by Jane Jago
Legal commentator Callum Keating contended that this ‘leaves the way open for a major legal loophole regarding publication of information about their identities’.
The article added, helpfully, that ‘While the pictures have been withdrawn from locally based sites they can still be accessed via sites outside the country.’
Geoffrey folded the paper in half and studied the portrait of a weary Mathew Allen smiling at the camera; the look in his eye claimed a victory of sorts in having brought the issue once again into the news. He threw the paper face down onto the floor.
Rage welled inside him. What did Allen want? Why was he hounding him? Why couldn’t he just let the whole thing die? In his anger it was easy for him to see himself as the victimized prey, easy to forget why Mathew Allen would suffer any consequence to hunt him down or see him dead.
He stood up and began pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the window, picked up the cigarette packet that lay on the counter, took out the remaining cigarette and tapped it against the bench. He would need to go out soon to get more. He put the cigarette back into the packet and returned to his pacing, stopping briefly in front of a makeshift desk to stare at the screensaver on his computer. He knew what he had to do but for three days he had been unable to do it.
The phone rang again. He put his hands behind his head, pulled his elbows in front of his face and arched his back. ‘Fuck!’
In the bedsit’s tiny kitchen he knelt down and disengaged the kickboard from the base of the upright stove, then dragged out a multi-patterned satchel from the cavity. He withdrew a small laptop from the bag and held it to his chest, then slammed it down onto the kitchen floor. The machine impacted with a smacking sound but remained intact. He retrieved it and hurled it down again. The screen flew back violently as one of the hinges sheared off and the plastic body split.
He turned a tap on at the sink and smashed the device several times against the edge of the counter. Using a nearby skillet, he delivered a final blow. Plastic shards flew into the air, the hard shell cracking open in several places to expose the workings of the computer drives within.
He dropped it into the sink. Tiny bubbles filtered to the surface as the remaining cavities filled with water.
Sitting down in front of the desktop monitor he logged onto the internet. He typed in a search for Mathew Allen and quickly found the ‘Benjamin’s Place’ website. He didn’t wait for the pictures of Benjamin to load before clicking ‘Links’. He selected ‘Justice Without Borders’ from the list and was taken to a site that acted as an exchange for information about convicted felons, crimes and sentencing issues, missing persons, children abducted in custody disputes, and sex offenders. He typed ‘Benjamin Allen’ into the search field.
Among taglines for articles about the trial and those expressing outrage at the ‘soft sentencing’ or early release, Geoffrey read, ‘Harris and Simpson, is this what they look like now?’ He scratched an itch at the back of his neck; his shirt clung to a damp area that had formed between his shoulder-blades. He clicked the link. On the screen two faces quickly uploaded.
Face B on the right mesmerized him. He scoured every feature. He couldn’t know if it was an accurate likeness of Graham Harris now, but the hair follicles on his scalp contracted as he looked into the eyes of the Graham Harris he had once known. Eventually he tore away his gaze to examine Face A. He scanned the image anxiously, comparing every feature to his own. The auburn hair, the rounded cheeks, the broad nose and the dimpled chin were all there but combined to create a completely different face from the one he had grown into. He hit the print button and waited impatiently as the printer head droned back and forth and the resulting document was delivered to the tray.
He took the image with him to the bathroom, stood in front of the mirrored cabinet and studied his face, masculine if not handsome, with the stern mouth and cold blue eyes. He held the picture up to his face and saw a clumsy resemblance, as if a bad artist had drawn someone who looked a bit like him – a distant relative, perhaps – but had failed to capture anything that triggered any real visual recognition. He changed his expression and even the technical resemblance disappeared. The forensically modelled projection stared ahead grimly. Geoffrey made a wide grin, exposing his teeth. Apart from the auburn hair, uncannily cut in an approximation of his current style, the two faces, one on paper, the other of flesh, held no apparent connection to each other. He crumpled the page in his hand and flushed it down the toilet.
