by Dave Warner
He should never have gone to the city.
Darren had mocked him: ‘Hockey? That’s a girls’ game, dude. ’
That first time he didn’t even know what was happening. Darren just came out the shop, shoved a bag at him and told him to run. The store security guards had no chance. They couldn’t bust Darren because when they searched him he had nothing on him. Darren was too smart to let the camera catch him. Then Darren stole that car and it all turned to shit. Trying to impress that skinny girl, Jasmine. She was cute though. He was pretty sure she’d been flirting with him but what could he do? Darren would have beaten the crap out of him like he did that time he had to ditch the bag and jump the fence to get away. Like it was his fault. So, he would go to jail and do his time. He had no choice. They’d caught him cold. It was prison, for sure.
Unless he ran.
But no, he wouldn’t do that. He promised Aunty. Trouble was, he recognised one of Mongoose’s men in the court. He didn’t know his name but he was one of the close ones he’d seen at the house sometimes. Maybe he was there to pay a fine or something? Or maybe not. Maybe Mongoose had sent him to check him out.
He couldn’t relax. He’d sit for a second on the bed and then jump straight up again. He wished Aunty hadn’t gone off but she said she had to do things with the lawyer. She was a good sort, the lawyer. Once they got him inside though, she wouldn’t be able to help him. No one could. He hadn’t talked. He’d kept Mongoose out of it. But what was to stop Mongoose wanting to make sure he stayed silent?
He couldn’t think clear. If only he could have a hit, just a little one, clear his head. No one was going to stake him but. Not now. Shit, shit, shit. He didn’t even have those pingers. The house felt so small. He was pacing from one side to the other and back. Like that cocky in a cage they used to have at the club: the ‘hockey cocky’. Could it still be alive? Damn thing gave his finger a real good …
The rumble of a car outside pulled him up. Mongoose had a Subaru sounded just like that. He couldn’t see anything from in here. The windows were at the side of the house. Even if he opened the front door, he might not see anything because Aunty’s little driveway had trees and bushes hiding it so you couldn’t see out to the street. If the car drove straight in, then you could see it. The car was still rumbling. What to do? He edged to the front door and opened it a crack, peering out. Nothing in the driveway.
The rumble stopped. His heart kicked in. He could imagine Mongoose climbing out with a cricket bat. Please come back, Aunty. He shut the door. His eyes travelled to the phone. The police? No, because then he’d have to say why he called them and once he mentioned Mongoose they wouldn’t let up. Maybe it wasn’t Mongoose, maybe it was some other car. Plenty of cars rumbled, not just Mongoose’s. What he could do was sneak out the back, go over the back fence through the property behind, walk down Axton Street, turn down Morris Street, back down the other side and look at the car from the corner. If it wasn’t Mongoose, he could come back inside and relax. If it was he could hide till Aunty came back. That’s what he’d do.
He grabbed five bucks from Aunty’s drawer, just enough to buy himself a milkshake or something. He put on thongs and cracked open the back door. He looked left and right. Clear. He ran quickly and lightly up the backyard, his thongs flipping against his heels. He vaulted the picket fence easily into the property behind, crossed through sand and bush that did for a backyard and ran up the path that ran along the side of the house. Inside a dog barked but that was okay, he was on Axton Street in a flash, jogging to the corner and then turning down Morris Street. There were a couple of cars parked on the street but he couldn’t see anybody. He slowed as he got to the corner of Aunty’s street. Fortunately a big old wattle tree provided good cover. He edged under it and looked to the left.
Shit, shit, shit. He could see the back of the car parked about fifty metres down blocking Aunty’s driveway: Subaru. Shit. Nothing for it but to get lost for a few hours. Maybe he could find the lawyer’s office? She might even buy him a hot chocolate. He turned to head back. The shape of something so close it was a blur leapt out at his head. Whack, the blow stunned him, he felt himself drop. Words hung just out of reach. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but it was weird … it was a rubber hand … and then something pricked his neck.
