

Sea hawks squawked a warning overhead, invisible against the violet sky. Mira heeded them and spun her back to the road, hugging the rail and shielding her glasses just as a gust of small stones and sand whipped past her from the speeding wheels. She heard a series of jolts as the truck accelerated off the bridge, but by the time she uncurled herself from the rail, the engine was already fading inland, dissolving into foggier swamplands and cane farms towards the interstate freeway. Within seconds, she heard the familiar growl of another engine — her friend’s old Camaro headed her way, this time through the maze of cane fields.

Much more than a friend soon, she hoped. Bennet Chiron may have started out as her social worker, but if all went well in the matron’s office this morning, he’d soon be her legal guardian — or as close to it as the law would allow, given their particular circumstances. At thirty-two, he was only ten years older than her but a lifetime wiser, despite the dark shadow over his own past, and she didn’t care about any of those technicalities anyway. Without his skills as her therapist, she’d still be a sedated lump in a straitjacket who couldn’t be permitted full consciousness without becoming dangerously violent and desperate to escape. Thanks mainly to Ben, she’d been granted her first chance in ten years to regain some of her independence and perhaps move back out into the world — at least as far as his secluded beach house for a temporary trial period. With no other friends in the world, aside from the quirky young matron at Serenity, she could easily call Ben her best friend, but that seemed far too cheap a sentiment, considering the depth of affection she’d come to hold for him. Yet she dared not think of him as her boyfriend. Not after all the trouble and heartache she’d caused him, so far inadvertently.

Her hands trembled with excitement, tempered by shyness and nerves. He’d been in hospital himself for the past ten days, and she’d been limited to supervised visits of only an hour each morning, which gave her nearly no time to discuss or plan their coming weeks together. So much to do if she was ever to convince a psychiatric review committee that she was fit and safe to resume a more permanent role in mainland society.

Mira hurried over to the overgrown picnic area to meet him, but the meandering footpath led her closer to the beach first as it followed the low dune towards the old public parking area.

A horn sounded and brakes squealed as Ben slewed against the kerb to her right.

‘Mira!’ he called above the rough rumble of his engine. ‘What’s the deal here?’

The car backfired, making her jump.

‘You okay?’ His door clanked as it stuck open. She heard him jog up behind her, leaving the engine chugging, but she didn’t turn to greet him. ‘Does Matron Sanchez know you’re out here?’

She shrugged, and a cold shiver caused her to hug herself. A platinum pass gave her authority to come and go from Serenity any time during the day as long as she returned in time for meals and other scheduled activities, and caused no trouble among the locals, but no walking distance ever seemed far enough if she could still see Likiba Isle. As a gloomy backdrop to the dead body, it seemed almost inevitable that someone would have died here.

‘Hey, Mira,’ he said, with a cautious step closer. ‘Are you with me?’

She nodded, wishing she never had to go back there.

‘So, what’s the problem?’

She shrugged, hardly knowing where to begin. It seemed too much to tell him all at once without sounding insane. She rubbed the cool mist from her arms, keeping her back to him. Still no point in turning to look for him. No matter how hard she tried, even with the help of her darkest sunshades, she suffered a sensitivity to certain light frequencies that made him invisible against the violet haze — same as the noisy sea hawks, the truck that she’d never seen despite its long approach to her and anything else that had moved in the past ten days. Over-crystallisation within her eyes would be the simplest way to summarise her problem, but he knew that much already. Diamond eyes, he called them. Most light reflected off the surfaces, leaving her effectively blind, while much slower light frequencies refracted enough to make it through to her synapses, enabling her to see the way things had once been. Different shades of sunglasses or tinted windows could filter frequencies enough to see different dates, so if the things around her weren’t positioned or moving precisely as they had been at those moments, they seemed invisible to her. That included her own body as well as her friend’s.

Invisible friend. She shivered at the idea. It really did sound crazy to think of Ben that way considering everything else she could see, albeit blurrily.

‘… Mira?’ He stepped closer until she felt the soft caress of his warm breath on her bare shoulder. Ordinarily, she would have found his nearness comforting, even exciting, but not today. She shifted her feet nervously.

‘This whole place gives me the creeps,’ she confessed. ‘If you’d been here five minutes ago, you’d have seen me freaking out at a ghostly seagull.’

‘A bird?’ he asked, lowering his voice. It wasn’t uncommon for animals with night vision to exhibit reactions to her inside her ‘visions’, as if they could sense that she’d cross their path at some time in their futures, but this had never happened before with a bird. ‘Do you think it sensed you too?’

