Left Luggage

by Andrew Christie

  She could walk to the bathroom with some assistance now, but she still couldn’t remember anything about the kidnapping. The police were frustrated. John had seen Moreton talking to the doctors, shaking his head, getting agitated. The doctors just shrugged. No one knew if the memory loss would be permanent, or how extensive it would be.

  After the last brain scan, a doctor had asked John if his mother had been diagnosed with dementia before the kidnapping. “There are signs on the scans,” she said, “early stages but definitely there.”

  Shit.

  “We’ll have to wait till she gets over the trauma completely, but it probably means she won’t get back to where she was before. We’ll refer her to a specialist. Try not to worry about it, let’s just get her up and around first.”

  Try not to worry? Jesus. John was still trying to process all this when his mobile phone started bleating. It was Walker. Moreton had told her about the amnesia.

  “Post Traumatic Amnesia? That’s going to be a great help then,” she said.

  John didn’t know what she expected him to say to that. “The last thing she remembers is having a cup of tea on Friday morning. Out on her terrace. Nothing after that, not till she woke up.”

  “She likely to come good? Get the memories back?”

  “Possibly not. And if she does, there is no telling when. What did the doctors tell Moreton?”

  “Yeah. Basically the same.” He heard Walker sigh. “We got a name to go with face you identified. Jimmy Duggan? Mean anything to you?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Associate of Delic. Never been charged with anything. There’s not much on him yet. But we will find him.”

  Well, get on with it, John thought. Leave me and Mum alone.

  But Walker hadn’t finished. “John, did you know your mother had a file?”

  “A file?”

  “ASIO file. Dates back to the seventies. Makes interesting reading. Seems she had some pretty unsavoury friends back in the day.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Her associates were of interest. Palestinian terrorists.”

  John looked at his mother, propped up against a pile of pillows. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “John?”

  “What?”

  “The guard. I’ve got to pull them off after today. Haven’t got the overtime budget.”

  He hung up on her.

  John drove. He didn’t know where he was going, he just needed to be moving. Whenever the traffic slowed or stopped he turned off and got onto back streets. It was slow going and often required backtracking, but the randomness of it suited his state of mind. His wandering route took him into parts of the suburbs he didn’t know existed.

  He needed to talk to his mother. She was still too fragile now, but eventually the questions would have to be asked. He knew his father had been killed in a terrorist attack, by an Algerian working for one of the Palestinian groups. Had his parents somehow been associates of the man who’d killed Jorge? It didn’t make sense. Betty had always hated all that, all the idealists who gave no value to human life. So quick to kill and maim the innocent to advance their causes. Or just to get publicity. He couldn’t believe that Betty would be associated with those people, but what about Jorge? He’d been an academic, a writer, an ideas man. John didn’t know enough about him. ASIO could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time they had fucked up. They would just be basing their reports on what the French told them. But he didn’t really know much about Betty either, he supposed. Not when she was young. She must have been very determined, hot-headed even, leaving Sydney to go and look for her mother, and not coming back. She was impulsive and she was used to getting her way.

  If they were mixed up with the Palestinians, it made more sense that she hadn’t spoken much about his father, about his death. It made some sense of her objections to him joining the army. Had he got those things from his father? What else might he have got in that little packet of genes? The ability to kill? Was that something you inherited? Had Jorge been a killer?

  When he was a teenager he had tried to find out about Jorge. He looked up the newspapers from 1975, but all he found out was that Jorge had been shot by a terrorist during a confrontation with police. But he had been killed at his own home – what was the terrorist doing there? The papers didn’t say Jorge was involved, but maybe it had been suppressed for some reason. Operational imperatives.

  He kept driving, meandering his way through Petersham, Marrickville, Ashfield and eventually on to Bankstown. The houses got bigger and further apart as he moved west. The traffic changed too, more commercial vehicles, older cars. He stopped in Cabramatta for some lunch. A Vietnamese pork roll, which he ate sitting on a bench at a bus stop, sipping from a bottle of water while he watched the people on the street. An old Vietnamese couple walking on the other side of the road made him wonder if any of the people who had fled Vietnam and settled in western Sydney had been photographed by his mother during the war.

