I want to see my mates who I have not seen in a long time but I want to be with Shada too because my family is so important to me and I have been thinking about the things Jamila has been telling me last night.
Oh John, John, Shada says to me as she takes my first pawn and sets up her knight, and I am seeing I will be in trouble in three moves unless I castle. Oh John, she says, what is happening to this family? I wonder if I can ask her about the burqa because she is part of the problem too so it is hard to talk to her about this thing she has just said. I move another pawn out so I can get the bishop off the back row and then allow myself to feel a bit nervous about what Shada is saying. This war with the Deebs, she says, it just goes on and on. Why doesn’t Farid just win it? I am surprised Shada is talking about the business, but I say, I do not know but I know what you are saying. At Toyota if there is a problem a small one or a big one we is thinking about it and coming up with a solution. But I am not sure Farid is even seeing this thing. It is seeing things differently that is hard.
She nods her head and moves her knight so I am pinned and must lose a castle or a bishop. Really I is needing to pay more attention to the game. Then she is saying, Do you sometimes get sad because it feels like nothing is ever going to be any different, because the people involved cannot see how that might be?
I feel more nervous then because that is exactly the sort of thought I am having myself, and it is a bad thought because of how disrespectful it is of Farid. I think backwards, which I often do, and think there must be a way for him to win this war. I tell Shada to be quiet and we keep playing chess. She is not quiet—it is impossible to make the women in my family quiet—and after a while she is talking about the imam and sharia law and all this stuff that is important but you do not have to talk about it all the time. I am surprised by this but maybe I should not be. She has been talking about this stuff more lately but I have not been paying attention and now I see it is a big part of her life and why she is wearing the burqa and all. You is learning stuff when you spend time with your family members.
But I am confused, mate, because Shada is talking sensible about Farid and the business but then all this extremist religious stuff like in the same conversation. I do not see how she can be smart one moment, crazy the next. Shada never used to talk about it, she and me used to have good conversations about Toyota and everything, which is why I love her and Rafi the most of all my brothers and sisters.
After a while she does stop talking but then she is crying. I know why she is doing this and I tell her how sorry I am the family will not let her go to the uni so she can get a good job like she wants to do. She is still crying and says, That is all right. I will just kill myself or something. I know she is just joking and say, You are too intelligent to do that. She says, Oh John I wish you were the head of our family. You is the smart one really.
I say, I am not half as smart as Farid, and she says, You are the only one in the family who ever beats me at chess. It is because you can look ahead and see what might happen, which is strange because in real life you do not do that. Well, this is weird what she says about chess, because in my memory Shada is beating me almost all the time, and I say this and she says, John you are not just honest like everyone says but modest too. You are beating me twenty-eight per cent of the time and I was the chess champion of the south-west region so that is very good.
P’raps she was right, because that night I beat her. She started crying then but I do not think it was about the game. I was not knowing what to do and she goes to bed and I is watching Rocky with the papa. After a while I is feeling good again, just me and the papa in the night, it is unreal. Mate, we men in the family sure do love that movie.
Ian was dead. Bec stood up and looked around, saw the canvas satchel a metre from his left hand with a big Maglite torch sticking out the top. What had happened here? There was a noise outside: thunder followed by the onset of rain. Bec turned, expecting Harris to have followed her from the lounge room, but he wasn’t there. More thunder.
In a daze she wandered back to the other room, pushing herself off the walls of the hall as though drunk. Harris was still on the couch, looking at his phone again. She got near and peered: there was no message on the screen.
‘What happened?’
‘He lives here?’
‘What?’
‘The bloke. I arrived and found him—I guess he was here when they came to take Shazza. Wrong place, you know. Wrong time.’
Slowly Bec explained about Ian, how after being charged and released at Maroubra Police Station he must have come back to finish his painting. She found herself speaking lucidly, which was interesting; she’d never seen anyone she knew killed before. ‘He had a girlfriend with him.’