‘What the fuck?’ He thought he said it aloud. ‘Mongoose, please …’
He tried to locate him but there was wattle in his eyes and nose and when he looked up the sun was so bright it was like a stick in your eye. ‘Man,’ he gasped, trying to stand but his legs were rubber. He felt weird, clammy, everything turned to film negative …
CHAPTER 18
As we swung into the street, a Subaru passed us coming the other way. At the time I didn’t think much of it. We parked on the opposite side of the road, got out and walked across to a driveway that was narrowed by thick old trees on both sides. Don’t ask me what kind of trees they were, botany was of as much interest to me as a bus timetable. The narrow dirt driveway looked rarely used. Certainly there was no car in it now as we approached what some people would call a quaint weatherboard. A tabby cat watched us from the porch near the front door but scrammed when we got close.
‘Does she have a car?’ I asked. It was the first thing either of us had said for minutes.
‘I don’t think so. There wasn’t one here last time.’
I followed Clement up three low steps to the porch and Clement pushed the bell. Nothing sounded inside, so he knocked. When a repeat knocking brought no response, Clement offered the obvious.
‘They must be out.’ He pulled out a card and wrote a note on it to contact him. ‘I’ve got everybody out looking for them. His aunt’s not going to let him skip.’
I had the impression he was attempting to reassure himself as much as me.
Never take anything for granted. That’s been a maxim of mine my whole detective life. If I needed reminding of it, which I didn’t, I learned it again in spades. We were back at the police station.
More than an hour had passed and there was no sign of the aunt or Sidney Turner. Broome is not that big a place you can be out on a street for an hour without the police spying you. If they were here, they were indoors somewhere. The supermarkets had already been checked. I sat on an office chair, my fear growing as inexorably as the nation’s debt. Clement was across the room talking to an attractive young woman in civilian garb, a navy cotton dress, sandals. I saw him hand her the evidence bag with the pendant. She went off with it down the corridor. He walked back to me.
‘Lisa Keeble, our head tech. She’s good. Chances of fingerprints aren’t great but you never know.’
I’d had time to ruminate on Turner and his great-aunt. ‘It’s possible they’re talking to his lawyer,’ I said. Clement made a call to find out who the lawyer was. Whatever he heard turned his face flat and white as an envelope.
‘What is it?’ I asked but he ignored me, dialled and walked off by himself on the phone. I sat there for five minutes. It felt like fifty. Clement returned. His colour had improved to pastel.
‘The aunt is with the lawyer. She’s just leaving. She says she left Turner home by himself. We’re collecting her.’
The lawyer’s offices were five minutes away. They were waiting out the front, the elderly Aboriginal woman and the lawyer who reminded me of Natasha ten years ago, poised, the looks of a newsreader. The body language between her and Clement was easy to translate. If they hadn’t shared a bed they’d thought about it plenty. It was going to gall him, I thought. He’ll be trying not to let it get to him, that she got the kid bail and he’s a flight risk. Maybe he wouldn’t have cared that much before, but he was involved now, like me, I smelled it on him. Nearly twenty years of desert on Autostrada and then you come across a well, sweet water, enough perhaps to get you all the way home. The kid could have slipped out for a minute. He might have been scared to open the door thinking he was going to be arrested again. It really didn’t matter so long as he was a
t home.
He wasn’t.
The back door was open and nearly fifty dollars was still in a drawer. The aunt said that was almost everything that had been there, maybe a little loose change, under ten bucks. She still believed in the kid. She said he wouldn’t run off and I could see she was genuinely worried. So was I.
On the off-chance, we cruised the surrounding streets but there was no sign of him. So we drove back to the house and were met by two other detectives: the solid guy with the beer gut, Earle, and the young guy who looked like he worked out while standing in front of a full-length mirror. There were two uniforms as well. Clement set them about doorknocking nearby houses while he got a list of names from the aunty – the kid’s friends, people he hung around with. When he finished with the aunt, I sidled up to him.
‘Funny he went out the back door,’ I said. Clement, who looked like a golfer watching his drive curve towards the trees, didn’t offer an opinion. I dressed up the implication. ‘I mean, if he’s just doing a runner why not head out the front? Unless he thought you had eyes on him.’
Clement gave me coal eyes. ‘You’re saying he slipped out the back because he was worried somebody was out the front.’