‘If it did, it ignored me. No, it’s not that. It just seemed so real, I reacted in reflex, as if part of me is still confused — still deluded, as if it’s possible for me to interact with everything.’

‘It’s only been a few weeks since we discovered what you’re really seeing, Mira. It’s going to take time to get used to living in two worlds. Most blind people have enough trouble coping with the surroundings they can feel. At least you can have peace of mind now, knowing you’re not crazy. Everything you can see was once real.’

‘Oh, please,’ she said, tightening her fingers into fists. ‘I told you it’s not that. It’s the frustration! I’m my own worst enemy, can’t you see? Keeping two distinct time periods straight in my head isn’t so hard now that I understand what my visions really are — and especially now that we’ve learned how different coloured lenses can change how far back in time I see. I simply see one day and feel the other. It’s so much easier now without medication and regular sedation messing around with my head. But to have my body react with a mind of its own to things that aren’t real any more, is like — don’t laugh, Ben. It’s betrayal.’

He laughed anyway. ‘You’re too hard on yourself … Maybe you should try getting used to one set of shades at a time. Perhaps change only once a month or so.’

‘I had no choice today. Besides, the more I change, the easier it is to remember what I can see is no longer real … except for the things that don’t move, naturally.’

‘Okay, great. I’m glad to hear it. So what’s the lag time with that pair?’

‘Ten days, give or take a few hours.’ Mira slid them higher on her nose to improve the focus. ‘Not as blurry as my last few pairs. I can read all the print on the No Swimming sign over there.’ She pointed down the beach, but if he looked at it, he didn’t say anything. Perhaps someone had changed or moved it after the last storm. She sensed him lean closer to her ear.

‘If you’d said that six weeks ago …’ He didn’t need to say the rest. If she’d insisted she could see when her eyes were so obviously blind, he would have called for an extra dose of medications — a cocktail which always included sedatives and made it even harder for her to keep a grip on reality. At least now that Ben had helped her to go cold turkey and get clean, she’d been able to learn how to use the old world she could see to help navigate the updated version she could feel, almost as well as any sighted person. Occasional stumbling made her look clumsy, but she could live with that; as long as she kept her mouth shut about it she couldn’t be mistaken for crazy again. Or so she hoped.

She heard Ben’s crisp cotton shirt rustle and sensed the warmth of his hand hover nearer to her bare shoulder — still without touching her, as if he wanted to draw her against his chest but couldn’t now that his role was changing from friend to guardian. Then she heard him take a step back, and the air turned cooler between them as if he feared touching her at all would cause him more pain. From the cramped sound of his movements, he still wore a sling to help support the shoulder wounded by a gunshot. The shooter’s face sprang to mind and Mira shuddered. She closed her eyes, stung by guilt and the knowledge that Ben had only been caught in the line of fire because of her, when she had been on the run on the mainland. The more she thought about it, the more death seemed to precede and follow her everywhere. The ghostly body on the beach served as further evidence. For Ben’s sake, it would be best if she helped him to maintain a safe emotional distance. It hurt to think that he might be thinking the same thing, but she needed him now more than ever — not just as a friend, but also as her best means of finally escaping a life of being passed from one psychiatric facility to another, and if keeping an emotional distance was the only way to keep him safe and comfortable with the situation, she’d do it. Or at least try.

Hugging herself, she turned away, but felt all the hairs down the back of her neck reaching out for him.

A gunshot cracked, and she spun to grab him to safety. He grabbed her too — until she realised it was only his engine backfiring again. They both laughed nervously.

‘Sorry,’ he said, sounding embarrassed as they released their grips on each other. ‘The old girl always runs rough after a few weeks in a garage.’

Mira patted his chest as she let go. ‘I can sympathise.’ A few days in a rubber room always left her feeling out of sorts too. Soft floors usually strained her calves and ankles on top of any other damage she managed to cause herself, while blander foods also became necessary as they were the only things she could stomach after periods of high stress, which in turn was always complicated by additional medications. She never did get a chance to recover fully between events. She’d only have to open her eyes each morning and her regular daily cocktail was enough to drive her back over the edge. ‘Before I met you,’ she said, ‘I was running rough at least twice a day.’

‘You’re looking pretty hot now, though,’ he said in a tone that suggested more than one meaning. She sensed him lean nearer to her shoulder. His breath touched her neck again and she shivered in anticipation of feeling his lips against her skin. ‘Hang on … are you sweating?’

