Free Eight Pieces on Prostitution by Dorothy Johnston, Port Campbell Press

don’t know.’
    Sue grasped Laura by the arm. ‘But what did he
do
?’
    â€˜He just died,’ Laura said.
    Laura swallowed, then she laughed. Sue heard hysteria, low and crouching, at the bottom of her laughter.
    â€˜Was he sick? Don’t just
sit
there Laur!’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Laura said again.
    Sue pushed Laura roughly. The man’s heavy upper body toppled forward. Laura lost her balance too, rolling onto the bed, then lying there with her head buried in her arms.
    â€˜Laur,’ Sue said more gently. ‘In a minute we’re going to have to phone the police. He must have had a heart attack. We can’t leave it for more than a few minutes.’
    Laura said from beneath her folded arms, ‘Call Cam. I want Cam.’
    â€˜What?’ Camilla said. Her voice over the phone was cross, in no mood to be interrupted.
    Sue shouted; she couldn’t help herself. ‘He’s dead!’
    Sue was thinking she could ring the ambulance and police right now. Laura couldn’t stop her and it was what she ought to do.
    She went back to Laura’s room and told her, ‘Camilla’s coming.’
    Laura was rocking back and forth on the end of the bed. Sue felt herself begin to sway as well. Her vision blurred and she thought, this isn’t happening. She imagined suddenly that she was very young, at a dance somewhere. The strobe lights that others found exciting made her dizzy. The blue lights made her sixteen-year-old face a ghost face, frightened by its own appearance.
    Camilla ran forward and folded Laura in her arms.
    Sue said, ‘He’s dead Cam. There’s nothing we can do.’
    â€˜Have you called the ambulance?’
    â€˜Not yet.’
    Camilla sat with both arms around Laura, looking up at Sue. ‘The police will make mince meat of her. What we have to do is get him out of here.’
    Sue opened her mouth to protest, but, instead of speaking, left the room and returned a few seconds later with two pairs of rubber gloves. She handed a pair to Camilla, then started going through the dead man’s clothes, which were neatly folded on the room’s only chair.
    A good quality dark blue jacket lay on top. Sue picked it up in hands covered with pungent rubber, while Camilla shook dark trousers. When a set of car keys fell out of the right-hand pocket, she put them on the bedside table. There was a long-sleeved white shirt, black socks and dark blue underpants, and, in an inside pocket of the jacket, everything they could have hoped for by way of identification.
    The dead man’s name was Josef Kafer and he was forty-one years old, according to his driver’s licence. He was the owner of a Commonwealth bank MasterCard and private health insurance. Another card showed that Kafer’s membership of the Kaleen Sports Centre would expire on February 1st, and another still was blank except for a barcode on one side. A small notebook contained a list of names and addresses.
    Sue and Camilla looked at each other with this information in their yellow hands. Sue rolled Josef over on the crumpled sheet, noting that he wore a wedding ring. His penis was still warm. She thought of the cold to come, while the phrase ‘struck down’ gripped her - tentacled, insinuating. Such neatness and orderly effects. Only then did she notice the red marks on Josef Kafer’s neck.
    â€˜Where’s his tie? Did he have a tie?’
    Laura didn’t answer. She began rocking to and fro again.
    â€˜Laura?’ Sue said, moving her aside.
    Underneath Laura, tangled in the sheet, was a dark blue tie criss-crossed with thin red lines.
    Sue held it up. The marks around the dead man’s neck weren’t deep, but to Sue they stood out clearly. His skin was chafed and the colour raised beneath it, the way she made her hands red sometimes when she rubbed them.
    â€˜Was he wearing this?’
    â€˜He did it! He did it!’ Laura cried.