Harris looked up from his phone. ‘A girl?’
‘And what about Sharon?’
‘They must have got her. The Deebs, because you spoke to her. Jesus.’
A feeling like cold water ran down her back. ‘I didn’t know—’ ‘Fuck Knight, it all comes back to him. Eye off the ball.’
‘What?’
He stared at her, for a long time. She was struck again by the vast gulf between them, confronted by the extent of his knowledge and experience. She should take comfort in that. The police system would take over now, procedures. She could stop thinking.
‘Where’s the backup?’
‘This is the lull before the storm. The right people have been informed.’
‘Homicide?’
‘This is a special op, mate. We have good people.’
‘Have you looked for her? Sharon.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘You kept her under too long. Two and a half years—’
‘Bullshit.’
Anger flared, fuelled by fear. ‘She’s been under for years. You sent—’
‘Fantasy, mate. Brought her out after Teller died. She went home on sick leave, disobeyed orders and came back here a few weeks ago, still on sickie. We’ve been trying to get her to see a psychologist.’ Bec blinked, felt the anger die, replaced by a steady burn of confusion. ‘She took you for a fool, you’re not the first. Couldn’t you tell? We’ll be doing a full-scale search when the cavalry arrive, but she could be anywhere in Sydney. You need to go. That’s an order.’
Bec left the house and walked into the park, stood by the lamppost, the rain on her head. Tried to work out how anyone could have followed them, how it could have gone so wrong. There was a full moon now, shining dimly through a gap in the clouds, and she wandered around, over the sandy surface with its covering of weeds and wispy grass. Stunned by Harris’s words, the scale of the mistake she’d made. For the moment she was overwhelmed with a sense of her own fallibility, didn’t even trust herself to drive.
She walked at random in the park, listening for the sounds of approaching cars, Harris’s assistance. Reached the concrete platform and saw half the metal grille had been lifted away from the hole. The kids’ entrance to the underworld. Heard someone calling her softly from a stand of trees over by the courts, through the rain.
It was Trish, standing in the shadows with her arms folded.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said when Bec approached. ‘I daren’t look.’
Bec wondered why she was staring fixedly at the manhole. She put out a hand to comfort Trish, and the girl took a step backwards. ‘Down there.’
Bec felt dizzy. ‘What?’
Trish spoke, fast. ‘We came back and went down after the cops let us go. The rain hadn’t started and Slip decided to finish it then. Your friend was in the park when we came up, we had a chat, she asked us back for a cuppa, use the loo. Seemed lonely.’
‘Yes.’
Bec thought about what Harris had said of Sharon, her not being well.
‘There we are, she seemed keen to have a yak, knock on the door. I ran out the back, I’m scared. Always scared. Bloke comes in, kissed her, great mates. He didn’t see me, I’m sure of it.’
‘
Slip stayed?’
‘I saw through the window, he started talking to the guy in the leather jacket. Mad guy, I could see it in the way he was standing, but no one else could. Not even your friend. But I know crazy.’
‘Sure about the leather jacket?’
‘Yeah. Brown.’
‘You were in the backyard.’
‘It was dark by then, and the light was on inside the house. Like watching a movie, you know? Wanted to yell at them— “He’s got a gun!”—but you can’t. Then I got so scared with the way the guy was looking around at the window and then, I ran. I left him. Ian.’
‘You saw a gun?’
‘No. Just like when you’re—I was over here, heard a bang. Then he comes out the front door after a few minutes, looks around, doesn’t see me. Slip is over his shoulder, takes him towards the car but then these people come down the street with a dog, he changed direction to the park. They kept coming, the dog barked, so—’
‘Yes?’
Trish began to cry. Bec went to comfort her and she took another step back among the trees. ‘He dropped Slip in the hole. Like a bag of garbage.’
‘It was just one bang you heard?’
‘Did you hear what I just said?’