She blushed, embarrassed to think of him studying her that closely. ‘I was only exercising.’

‘Oh, please tell me you weren’t running?’

She shrugged, knowing there was no point in denying it. ‘You know how much I hate bridges, Ben. The faster I’m over the other side …’

‘Mira, please! You shouldn’t be running in your condition.’

‘Are you kidding?’ She spun to face him, ensuring he could read the rest of her feelings from her expression without needing to raise her voice. ‘After ten years of being strapped in a wheelchair to go anywhere? I love to run, Ben. I can’t help it! Give me a straight path with no obstacles and I’m off, blind or not! It’s practically reflex.’

‘But to the mainland alone? Why risk it, today of all days — and over a bridge to a cove that only gives you the creeps anyway? It’s too dangerous.’

Mira chewed on her tongue, knowing now was definitely a bad time to mention the dead body. ‘It seemed safe enough from the other side.’

‘What if the wrong people recognise you out here?’ His voice returned to a whisper. ‘… Behaving like you’re not properly blind?’

‘I’m sorry, okay? I had to get away.’ She took a last look at the beach where the woman’s glazed eyes still stared at the underbelly of that irreverent seagull, then she spun on her heel for the car park. To Mira, all of the spaces for vehicles looked empty, even though she knew Ben’s old crimson Camaro had to be parked there, somewhere close by on her right where she’d heard it bump against the kerb.

‘Wait,’ he said, catching hold of her skirt. ‘There’s still something you’re not telling me.’

‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ She tugged free, wishing she knew how to express how much she really appreciated him, even if they did have a long rough road still ahead of them. ‘Come on.’ She made a clumsy grab for his shirt sleeve, hoping he could tell it was done with affection as she tugged him to follow. ‘We can’t be late today.’

‘Hang on!’ He swung her around him, effectively blocking her path. ‘You’re out here this early for a reason, Mira — far more than the obvious. Why risk coming all the way out here when you knew you had to be back in time for breakfast? The walk each way must take the best part of an hour?’

‘I knew you’d give me a lift.’ She pushed and stumbled around him. ‘Which space is your car parked?’

‘Nearest, nose in … But you couldn’t have known I’d come so early.’

‘I know you.’ She reached to find the car and fumbled along it until she found the passenger door, then realised she hadn’t heard him move to follow yet. ‘Aren’t you as keen as me to get away from here, Ben?’

‘I left the engine running, didn’t I?’ Yet he kept his distance. ‘I know you too, Mira. Listen, I may not be employed over there any more, but I can still tell when something big is eating you.’

‘Quit worrying!’ She tried not to sound too frustrated. He’d only lost his job because another spiteful inmate had made false accusations against him, and she knew that it would never have happened if Ben hadn’t spent so much time with Mira. ‘I just needed to get out. I was going crazy back there.’

‘At Serenity?’ He chuckled. ‘That hardly seems likely.’

‘It’s a nuthouse, Ben! The patients are all … oh.’ She deflated, recognising his sense of humour too late. ‘You’re being sarcastic.’

‘More like ironic. You’re the only sane person they’ve ever had, and that’s counting half of the staff. Listen,’ he added more seriously. ‘Of course I can guess how anxious you’d be to get away this morning. I felt the same way on my last day in gaol. After six years, I was climbing the walls by mid-afternoon —’

‘Mid-afternoon?’ She bit her lip, stopping herself from saying anything that might sound ungrateful. She knew his six years behind bars must have been far worse than any of her ten in orphanages or institutions. He’d been completely innocent the whole time — his career as a social worker shot down overnight. Convicted for armed robbery and second degree murder, he’d never be allowed to work with handicapped children ever again. On the other hand, Mira wasn’t a child any more and she’d earned every bit of her infamy by fighting the system and anyone who’d come within striking distance. Looking back now, she could see how crazy she must have seemed. As far as any of her tests ever showed, she shouldn’t have been able to see anything. ‘Surely it won’t take us that long today? This isn’t gaol, Ben. Just a health sanctuary. Not even a proper asylum, according to the latest brochures.’

‘It’s still a high security health sanctuary. To be honest, I have no idea how long this could take. Matron Sanchez told me five minutes tops, but you being you, and me being an ex-con, gaining your guardianship should have been impossible. A long shot at best — months or years, depending on how soon I can prove my innocence and clear my name. And yet here we are, booked for our final interview with her for first thing after breakfast, thanks to the little loophole she found for us. There’s still bound to be some last-minute paperwork, or else we should expect it soon after from higher up the chain.’