  He binned the paper bag that was now soggy from the brown sauce in the pork roll and got back in the ute. Where to now? It was clouding over, but he didn’t want to go back to RPA. Not yet. He didn’t know what to say to his mother. He should find out something about dementia. Had there been signs that he had missed? Forgetfulness? She was a bit vague sometimes, but she was old. That’s what old people were like.

  He started driving again, heading out of Sydney, thinking he might drive down to the Southern Highlands, Berrima. Go down through Kangaroo Valley to the coast. Have a swim in the ocean.

  When he saw a sign to Moorebank he swung the wheel, waving an apology to the truck driver he cut across as he got off the Hume Highway. Moorebank was where Delic’s smash-repair shop was. He pulled over and used the GPS system on his phone to find it.

  PDW Smash Repairs was on a loop road between a foundry and a furniture removalist, in a small industrial estate that was squeezed onto a wedge of flat land between Heathcote Road and a creek.

  John drove slowly past, then went right around the block before parking two hundred metres down the road outside a civil engineering contractor’s yard. From there he had a good view of the street and the workshop. The front was made up of a concrete forecourt behind which was a single-storey workshop. There were two large roller shutters, and a small door on the left with a sign that said “Office” above it. The forecourt was filled with cars. Damaged cars, some being worked on, waiting to have the paint work finished. Through the big doors, John could see more cars inside, in various states of damage and disassembly. On the other side of the removalist’s warehouse there was a laneway that led through to some scrappy parkland lining the creek.

  John watched people coming and going in the street and around the various workshops. It was a busy area and no one paid him any attention. He didn’t really know what he was looking for. He was curious though; why would someone from here try to kidnap Betty?

  He couldn’t see any cop surveillance – either they weren’t there or he wasn’t good enough to spot them. Both ideas were equally disturbing. On the bright side, though, if they weren’t there he didn’t have to worry about getting lifted and charged with obstructing an investigation or whatever they could charge him with. He was sure they’d find something if they thought he was getting in the way.

  He decided to have a look around, so he left the ute parked in the street and walked past the removalist to the laneway. It was mostly gravel and weeds with a cracked concrete footpath down the middle. There were steel bollards at both ends to stop vehicles driving into the parkland. To stop stolen cars being dumped in the creek, probably. John followed a track worn through the long grass that led down to the line of trees marking the creek. Looking back up the slope he could see a single door in the back wall of the workshop. The door opened directly onto the park. Two men in blue coveralls were leaning against the wall smoking. John stayed in the trees, watching as they finished their cigarettes before they went back
inside. Where the track met the creek, someone had placed large stepping stones in the muddy water. There were old tyres and a shopping trolley in the creek bed too. On the opposite bank the track continued up towards a street lined with single-storey houses.

  It started to rain lightly as John walked back to the ute. He waited and watched the workshop through the rain-spattered windscreen. Just after four they started moving the vehicles from the forecourt into the workshop for the night. Pushing them on trolleys, squeezing them in. When they were finished all the floor space was occupied by cars. A group of young men came out of the workshop, laughing and shouting as they ran to a dark blue Nissan Skyline parked in the street. John thought he recognised two of them from Delic’s Facebook page, but the blond guy wasn’t there. Two older men followed them out of the workshop and began closing the roller shutters. John didn’t recognise either of them.

  He started the ute and followed the Skyline as it pulled out. The car was easy to spot, with its fancy paint job and fat exhaust. With the chrome wheels and tinted windows, it looked as though the owner had made use of every one of the neighbourhood’s car workshops to trick it out. When they turned right onto Heathcote Road he stayed in the left lane, letting a couple of cars slip between him and the Skyline. They crossed the Georges River and the railway line on a long, low bridge, then took an exit that brought them back around under the bridge beside the railway line. The Skyline pulled into a car park beside Liverpool station. John followed them in and drove past as they parked. He found a spot near the exit and waited, watching the young men run across the road in the rain. They went into a hotel that was painted bright blue and covered in posters advertising special deals: ten-dollar steaks and strippers on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

  The apprentices were ordering drinks at the bar when John stepped into the beery gloom. This was their regular watering hole, judging from the way they were joking and laughing with the barmaid, giving and taking a bit of shit. They took their drinks and sat at a table close to the stage, where they’d have a very good view of the strippers. John bought a schooner and sat at a table at the other end of the bar. His view was of the apprentices and all the doors.