He’d been half out of his mind for three days. He let out a strangled laugh. It took hold of him, spasming deep in his belly. He laughed until tears rolled down his face, until he began to wheeze. He dropped to the tiled floor and held onto the side of the bath for support. Several minutes passed before he finally regained his composure.
Now that he was free to leave the confines of the flat, he felt far too exhausted to face the outside world, wanting only to eat a good meal and sleep for a very long time. He needed to phone in to work, check in with his parole officer and put the wheels back on his life before things started to unravel.
He made it as far as the bed, lay down and closed his eyes. If he could get an hour’s sleep, then he could think about going out for food and cigarettes.
When he opened his eyes again the room was shrouded in darkness. Only a faint glow of evening light bled through the dull-white Terylene curtains. For a moment he wondered if he had slept right through to the next day. He dragged himself up and peered outside. Across the neighbouring rooftops he noted the streaks of faded orange that tinged the darkening sky.
After showering for the first time in three days, he shaved and dressed. He drained the sink in the kitchen and separated the laptop debris into three different garbage bags, which he carried from the flat slung over his shoulder. He deposited them in bins on three separate streets, the last before the steps to the Underground.
Three days in captivity had given him a heightened awareness of the small freedoms his narrow life allowed; for as long as he could remember he had had no remaining ambition, other than to walk free, unmolested and anonymous. An episode like that of the last few days served to remind him that he could be exposed at any time. No matter how many years passed he would always be an uninvited guest at life’s table. As he boarded a city-bound train and stood near the automatic doors, silent strangers brushing involuntarily against him, he began to breathe a little easier.
In the city he walked in the direction of Quayside with the intention of getting a meal and a beer at one of the busy eateries. Passing a closed tobacconist’s stall he felt instinctively in his pockets for his cigarettes. They were empty: he’d left his last cigarette in the flat. He felt in the side pockets of his leather jacket. The right-hand one held his wallet and keys. In the left his fingers found something cold and hard: the neatly crafted pocket-knife he often carried when fear gripped him. He hadn’t thought to take it since the weather was last cold enough to wear the jacket but he felt glad of it tonight. He took it out and opened the blade with the fingers of one hand. He pressed the point against the hardened skin of his thumb, then shut it and slid it back into his jacket. Struck by sudden panic, his hand flew to his shirt pocket. His mobile was there. For one minute he’d thought he’d come out without it.
The smell of stale urine and hops rose from the doorway of a nearby pub. Inside the men’s bar, he dropped a series of coins into the slot of the cigarette machine. At the bar he ordered a beer and found a book of matches. Only when his cigarette was finally alight and he had taken his first drag did he look around him. Apart from a one-eyed drunk at the bar, the room was empty. Through the internal glass doors that led to the main entrance, he could see a steady traffic of younger clientele coming and going from the lounge. The smoky sweet scent of barbecued meat reminded him that he was ravenous.
‘Where can I get a feed?’ he asked the man behind the bar.
‘Through there.’ He inclined his head. ‘In the bistro.’
He pushed his way through a small crowd clustered at the rear, lifting his beer away from his body. As he sidestepped a table of diners he collided head on with a younger man. The wiry blond held a plate of food to his chest in an effort to save it. ‘Whoa!’
Geoffrey swore loudly as the contents of his beer glass splashed in a frothy arc across an empty table. ‘Sorry, mate.’ Inwardly he blamed the other man but he knew enough not to buy extra trouble.
‘Forget it. Shame about your beer.’
Geoffrey watched as he carried his food over to a table of young men and sat down to eat. When one of them glanced at him, he quickly looked away. By the time he had collected his meal and found a table he noticed, with some relief, that the blond was gone. He tore into the buttered steak, mentally plotting the route he would take home and the supplies he needed to buy from the ‘all-nite’ supermarket.
A beer thudded onto the table in front of him. He looked up to meet the eyes of the blond man. ‘Thanks.’