‘But we’ve already jumped through all the hoops she gave us, haven’t we? And Matron Sanchez is still technically my co-guardian for the next six months.’ As far as Mira could guess, that was the only way it could work for now, with Ben as an authorised escort and Matron Sanchez remaining her official guardian. Legally, the matron had sufficient discretionary powers to hire staff and authorise her escorts, regardless of any criminal history as long as the crimes weren’t against children.

‘So far as I know.’ He paced away and back again, his stride betraying that he had doubts. ‘Listen, I know how you value the truth, Mira, but it’s not like we can tell a review committee about that little talent of yours. That part has to remain a secret, so we’ll need the extra time this morning to get our stories straight. Over breakfast, I hope?’

Mira shook her head and trembled, and not just at the thought of lying to a review committee about why she was so suddenly fit to resume a limited role in society. ‘I can’t stomach another bite from that place. I mean, as nice as it’s supposed to be now after all the renovations, it’s still been tough for me to take — especially these past ten days while you’ve been away in hospital. So when I leave, I want to start my life afresh, not with a stomach that’s still digesting part of it.’

‘Hey, sure. I get that too. I couldn’t stomach any food either before leaving the clink, but we don’t have to eat. We can catch brunch later at a seaside café?’

She tried to smile but couldn’t. ‘Sounds nice but dog dishes in the dirt would do me, so long as I’m off my chain. Every minute outside is another sixty seconds of freedom.’

‘I hear that too, but …’ He paced away and back again. ‘Look, there’s no gentle way to say this, Mira; you’ll keep counting your freedom in seconds if the wrong people ever catch you out and about on the mainland alone — and running is as good as advertising. You need to act blind properly and look harmless out here as if you’re no further use to them.’

‘I don’t have to act blind, especially at this hour.’ She pointed to the ten-day-old sunrise and noticed clouds forming as the fog rose into rain, while the warmth from the real sun, although invisible, continued to dry the mist from her face. ‘The benefits outweighed the risks. Besides, what good is earning a platinum pass to leave without a guard if I can’t use it? Today is my last chance — and if Matron Sanchez didn’t want me to cross the bridge, she would have said so specifically.’

‘She probably expected your fear of heights to be barrier enough; not to mention the bridge itself.’

‘Ha! That never would have stopped me a month ago.’

‘A month ago you were a sociopath and officially a danger to yourself as much as anyone who got in your way.’

‘Oh, charming. Thanks so much for reminding me. The past decade somehow slipped my mind completely.’

‘Don’t be like that. I don’t want to fight, especially today.’

‘Me neither but please stop nagging me!’

‘I’m not …’ He cut himself off, and sighed heavily. ‘I’m just asking you to be more careful. You’re not the only one who can get hurt now because of your actions, even if it’s no longer you who’s doing the hurting.’

She cringed, stung by another pang of guilt. It seemed every time he’d accompanied her to the mainland, she’d attracted trouble and he’d always borne the brunt. Left for dead the last time. She’d witnessed a murder — a rogue army colonel in a dark alley with a military cop who’d asked one too many questions about stolen technology — and just her luck to be describing it to Ben and two other military cops just as the killer returned to the scene. Yet fleeing to Ben’s beach house on North Stradbroke Island had only served the killer with a more intimate setting to catch up with them.

Mira touched her lips, remembering that one final moment with Ben — her first kiss so magical in his arms until the colonel’s bullet thumped more than just the wind out of him. Re-living it over and over in her mind for the last ten days, it seemed increasingly likely that Ben might never feel comfortable getting that close to her again; more likely that he’d try to stop himself. Much safer for him that way too, she reminded herself.

‘Sorry, I forgot to ask … How’s your shoulder?’ She bit her lip, fearing the answer. The exit wound in his chest had been half the size of her fist, even though the trajectory through from his back had been relatively clean of any fragmentation or percussion damage.

‘I wasn’t fishing for sympathy,’ he replied flatly.

‘You can still answer me. You’re not the only one with a right to be worried.’ The high-powered round had pierced between his left lung and clavicle, miraculously missing all bones, organs and major arteries, but concussion from hitting the deck had caused him to lose consciousness for three days — and she hadn’t been able to visit him in hospital without her own guard and the scornful supervision of the other woman in his life. ‘Did they release you last night or this morning?’