  The young men were looking at something on a mobile phone, passing it around the table. From their laughter and general stupidity, John presumed it was porn, or maybe a cat.

  The pub was filling up now, attracting workers who had knocked off for the day, and who were intent on working on their drinking and getting an eyeful of inflated mammaries before they went home to their families. The crowd was cheerful and noisy at this early stage, but the number of black-clad bouncers who had taken up positions at the doors meant that it wouldn’t necessarily stay that way. John couldn’t see the apprentices’ table anymore. Not that it mattered – he wasn’t going to learn anything useful here.

  When the PA system fired up and the manager started to spruik the show, John finished his beer and left.

  It was seven by the time he got back to the hospital. He left the ute back at Camperdown and walked up the hill through the light rain.

  His mother was asleep. Billy was sitting next to her, flipping through a magazine.

  “What are you doing here?” John asked.

  “I came over after school. Tom was at home, arguing about something with mum.” He shrugged. “You didn’t tell me she was awake.”

  John sighed. “No, I didn’t. Sorry. You’re right, I should have called you.”

  “There was no cops, and no one knew where you were so I thought I’d better hang here. Keep an eye on her.”

  John felt like hugging the boy, but didn’t. “Thanks, mate,” he said. “I’ve got it now. You had anything to eat?”

  Billy shook his head.

  “Here, get yourself a burger on the way home.” John held out twenty dollars.

  “That’s too much.”

  “No. It’s not enough, but it’ll have to do for the moment.” He held the boy’s shoulder briefly then pushed him gently towards the door. “And don’t forget to do your homework.”

  “Already done it.”

  “Sure.”

  John was glad his mother was sleeping. He didn’t know what to say to her yet. Were you a terrorist? Was my father? Is that why they tried to kidnap you? What the fuck is going on, Mum?

  “Is this normal? Sleeping so much?” he asked the nurse who came around to check on Betty.

  “She was awake this afternoon for a while, had something to eat. It takes time. She was speaking some other language—”

  “French. Mum lived in France for most of her life.”

  The nurse nodded. “Yes. It could take a while for her to get back to normal. Try not to worry.”

  Try not to worry. John sat by his mother for a while, looking through a couple of magazines he had already read once. There was no point him being here. He’d come back in the morning, maybe she’d be awake then.

  He was on his way out of the building, going through the lobby, when he stopped and went back to the enquiries desk. The young man on duty directed him to a ward on the east side of the fifth floor.

  He found Ken Mallard sitting up in bed, fiddling with the remote control for his television. He was in a room with four beds, only three of them occupied. Ken smiled when he saw John. He turned the television off and dropped the remote onto the bed covers.

  “John, how are you? I was just trying to find something worth watching.”

  “How’re you doing, Ken?”

  “Oh, I’m alright. Hurts like hell, and the drugs don’t seem to make much difference. But you gotta put up with it. Can’t stop breathing.”

  “No. You’ve got to do that.”

  “They reckon I’ll be here for a while. How’s Betty going? I wanted to go and visit her but they said I can’t yet. Can’t see why, it’s only in the hospital. Surely Lucy could wheel me around there. But they say no.”

  “Mum’s out of the coma now. But she’s sleeping a lot. They say she might have dementia.” He shrugged. “Might have had it before. They can’t tell. Reckon there’s no permanent damage from the crash. Just have to wait and see how she goes.”

  “Dementia, Jesus. She never seemed ... forgetful or anything to me. She was pretty sharp, I thought.”

  “Yeah,” said John. “She could be sharp alright.”