‘No worries.’ The man smiled down at him. One of his front teeth crossed the other and was diagonally chipped, giving his smile an awkward appeal. Geoffrey realized that he couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. He gave a guarded smile back and continued to cut his meat.
‘The food’s pretty good here. The chef’s a mate of my brothers.’
Geoffrey nodded and chewed. The youth’s friendliness was not lost on him but he knew the dangers of human contact. He allowed himself to crave neither friends nor intimates, who could threaten the integrity of his fortress-like defences. Keeping people out was a small price to pay to preserve his limited freedom.
Other, more basic, urges were not so easy to fight. He fought them anyway, pushing them down into the back of his consciousness or avoiding temptation wherever he could. In any case he would never have allowed himself to admit to the overwhelming attraction he felt towards the tanned young man in the pale blue shirt.
‘Well, enjoy your beer,’ he said, winking, and moved back into the crowd.
The night air was heavy with moisture as he walked the half-mile of dockside that led back to the commercial centre. A light rain began to fall, adding to his discomfort. It wasn’t the shortest or safest route back to the Underground, but it was mostly deserted. He crossed the street and stopped briefly to look out across the oily black water, a heartless expanse that immediately depressed him and threatened to swallow him. He turned away from it, leaning against the Victorian cross-patterned iron rail.
On the opposite side of the street stood a row of cavernous factories, days away from being gutted and refurbished, built from rough-cut convict sandstone. Aeons of invisible suffering mixed with crumbling mortar. Loneliness, abandonment and degradation, all there in the empty rain-slicked street. What a desolate landscape, and yet he felt at home in it. This was how the world really was; places like this didn’t lie.
Looking towards the lime-painted doors of a corner warehouse, he saw the outline of a figure emerging from the cross street he had just left. Steady footfalls on the wet bitumen broke the comforting silence. Geoffrey turned abruptly and walked at a pace to maintain his lead on the stranger. Instead of continuing directly towards his destination, he turned impulsively into the next laneway. As he climbed the shallow rise away from the waterfront, he thought he heard footsteps again and looked back to see the figure, in a pale shirt, turn into the laneway after him. The soles of his feet tingled painfully as a feeling of vertigo flooded through him. Was that the young man from the hotel?
Geoffrey walked fast now, turning left towards an open square of parkland. He cut across it, heading in the direction of the yellow light that spilt downwards from the eaves of a distant toilet block. He could make out the silhouettes of two people near a stand of trees at the park’s far entrance. As he moved closer to them they melted into the darkness. He rounded the brown-brick building and entered the anteroom of the men’s toilet. Not knowing if he was still being followed, he looked back out into the darkness. His light-blinded pupils registered nothing.
Despite the cold he was sweating heavily. Reluctant to leave the illuminated sanctuary, he stopped to splash himself with water. He pulled the hem of his shirt loose from his trousers and wiped at his face. When he uncovered his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror, he saw the blond youth standing in the doorway behind him. Geoffrey spun around to face him. ‘Why are you following me?’
The boy gave him a strange look.
‘What do you want?’ Geoffrey fingered the knife in his pocket.
The boy moved forward slowly ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ He laid a hand on his arm.
Geoffrey pushed it away. ‘I’m no faggot.’
‘Didn’t say you were.’ The boy edged closer.
Geoffrey’s stomach churned. ‘Look, you’ve got the wrong idea.’
The boy’s face was now very close to his. ‘Don’t you like me just a little bit?’ His grey-blue eyes looked right into Geoffrey’s.
Geoffrey looked back at him, as if he might kill him, then reached down and felt the boy’s crotch. They kissed. Geoffrey pulled him into the nearest cubicle and began to undo the fly of his own jeans. The boy pushed the stall door shut and immediately dropped to his knees. Braced against the rear of the cubicle, looking down at the silvery blond hairs on the back of the tanned neck, Geoffrey was overcome with a wild excitement, every nerve ending in his body screaming as the boy fondled him, then took him into his mouth. Geoffrey groaned, one hand caressing the boy’s scalp while the other found its way into the jacket pocket and held the knife.