‘Oh, no you don’t. No changing the subject. It’s your welfare that counts most today, young lady.’ Again he closed the distance between them, and again he stopped short of touching her. This time she felt him stroke the air slowly down the length of her arm, and her body responded with a ripple of goosebumps.

‘Mira, if you have a problem, you can tell me.’

‘Actually, I think you’ve nailed it already; must be last-day jitters.’ She meshed her fingers to prevent them from shaking. ‘I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, but thanks to you, institutionalised is a monster word that’ll no longer apply to me.’

‘Which earns me a small smile at least?’

She obliged as best as she could manage, turning just enough to let him see her face over her shoulder.

‘Is that the best you can do?’ He sounded hurt. ‘I thought I’d need a backhoe to shift your grin today. Seems I’ll need one to drag out a smile in the first place … There has to be a reason, surely?’

‘If there is, I can’t explain it.’ She wished she could. She stared across the bridge to Serenity, the last in a decade-long line of orphanages, asylums and secure ‘health sanctuaries’. The best of a bad bunch, but still a place which limited her freedom. ‘I thought I’d feel better over here … Instead I feel edgier.’

‘Grass always looks greener from the other side.’ He sighed, and paced away a few steps. ‘I suspect we’ll both feel on edge for a while. What we need is a change of pace.’

‘Oh, absolutely! And much more adventure! We could travel, maybe?’

‘Actually, I’m planning on something more sedate.’

‘After ten days staring at hospital walls?’ She could hardly believe it. ‘I’m not hoping for much; just a few trips to explore a city? Any city. A shopping mall would do; somewhere I could buy my own clothes for once.’

‘Trust me, busy malls and shopping crowds are the last things we need. I still jump every time my own car backfires.’

‘Then we could go natural, with caves and bushwalking through mountains and national forest, maybe? How more sedate can you get than singing songs at night around a campfire?’

He laughed, making her feel foolish. ‘You’re an expert at dodging the subject.’

‘And you’re an expert at digging up my problems.’ She pouted, knowing he wouldn’t stop needling her with questions until he got what he wanted, even when she was unaware if she still had anything festering under the surface. The only thing that made it easier for her was how much he cared for her, and trusting that he only did it to help her. If only she trusted herself enough to release her darkness in bites small enough not to hurt him.

‘Quit fighting me, Mira. Quit fighting yourself. Was it something you saw? Or something you’d like to?’

‘Beats me, honestly! I have a knack for seeing bad things everywhere, so maybe it’s something I still see.’ She wrung her hands, wishing she didn’t have to sound crazy to explain it any more than that. ‘Do we really have time for this now?’

‘I won’t know that until you give me the summary.’

She glanced over her shoulder to the beach, but the ticking clock and ghostly purple haze made the dead body seem even more surreal and threatening.

‘I wish you could see for yourself, Ben. It’s like a silent movie — and my luck, not a comedy.’

‘Okay, longer summary. There’s still plenty of time to get you back by car …’ although she noticed he still left the engine running. ‘Tell me everything you see.’

Mira forced a small smile for him. ‘Do you feel crazy, asking a blind girl what she can see?’

‘Actually, in your case, I’m more worried if someone is listening.’

She shivered, preferring not to think about him. Of all the other residents at Serenity, ‘the listener’ was the only one she’d come to fear. He hadn’t left the isle in sixty years, hadn’t said a word to anyone for the first fifty, allegedly, and yet all the wrong people seemed inextricably linked to him. And he often seemed so poisonously jealous of her, or spiteful, depending on which of his seven personalities had surfaced that day.

‘From the beginning then,’ she whispered. ‘But just for you.’

Mira took off her shades to wipe them clean using the cotton hem of her sundress, clenching her eyes shut against the morning glare, which she could still detect to some extent through the thin, sensitive skin of her eyelids. Then as she opened her eyes without the filtering benefits of the glasses, the sky aged from vivid violet to pale blue, as did everything else around her.

Everything blue.

The bridge vanished, along with the dead body and the irreverent seagull. She could still feel the concrete path beneath her feet, although her shoes and the rest of her body remained invisible just as if she was dreaming. More like sleep walking through a blue fog. However, the trail seemed much narrower now and reduced to dirt; little more than a wallaby trail that disappeared into a thicket of darker blue reeds at the water’s edge. To her right, the trail looked to be rutted at cross-angles by a wider road, also dirt, but trampled into shape by the passing of much busier oxen and horse-drawn carriages. The derelict tram bridge came alive too with ghostly blue boxcars. Blue-skinned loadmasters shouted silent orders to chain gangs of blue convicts, who unloaded blue hemp and sugar cane under the watchful glares of their ghostly blue guards from Likiba Isle. In the distance, across on the isle itself, the overgrowth of wetland forests shrank away and drained to reveal the earlier clearings for crops, cells and guard barracks. On the hill, atop the longest roof, she could also make out the movements of workmen replacing shingles that failed to weather an even earlier renovation from quarantine station to gaol.