‘That’s the car there?’ Bec pointed to the only vehicle in the dead-end street, apart from her own, and Trish nodded. Bec listened again for the sound of Harris’s approaching backup.
There was more moonlight now. ‘You’ve got to get him out. With this rain he’ll be washed out to sea.’
Bec’s mind was racing. She wanted to tell Trish the person in the hole wasn’t Slip. But she didn’t want her going in the house to confront Harris. So she told her to stay in the trees, and approached the concrete platform. For a minute she stood looking at it, the rain all around her. It made her hair heavy and began to work its way into her clothes.
She leaned over the hole and saw it was pitch-black, called, ‘Sharon?’ Felt a hand on her back, the end of a gun barrel pressed against the side of her head. The action had a logic that she recognised, too late. Straightened up slowly and was relieved of her own weapon.
Harris said, ‘Cluster-fuck, mate. Sorry you had to walk into it. Knight said you were a thinker.’
Bec felt a stab of pain, although she couldn’t have described where it went in. The sort that does not pierce the body.
‘Knight and you?’ she said.
‘It’s a war, you get that at least? This whole fucking thing is an undeclared war, and in war you have to react to events, play the cards you’re given. I’m sorry.’
Harris sounded more lucid than before, recovered from the state he’d been in. Sounded normal, but of course he was not.
Bec realised there’d always been something wrong with him that nobody had noticed. There are people like that walking among us, like aliens or vampires except they are not that. They are just people who are not normal, but who fit in most of the time.
‘So Knight’s part of the war?’
‘Knight doesn’t know shit, but he’s a warrior, respects the need to get on with the job.’ Said with a certain amount of disdain. ‘See if she’s all right.’
‘What?’
Harris said angrily, ‘She had a knock on the head. Get down there. See what you’ve done.’
Air was coming out of the hole in gusts, cold and stale. Bec didn’t want to go down. He pushed the gun into her stomach, and she slid onto the concrete platform and put a leg down the hole. Always she’d been scared of the idea of a gut wound. Terrified.
She began to descend, slowly, feeling the grime on the rungs of the ladder attached to the wall. Harris said, ‘That bloke in the house was shot by the Lebs when they came for Shazza. She hid down there. Now you’ve got to help her.’
He was building the story as he went along, and Bec realised he didn’t know there’d been a witness. She considered telling him about Trish, but the girl was probably still nearby. The rain fell more heavily. Then, accompanied by a crash of thunder, it became a downpour as Bec descended the ladder.
The shaft was maybe a metre and a half wide and four metres down. It felt all wrong that her life had changed so completely in the space of several minutes. She felt like stopping and crying out: There’s been a mistake. And yet, at a deeper level, things made more sense than before. With horror had come illumination.
When she was well down she stopped and looked up at Harris, whose head and shoulders were silhouetted.
‘You want me to bring her up?’ she yelled.
Stupidity.
‘You just keep going, you’re doing well.’
Like Knight, patronising her. Wanted to scream as she began to descend again, then a loud flash and bang from above. Something tugged sharply at her jacket and she knew Harris had shot at her, just missed. She gripped the ladder, ears ringing.
As the noise cleared she heard Sharon’s voice faintly from below, ‘Jesus, Brian.’
Bec looked down, into the darkness. As she peered, the light changed and a second later she was hit on the shoulders by a heavy weight. For a moment she thought she’d been shot, then she realised it was Harris, he’d fallen into the hole somehow and hit her with such force that she came off and was falling too, banging the ladder a few times before she landed on the ground, partly on top of him. In pain and in the dark.
Someone swore. It was Sharon.
‘That you, Bec?’ Her shoulder hurt and her head was ringing, in agony where it had hit metal. She waited for the pain to abate, felt Harris inert beneath her. There was water all around them, maybe ten centimetres deep, an insistent flow. She stood up shakily, splashing her feet. Nothing broken.