That accurately represented my position.
‘When you picked him up he had a big bag of eccies on him and grass. I’m guessing he was dealing those to pay for his meth. He have any cash?’
‘Five hundred and sixty dollars.’
‘So, could be somebody is out of pocket. And maybe not happy about that.’
Clement thought it through for all of five seconds. Then he hauled the detective constable from his doorknock to join us and called out to his sergeant.
‘Graeme, I’m heading to Mongoose’s with Shepherd. You run this.’
The older guy nodded. I liked him, a kindred spirit. Somewhere in his past he’d taken back soft-drink bottles for the refund and foraged a golf course for balls to resell to happy hackers, using the cash for bubblegum footy cards. Clement was harder to get a bead on: intense, driven, maybe moody. I could imagine him furiously chopping wood by a Swedish lake-house populated by sparse furniture, Lutheran in the original sense. I’d liked his thoroughness with the CCTV stuff but I guess I was still miffed I’d needed to convince him I wasn’t an aged obsessive, raking over his last case. I didn’t blame him, mind, it was a natural conclusion, but that doesn’t mean I liked it.
‘Shepherd, Snowy Lane.’
I was surprised he’d used that moniker to introduce me. It meant nothing to the young dude.
He was forced to add, ‘He’s a private D.’
We both made for the front passenger door. Shepherd reached it first but his swagger deflated when his boss told him to climb in the back. And that’s how easy it was for me to start liking Clement again.
I don’t know the geography of Broome well enough to describe where we were heading but it seemed to be away from the water. The street we turned into was wide with fewer trees than Turner’s aunt’s place. The front yards were mostly bare, the earth red-brown, though there were a few acacia trees dotted here and there, they’re about the only brand I recognise. There was one house bigger than the others. It sported a long but narrow concrete veranda on which sat a few old chairs. Cars, mainly iridescent utes, dotted the driveway and front yard but it was stark, bare of trees or shrubs, with the absence of any feminine touch; a gang place if ever I’d seen one.
‘His car’s not here,’ commented Shepherd from behind in a thin, cheap voice that could have been manufactured in Guangdong.
‘What does he drive – Merc?’ asked Clement as he parked in the driveway and killed the engine.
‘Na, hotted-up Subaru.’
CHAPTER 19
Sidney Turner woke with the smell of dry dirt in his nostrils. Forcing open his eyes, he saw rotting wood and mudflat close up. He was on his right side. He went to push himself up off the ground but realised his hands were tied behind his back, and feet bound. Tilting his head as far as he could manage, his left eye detected a darkening blue sky. Late arvo? Somewhere in the near distance birds were screeching and chattering. His head felt like it had been kicked by a kangaroo. He split the smell of dirt and bush apart, zeroed in on a cloying odour of sap and wild honey mixed with something else … still water. His muscles had melted. He had no strength. Where was he? Sleep still held him in a headlock but it was not normal sleep, this one made you dizzy and weak. The recent past came to him, not in a fluid stream but like one of those old black and white movies he’d seen on some show on Aunty’s TV, movies that had no sound, and where the images came in jumps and jerks. He remembered looking through wattle, then turning and wham! Somebody had hit him from behind. Mongoose, must have been, must have suckered him. Got out of his car and been waiting, knowing he would come out of the back door.
Panic gripped him. In his balls was where he felt it most.
‘Listen, man, I didn’t tell the cops nothin’. ’
His words were sucked into a maw of dead silence. What was happening? If it was around 5.00 now, he must have been out for hours. He was so thirsty. As his brain thawed, thoughts broke free in chunks and fear rose like so much mist, slowly forming into a solid shape, a knowledge: they were going to kill him and bury his body where it would never be found.
The adrenaline jolt helped him roll on his back. Insects buzzed around him.
‘Mongoose?’ Even though his throat was raw he called as loud as he could. He had to explain he hadn’t talked. Beg for a chance to let Aunty pay off his debts.