Turning around, she took one step too far and bumped into Ben; felt the shape of the sling that supported his arm. Like her, he seemed invisible against the ghostly blue haze of yester-century, as with everything else in the picnic area and car park — part of which now served as a holding yard for blue bullocks, while everywhere else around her the small dead port bustled with the blue ghosts of sailing ships, steamers and row-boat loads of sailors ashore, all going about their business.

To her left, a grotty, shaggy-haired boy picked the pocket of a burly man who wore the hat and coat of a sea captain. Then the boy bolted off through Mira and disappeared along the scrubby dune towards the inlet that was choked — back then — with stunted mangroves. The victim bolted towards her then too, cursing hotly enough after the boy to make Mira stand aside to let him pass. She couldn’t hear him — couldn’t hear any of the ghostly spectres — but she could read their lips.

A blind girl who could read lips. Mira shook her head.

‘Earth to Mira,’ Ben said. ‘A little louder please?’

‘Sorry, I just needed a minute.’ Distancing herself in time first seemed to help settle her nerves a little. She returned her attention to the beach which appeared wider and less threatening, since the only dead body in sight then belonged to a pelican — sprawled in much the same spot as the woman, despite the shifting of so much sand and time.

Sliding her sunshades back up her nose made the blue fog of yester-century disappear, replaced in the same instant by the violet haze of yester-fortnight. Still, she couldn’t see Ben, but with her glasses repositioned the purple bridge reappeared, the beach eroded to a slimmer crescent, mangroves thinned out and the inlet shifted a little further south away from the dead woman with the seagull. It hurt more to see them now. Faster light always hurt more for Mira to process, and changing shades without closing her eyes first often exacerbated the pain until she refocused.

‘Does it hurt too much?’ Ben asked.

‘My own fault.’ She rubbed circles against her temples until the pain subsided. ‘Can’t help testing my limits, sorry.’

‘You want me to give the lecture today?’

She waved him off, knowing that one by heart already. ‘Take it easy. Take my time,’ she recited. ‘But it’s not just the pain, Ben. This was a crime scene.’ Her stomach soured more at the thought of describing it. ‘A nasty one.’

‘Anyone … get hurt?’

She heard him gulp.

‘Nobody we know this time, so relax. There’s no way I’d put your life at risk again by blabbing about it.’

‘Your life too,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s a trio of fishermen behind us on the old tram bridge. If they’ve noticed us poking around down here …’

‘It’s a public park, isn’t it?’

‘Sure, but hardly anybody ever comes here. Fishermen and a few local glue sniffers.’

‘It’s still public. We have every right to be here. Besides, nobody else was involved — at least not as far back as I can see.’

‘Is ten days not enough?’

Mira shrugged. ‘I missed the worst bit — but I’m not sorry. It’s bad enough just looking at the aftermath.’

‘So it’s possible there was someone else involved?’

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s history now. Doesn’t affect us.’

‘If you missed the worst bit, how can you be so sure? Please, Mira, I need to know if there’s anything here that can affect us.’

‘What else can I say? What’s done is done. It’s not like I can change anything. Seeing back through time isn’t nearly as useful as going back in it.’

‘No, but it can be more dangerous here and now.’ He lowered his voice, muttering a curse for losing his patience. ‘Sorry, I can only imagine how hard it must be for you, living in the past as you have to, but you know the risks. There are too many people out there who’d kill to get you on their slab as a lab rat! If anyone could ever replicate what you do, there’d be no secrets safe from them. We need to be better prepared from now on and that means I need to know as much about the dangers around us as you do, okay? There’s no good can come from trying to shield me — especially when it’s me who’s meant to be the guardian, for all intents and purposes.’

‘But it’s just a dead girl on a beach.’

‘Just a dead girl on a beach? Oh, yeah. That’s very helpful and reassuring.’

She sighed and gave in. ‘Come here, then.’ She led him down the path to a rack of timber boards which held the sand together loosely in the shape of steps.