A light shone down the hole, and Bec put up a hand to protect her eyes.
‘It’s me.’ Faint voice, Trish. ‘You okay?’
Sharon was getting up slowly, leaning against a wall, staring at Bec in surprise. Her face was smeared with dirt and she looked groggy. In the water, Harris lay unconscious. Bec dragged him into a sitting position.
‘I just came to,’ Sharon said. ‘One of my ankles is stuffed. This water’s rising.’
Bec called up, ‘We need to get out.’
‘I hit him on the head,’ Trish yelled down the hole. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see anything in the house, not really. I’m such a liar.’ These last words sounded like a scream of pain.
The light disappeared and Bec yelled but there was no response. She pictured Trish going into the house. Sharon moaned.
‘I’m coming over to you,’ Bec said. ‘We’ll get you up the ladder.’
‘Yeah? I’m pretty shaky.’
‘You’re a gym queen, remember?’
‘We’ve got to get Harris out of here.’
‘You first.’
‘We can’t just leave him.’
Bec was next to her now, helping her walk. She could tell there was a lot wrong; Sharon’s voice was slow and uncertain, her teeth chattering. In the gloom she found the ladder, put Sharon’s right hand on it. Sharon took the hand away and Bec put it on again, feeling the water almost at her knees.
‘You’re in shock but we’ve got to get up, okay? One rung at a time. I’ll come back for Harris.’
She put her hands under Sharon’s bottom and lifted, figuring she’d either collapse or start to climb. There was a second’s indecision and then Sharon pulled herself up a few rungs.
‘Keep climbing,’ Bec said above the noise of the water. ‘I’m right here with you.’
‘Scared, Bec. I’m really scared.’
Bec put a hand on her thigh, pushed against the firm flesh, muscles.
‘Be scared, just keep climbing. Use your arms.’
In the dark she couldn’t see which of Sharon’s legs wasn’t working, but soon felt it was the left one. As they climbed she did what she could to help, twisting one of her arms through the rungs and providing some support for the bad leg. She kept hoping Trish would come back with the torch but the darkness persisted, with the rushing water belo
w.
Finally they reached the top. Sharon dragged herself through the manhole, awkwardly manoeuvring her body around to get the bad leg out. Bec came after her, breathing the rain-flecked air, looking at the soft light around the lamppost over by the road. The park was empty. Her gun was lying on the edge of the concrete platform and she slid it back into her holster. There was a black torch nearby, clicked it on, the Maglite applied recently by Trish to the back of Harris’s head. Trish must have gone over to the house earlier, while Harris was forcing her down the hole. Of course.
Sharon was examining her swollen ankle, and as the light caught the foot Bec saw her toes move.
‘You’ll live.’ She pulled out her mobile and turned it on, put an arm around Sharon and they sat on the concrete watching the little screen light up. In the glow she saw a wound on Sharon’s head.
‘Harris hit you?’
Sharon frowned, winced. ‘I was in the kitchen with the kids, making tea. I looked for milk in the fridge but—’
‘Sharon.’
‘He just appeared. Then . . . we must have got jumped.’
‘He shot Ian.’
‘No. Brian wouldn’t do that.’
Bec wondered if Trish had got it wrong; the girl was in no sense reliable. ‘You called him? On the phone?’
‘Brian? I did not.’
‘He found you.’
‘I don’t know how.’
Bec thought about this as the phone fired up, thought about Knight.
‘Brian wouldn’t do that,’ Sharon said again, her words slurring. ‘Brian’s a saint. He even flew up to New Guinea to look at the crop, he was so worried about the drugs going on to the market while we waited for Kalla. He told me later, he had to see the source of so much evil.’
‘Who’d he go with?’
‘Not Jace. Jace and him were fighting by that time, always fighting fighting fighting.’
There was much to ask but it would have to wait. ‘Sharon?’ She gave her the phone and pushed her shoulder.
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