Yet again his voice choked on itself. Maybe they’d gone somewhere thinking he was still out to it. Or it could be this was just a warning. A warning he didn’t need. They’d dumped him in the bush. He’d have to find his way home. Now his brain was functioning better, he seemed to grow in physical strength too. He summoned his energy and tried a sit-up but couldn’t hold it. As he dropped back down, this time to the left side, his eyes tracked a grey shape, log-like, spitting distance. He felt his bowels shift. His heart jumped to his throat. He couldn’t breathe. Was it …?
Using hip and shoulder but with the greatest care he was able to fractionally lift himself to confirm …
Oh fuck.
Less than three metres from him, a big croc lay on the creek bank just the other side of a narrow strand of low bush. Sidney’s bladder wanted to release but he did not dare. He barely dared draw breath. Had it not heard him, smelt him? Perhaps it had been preoccupied with the birds dotting trees like toilet paper chucked around by some naughty kid. He had to be so careful now. If he made a sound, the croc would come for him but he couldn’t just lie there. The volume of birds’ cries seemed to come in waves, he noticed. Scattered individual cries would start to congregate and then swell for a second or two in one big mass before breaking apart again. With great care Sidney drew his legs behind him. He waited until the cries reached peak volume, then using his arms in concert with his legs he pushed backwards, once, twice … and then rested as the sound fell away. He fought to raise himself again but this time as he lifted, the croc, as if sensing him, swung its head around. He dropped into the earth, his heart thumping out of his chest. Please, please … his muscles tensed, his ears primed for the sound of the croc’s advance. He did not want to go that way, dragged into a creek by a crocodile, death-rolled till he drowned, stashed underwater and eaten in stages. The birds’ cries were swelling again. They reached a crescendo. Did he dare? Closing his eyes, Sidney Turner pushed again, once, twice. He expected at any moment to be seized by jaws of iron. The painful throb in his head did not even register, for every other internal organ seemed to be fizzing, whizzing, clattering, clanging, thumping, pumping. The next time the birds’ cries massed, he pushed again, once, twice, three times now, a worm slithering away through spiky grass. He followed his routine twice more before he started to feel some optimism. For the first time he had driven himself back towards some proper trees, paperbark. He rolled onto his back and, wedging his flank
and hip into the trunk, managed to sit up. He’d dragged himself maybe ten metres from his original position but the sun must have dropped, for the air was charcoal now and he couldn’t be sure where the croc was. While the rope on his hands was tied tight, the rope around his ankles was much less so, and had been loosened during his wriggling escape. He tried rolling onto his back and rubbing his ankles against the trunk of the tree but all he did was scrape his legs with crumbling bark. However, by alternately stretching his legs, pulling ankles apart as far as he could, and trying to crisscross them, he began slowly lessening the tension, working a wider circle in the rope each time. Finally he was able to angle his right foot down and then slide it up through the hole. Once that was out he was able to stand, albeit shakily. He felt an incredible burst of joy in his body and, heedless of the sticks and thistle that poked into his bare feet, walked, or more accurately stumbled, from the creek to a distance he thought was safe. The rope around his left foot snagged and dragged so he stopped and used his right toe to further free up the rope until he was eventually able to drag it off his leg. By now dark had dropped. Once more the ache in his head and the dryness of his throat surfaced.
What to do? What to do? What to do?
Had Mongoose left him there by the creek hoping he would be taken? Or was that just a coincidence? If Mongoose knew there was a croc in the creek, why not toss him in? Shit. He wished he could think straight. If it was just a warning then maybe it was safe to try and get back home. But where was he? Before he could think anything through, he saw headlights appearing through the bush. It might be Mongoose coming to check on him, see if he was dead, and finish the job if not. Sidney began running fast, blindly through bush, the headlights bouncing with the car over uneven ground and threatening to expose him. He hit a bare patch of ground that allowed him to hit top speed. In a few seconds he would be safe in the thicket ahead. Just as he reached the very apex of his acceleration, something, a twisting tree root most likely, but something absolutely solid, dark, unseen, low down like a devil’s fist, grabbed his ankle. He heard the snap and felt the rest of his body continue at an unnatural plane, so he spun in the air and flipped like a TV wrestler. With his hands behind his back he could not break his fall in any way. Instead of canvas, his head landed on hard rocky earth with a terrible thump.