‘It happened there …’ She pointed to the woman’s body, but now that she was much nearer to the scuffled patch of sand, her eyes followed the rumpled trail of boot prints to a second lifeless shape in the murkier shadows under the bridge. Unlike the woman, his ghostly corpse was face down between the pylons with a fishing knife still embedded in his back and one arm twisted around as if he’d died while struggling to pull it out himself.

‘An open and shut case,’ she declared, as the past continued to play out around her. She saw the first ghostly tour bus of the day head over the bridge to Serenity and recalled how festive that day had begun before turning to near tragedy for Ben. Then to her left, she noticed the helmet of a ghostly police officer as he pulled into the car park on a fat patrol bike, but Mira didn’t need to watch him to know that he’d soon read the rest of the crime story from the sand, just as she had.

‘Open and shut,’ Ben echoed. ‘I thought the same thing right before I was framed and locked away for six years.’

‘Hardly the same, Ben. This victim was a beach jogger with nothing worth robbing.’

‘And the killer?’

‘He’s a fisher … okay, so maybe he hung out with the trio on the tram bridge, but it hardly matters now. He’s dead too. They killed each other.’

‘If you didn’t see it happen, how can you tell who killed who? Or that a third person wasn’t involved like I said before?’

‘It’s obvious from their positions, their footprints, the murder weapons and everything else that’s here. I’d really rather not go into the gorier details if you don’t mind.’

‘It’s the details that matter most, Mira.’

‘It’s the details that make me sick!’ Queasy in a way she hadn’t felt since the first time she’d seen a ghostly guard molesting a male convict, while torturing him to death with a knife and branding iron. At the ‘old’ gaol, violence like that, and worse, was a regular occurrence. She gulped and realised Ben was still waiting. ‘Look, it’s simple. He attacked her, she stabbed him, he shot her. Case closed.’

‘A fisherman with a gun? Do you mean a spear gun?’

‘No, a normal handgun. I can’t see the specific make or model from here but it’s too big for a pocket, plenty small enough to conceal in his fishing sack. Obviously, he waited for her. He’d had time enough to catch four whiting and a flathead.’

‘The knife was his, too?’

‘Yeah, probably. Not many pockets in a bikini. And it does look like a fishing knife — as much as I can see sticking out of him anyway. Big handle, like the ones with serrated blades on one side for scraping off scales.’

‘Okay, that’s good. Try again with these now instead.’ He tapped her shoulder with something that felt cool, like the metal arm of his own sunglasses. ‘They’re darker but if I remember right, they let you see back only about a week.’

‘Here’s hoping with less carnage.’

‘Yes, here’s hoping.’

She sighed, and closed her eyes for the swap. ‘Crime really does happen in waves, like light and water, you know. I’ve seen it for centuries, and I’m beginning to think that my knack is for glimpsing the worst of it.’

Opening her eyes again, she saw purple sand washed over with a muddier shade of violet. The cop disappeared along with both bodies, replaced in the same instant by four teenaged boys who were playing beach ball over a tattered strand of crime-scene tape.

‘Oh, yes. Now here’s my kind of crime … just kids bending rules in a ball game.’ She noticed that the sun had also leapt a few hours higher. ‘But the faster light hurts more.’ Closing her eyes again, she returned the glasses. ‘Can we go now, please? I just want this day to be over and done with.’

‘Me too.’ He waited until she headed back up, then fell into step behind her, making the sand squeak under his shoes. ‘Hey, did I mention I bought a few other shades from the hospital canteen? Only ten bucks a pair, so I grabbed every colour they had. We can try them later today; see how many new dates you can see — if you’re up to it?’

‘Sure, when we’re far from here.’ She reached the sandy steps and the path, wondering why she didn’t feel any better to be on her way to his car, unimpeded finally. ‘I spent my monthly allowance on extra glasses last week too, but I left them in my room when I went for a shower and someone crept in and smashed them.’ She didn’t need to say who she suspected.

‘What about the first pair I gave you, and the ones that let you see yesterday? At least with those you could glimpse your own body occasionally.’

‘Smashed too. Damn doors that only lock from the hallway. If I hadn’t been wearing these in the shower to help me see the water, I’d be stuck in last century again.’ With her naked eyes, that was all she could manage.

He overtook her on the path, then she heard the familiar clunk of the passenger door opening. Her stomach growled in reply, but it wasn’t just her revulsion at returning to Serenity in time for breakfast.

‘I feel sick,’ she confessed as he helped her to find the invisible seat. ‘What if the matron changes her mind about letting me leave?’

‘She won’t. It was partly her idea.’ He stretched out her seatbelt and wrapped it around her, his hands so large as they brushed her arm and yet so gentle.