At that moment something heavy slammed powerfully against the cubicle door, which exploded inwards, smashing his elbow and sending the boy sprawling backwards. Pain coursed through Geoffrey’s arm.
‘Stay exactly where you are.’ The man held up a badge of identification. His partner bent down, secured the boy’s arms behind his back and handcuffed him. ‘I’m arresting you both for offensive behaviour.’
Geoffrey held his elbow and stared up at the two policemen. His brain was still reeling.
The boy began to cry. ‘We didn’t do anything wrong.’
One of the policemen grunted in disbelief.
‘You do yourself up,’ the second officer instructed Geoffrey, as he took in the sordid tableau – the cracked toilet cistern, the graffitied walls, thick with salacious invitations, phone numbers, and pornographic promises. How anyone could raise a hard-on in this filth was beyond him.
The next twenty minutes passed in a blur. Bundled into the back of an unmarked police car, alongside the blond stranger who kept glancing at him in expectation of camaraderie, he could only look out of the window as the neon-lit night streaked by.
From the moment of his arrest he had been trying to work out if he should stay silent and ride out the consequences of this cataclysm or if he should phone in a ‘code blue’.
At the police station they had taken his belongings from him. He watched silently as his mobile phone was slipped into a plastic bag and placed in a metal drawer. The number he needed was engraved deep in his memory: when he closed his eyes he could see the digits hovering above him, like a tattoo. Still unable to come to any decision, he declined the duty sergeant’s offer of a phone call and was ushered into a bare interview room.
Alone, he counselled himself to stay calm. ‘Offensive behaviour’ was a misdemeanour charge. Don’t panic, stay calm, stay focused. Wait and see what happens. Just answer their questions, get bailed and get out of there. He could sort it out with his parole officer later. He stared at the arsenic-green walls, glowing dimly under the sickly fluorescent light. Come on. He ran the jagged nail of his thumb along the corner seam of the laminated table edge.
The door opened, and the officer who had arrested him came in, followed by a younger uniformed officer. The detective looked at him from weary eyes as his colleague turned on a video recorder at the back of the room and sat down alongside him.
‘Let’s get this out of the way and we c
an all go home.’
Geoffrey looked back at him.
‘About twenty-five minutes ago, at nine forty p.m., you were arrested for offensive behaviour in a public toilet in Observatory Park. Do you wish to deny or confirm that you were in the process of receiving fellatio from another male in the public toilets there?’
‘Yes, we were . . .’ Geoffrey broke eye contact.
The officer nodded. ‘Have you ever been to that public toilet before?’
Geoffrey shifted in his seat. ‘Maybe . . . a long time ago.’
‘When?’
‘Maybe once last year . . . I don’t know exactly. Why?’
‘To be honest with you, mate, we’re not really all that interested in the sex life of your average queer but there have been a number of violent assaults on gay men in Observatory Park over the past five months.’
Geoffrey listened attentively. He had started to wonder where this was headed.
‘You had a small pocket-knife in your possession?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What do you carry that around for?’
‘It’s a multi-tool. I use the scissors at work to trim leads and wires. I don’t know anything about any assaults.’
‘The young guy you were with, where did you meet him?’
‘I saw him in the pub on North Head Road. I’ve never met him before – he followed me when I left the pub. I noticed him behind me before the park – I stopped in the toilet and he came on to me in there. I don’t even know his name.’
‘Did he get rough with you?’
Geoffrey shot the policeman a withering look. ‘Him? No.’
The officer made a neat pile of the few papers in front of him. ‘Well, we won’t keep you longer than we need to. Officer Hartley will take you downstairs, where you will be charged and fingerprinted. Then you can get out of here . . . You might want to think about getting a motel room next time,’ he added, without smiling.