  Ken smiled. “She has opinions. That’s for sure.”

  John left when visiting time ended. It had stopped raining now and he stood underneath the fig trees, watching the bats fluttering around in the canopy, squeaking and chattering at each other.

  Food, he thought, turning left and walking up the hill to King Street. He found a small, cheap-looking Thai restaurant and ordered massaman curry. The restaurant was brightly lit with fluorescent tubes and had yellow-painted walls. Above the counter there was a little Buddhist shrine and one of those strange golden cats, waving its paw at him. It was his kind of place. There were plenty of others eating alone: taxi drivers breaking their shifts, and students escaping their tiny apartments for half an hour for a feed before hitting the computer again. The food was good and it was quiet, not the sort of place that attracted big noisy groups.

  After the curry, John wandered along King Street, watching the crowds who were starting to migrate from the restaurants to the pubs and bars. Past Newtown station he heard loud music coming from a pub and crossed the road to check it out. There was a four-piece band in the front bar playing covers of eighties and nineties rock. He found a stool at the back of the bar and ordered a Jameson. When the band finished their sets, John kept drinking. Kept thinking about his parents.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  Pure Home Grown

  It was after 2am when John left the pub. There were still plenty of people about on King Street but the back streets were quiet as he started the walk home. Only the occasional car, and no other pedestrians.

  His route meandered through Enmore in the general direction of Camperdown, along narrow streets li
ned with terrace houses and parked cars. He walked in the middle of the road because the footpaths were so narrow and uneven, half their width taken up by trees with low branches that he would have to duck under. It was a clear, still night, marked by the constant grind of the city in repose. Between Newtown and Stanmore the railway line was elevated on a brick retaining wall, a barrier across the street grid, forcing cars and pedestrians down the hill to the Liberty Road underpass. There was a bit of traffic on Kingston Road but he left it behind, turning up into an area of old industrial buildings and warehouses that were being converted to apartments. They weren’t really conversions – the builders just kept the old brick facade and built a modern concrete structure inside it, jamming in as many apartments as possible. It was happening all over the Inner West, the planners made them keep the streetscape intact but they gutted the buildings and lost all the individual character. He’d been to a couple of display units when he was looking to buy a house. Once you were inside they were all the same – you could be anywhere.

  He heard a car behind him and stepped onto the footpath to let it go past. The silver Commodore cruised along the street and turned right without signalling. Probably looking for a parking spot.

  There were temporary fencing panels and waste skips all over the footpath, so John stepped back out onto the road again. Ahead of him the Commodore came back out of the side street and turned towards him, coming faster this time. John moved to the side of the road, watching the car approach. It was close to him when he saw the nose dip, the car braking suddenly. An arm with a gun came out of the passenger-side window.

  John ran. There were two shots in quick succession, the sound of glass breaking. Shouts. He leaped onto a skip full of rubble and vaulted over the fence. The chain-mesh panels swayed under his weight, leaning into the building site. He dropped to the ground behind the skip. Three more shots ripped the night, one then two almost together, slamming into the metal side of the skip. John heard car doors opening and running feet. He ran down the ramp into the basement of the building. Harsh orange light from the street lights silhouetted him until he reached the bottom of the ramp, where it was pitch black. Two steps into the darkness, John hit something solid with his left knee and fell onto the concrete floor. More shots, hitting masonry and steel close to him. John lay stunned for a second, then the pain in his knee came. Fuck, he thought, getting himself up into a crouch, ignoring the pain. The thing he ran into felt like bags of sand or cement. Good cover, anyway. He turned away from the light, willing his eyesight to adjust to the gloom faster. From the street he could hear voices, a half-whispered argument. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, and he started to make out shapes. Columns, stacks of building materials. There were pallets of bricks scattered among the concrete columns. Plenty of cover and there should be a fire exit somewhere. He moved further away from the entrance, feeling his way carefully, trying not to put too much weight on his left knee. And trying not to make any noise on the gritty concrete floor. He couldn’t see any sign of the fire exit.