‘But what if the review board overrules her? She’s only one psychologist against many.’

‘She’s the one who knows you best.’

‘And they know me the least. That’s my point! This could be my last trip to the mainland. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still psychologically unstable, and let’s face it, Ben; this is only your first year out of gaol.’

‘None of that matters now.’ He leaned across, unavoidably close to her, and fastened the buckle with a metallic click. ‘We’re both special cases, you and me, or else we wouldn’t be alone together now, would we?’ He adjusted her seatbelt a little tighter. ‘Today we start a new life together. Purely platonic. No strings attached. So forget the past. Forget everything that’s ever happened. It’s all down to you, me and the next steps that we take together.’

She gulped and hoped it would be as easy as that. ‘Tomorrow starts today,’ she said, reciting another of his regular lectures, but repeating it aloud did nothing to quell the growing queasiness in her stomach. Not just nerves any more. More like a swelling sense of dread that grew more intense as Ben closed her door and jogged around to take his place behind the wheel. He slammed his own door twice to close it as if the old car was also feeling reluctant. Then the engine chugged twice and finally cut out on him.

‘Hold this,’ he said, dumping his slim elastic sling in her lap. ‘It’s more of a pain on while I’m driving.’

Wringing her fingers in her lap, Mira worried what kind of last-minute hurdles and tests awaited her, while Ben cranked the engine.

‘Come on, baby,’ he said cranking it again. ‘No sulking.’

Mira screwed up her nose. ‘I’m not sulking!’

‘I was talking to the car.’ He cranked it again and the engine responded with a splutter and purr. ‘Now that you mention it, you only do that with your hands when you’re sulking or scared. So which is it now?’

Flexing her fingers, she splayed them flatter against her thigh, trying to convince herself he was wrong for once. ‘Would you believe hope?’ She tried to brighten to prove it, but her deepest fear rose, washing another frown over her face. ‘I’m hoping I won’t have to face him.’

‘I knew there was something else eating you! Okay, now tell Papa Benny bear all about it.’

‘Papa Benny bear?’ She grinned, realising he didn’t need a backhoe after all. ‘Is that so?’

‘I might as well be your father after today.’

‘You’re barely ten years older than me.’

‘Big brother then. Quit dodging the subject. Enough’s enough.’

With a huff, she folded her arms. ‘What’s the point? In facing him, I mean. A final test, I don’t need. If I’m really being allowed to leave today, I’ll never have to deal with him again.’

‘True, but the fear would remain.’

‘Hey, when it comes to facing my fears now, Ben, I’m a gymnast! I’ll leap straight at it, but in his case … Please, no. It’s not fear. It’s prudent planning. He could ruin everything.’

‘Prudent planning.’ Ben chuckled and gunned the engine. ‘Congratulations, Mira. You finally nailed the right attitude. Of course, I knew you would. So I rang ahead a few days ago from the hospital and arranged to have him locked away with loud music.’

‘How can you be sure that would work? We have no idea how far ahead he can hear. If you believe some of the other patients, he predicted my initial transfer to Serenity almost a month before I knew of it myself.’

‘Not accurately. The further away in time, the more confusing it is for him to hear any whispering from the one true future among the cacophony of all the alternatives. With accuracy, it’s only two days — three days, max — and he’s been locked away for twice that.’

Mira shook her head, unable to believe it. ‘If he’s been locked up all week, who smashed all my sunnies?’

‘Anyone who’s jealous of your special treatment. You’re the only patient who’s ever had a chance at leaving permanently, and certainly the only one who’s had all their privileges restored without any need for additional medication.’

‘So you’re sure he can’t possibly interfere?’

‘Or listen in. Relax,’ he added as he skidded backwards from the kerb. He turned the car sharply and accelerated for the bridge. ‘By the time I’m done as your guardian, you’ll be a new woman — confident enough to cope with anything. Even him.’

TWO

Freddie hugged himself inside his straitjacket, enjoying its warmth.

The batteries in his headphones were dying, though, killing his music. Now jackhammers drilled inside his head — voices, whispers, screaming. White noise. Echoing.

Every sound permeated from every tomorrow, rippling back to him through time like raindrops on a pond, ever dissipating as ripples do, until the weakest whispers broke the soft end of the sound barrier. Light and sound. Sound and light. All waves of one sort or another; ever forcing him to listen forward in time while forcing his nemesis, Mira Chambers, to look back.

He bumped his bald head