Kill the Possum

by James Moloney

  Murphy slows his pace a little and sums up. ‘So what we’re starting to see here, Dylan, is that you don’t really know anything about how Ian behaved, just what you were told by your girlfriend, Kirsty Beal, whom you believed without question and whom you’d do anything to help. Perhaps you’d even lie or exaggerate your evidence in a court room.’

  Dylan is trapped now. If he says no, it looks like he’s going back on all his earlier answers. If he says yes, he’s a fool who was used by the Beals.

  He feels an intense anger rising into his throat as he stares into Murphy’s face. At first glance he’d seemed so different from Cartwright but now Dylan can see the same bullying malice. Murphy’s enjoying this, just like Cartwright enjoyed his games with Tim and Mrs Beal. Only they aren’t here today. This time the malignant gaze is on him.

  Dylan hates him. He wants to shout at him and let out his rage. He wants to shout at the whole court. Don’t you see what he’s doing? You let it happen to Kirsty’s mother at the Committal. Now you’re letting him do it to the Beals again, by doing it to me. Dylan has become a Beal after all. Oh, if only he had a length of water pipe in his hands right now…

  The thought almost cuts him in two. Why did he kill that possum? If only he’d let it go.

  He’s not in the old garage, though. The Coroner is looking down at him waiting for his answer. Yes or no won’t do. Murphy’s deliberately driven him to this point, so he’ll have to explain himself. That means words, and words are like a piece of pipe to a man like Murphy.

  He has to risk it. For Kirsty, for Tim. He pushes the anger out of his heart for long enough to speak with what’s left.

  ‘You’re forgetting something, Mr Murphy. I was there one Sunday when Ian brought Melanie back. I saw what he did to the Beals with my own eyes. Just once, but it was enough. It was the cruellest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.’

  Murphy stares back at him, hard-faced. He’ll never convince this man who’s only interested in the mistakes his words might give away. He turns to look up at the Coroner who is watching him with the same dead-pan face but without the cold features of a statue. This is different from this morning when he laid out the simple facts and nothing more. He barely recognises his own voice, the anger he felt moments ago replaced by the deep sadness that has taken hold of him since Cartwright’s last visit to the Beals.

  ‘He didn’t have to hit them,’ he tells the Coroner. ‘The punches he used went straight into their minds. I could see it. I watched him pound into Mrs Beal until she couldn’t even talk. I watched him taunt Tim, make a fool of him, dare him to speak until the terrible stutter came out of his mouth. All he had to do was go up so close to him that their foreheads were almost touching.’

  ‘But they didn’t touch. That’s my point,’ Murphy jumps in. ‘You are telling us what you imagined and that’s no use to this inquest. Answer another question then…’

  ‘I haven’t finished answering this one.’

  ‘There’s no need. I have others for you.’

  ‘You asked me why I believed Kirsty. I’m trying to tell you. I want to explain properly,’ Dylan says firmly and he looks up at the Coroner again in silent appeal.

  ‘You asked a fair question, Mr Murphy. I think Dylan should be allowed to answer it to his own satisfaction.’

  This is what Emily told him not to do, but he can’t stop. His eyes aren’t focused on anything, not in this room anyway.

  ‘No, they didn’t touch, but the damage Ian did was much worse than a real punch. It left a bruise on your soul that no one could see. Those Sunday afternoons made Tim hate himself and now he’s in a hospital somewhere with his brain all punched out because of years of the same things I saw that day. I wish this whole court could have been there to see it too, even you Mr Murphy and then you’d know why I believed the things Kirsty told me.’

  That’s it. He better not say any more. He comes back to himself and is surprised by the continued silence. So many people looking at him. Staring. There’s not a fidget, not a cough in the entire courtroom. Even the slack-eyed journalists have stopped writing to watch him.

  There’s one face he has to look at because Murphy isn’t finished with him yet, but when he turns to the man, he see something that wasn’t there before. The cold gleam still hardens his eyes, but his cheeks are flushed. Murphy is angry, angry at what Dylan has said. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Dylan straightens up in his seat, feeling the air in his lungs like a drowning man who’s made it to the surface. Well, come on Mr Murphy, what else have you got?

  ‘I want to turn now to the theft of Mr Cartwright’s rifle. You’ve admitted to helping Tim steal it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve said you wanted to stop him bringing it to the Beals’ house and using it against them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet it ended up there because you stole,’ he says, raising his voice sharply on the word ‘because’. ‘And because it was there as a result of your theft, it caused some rather grisly consequences, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Immediately a stern voice intervenes. ‘That’s uncalled for Mr Murphy,’ says the Coroner. ‘This is an inquest, not a trial and I won’t have my witnesses bullied, especially not one so young who’s been very open with this court. Under difficult circumstances, I might add. Kindly treat him with more respect.’

  ‘Did you and Timothy Beal discuss Ian Cartwright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He told me how Ian used to hit him when he was little.’

  ‘Was he angry about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he tell you he was angry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he talk about doing anything to Ian because he was so angry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, all that anger and he didn’t want to do anything to stop it?’

  ‘He wanted it to stop. He was just too timid to do anything about it.’

  ‘But he stole the man’s gun.’

  ‘Only because I helped him. We did it to make sure that Ian couldn’t use it.’

  ‘He wanted to use it to kill Cartwright, didn’t he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he fired the first shot.’

  ‘I can’t tell you about that. I wasn’t there.’

  Murphy keeps pounding away at him. It’s as though Dylan is standing in front of Ian deflecting the blows with his lies.

  ‘You didn’t just steal the rifle, you stole bullets as well. Why would you do that, if Tim didn’t plan to shoot them?’

  ‘They were in the gun already.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t check to see if it was loaded?’

  ‘No. We just took it and got out as fast we could.’

  ‘That’s incredibly dangerous.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Irresponsible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You might have killed someone.’

  ‘Yes, it was stupid. I know that now.’

  Forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand. But there’s no pain and Murphy isn’t smiling as Cartwright had done. He’s frowning, frustrated.

  He goes at Dylan again and again until the Coroner calls down at him. ‘Mr Murphy, you’ve had your chance. The witness has answered all your questions and you haven’t been able to find any anomalies in his story. I’m inclined to let him stand down.’

  Murphy thinks about this for a long time until Dylan detects the slightest droop in one shoulder. ‘I have no more questions for the witness.’

  As he heads slowly back to his seat, the Coroner says to Dylan, ‘That’s all for you then, it seems. Dylan, is there anything more you can tell this inquest?’

  That’s it? He doesn’t have to tell them any more? But he hasn’t told them the most important thing, that lies even more deeply buried inside him than the plans he and Tim made. It seems ridiculous now when he’s spent these last weeks making sure that it stayed a secret but part of him w
ants to explain, part of him wants to stand up in the court right now and tell them that he and Tim had decided to kill Cartwright so the bastard would leave the Beals alone. More than that, he wants to tell them how he wishes he had done it, oh God, how he wishes that he hadn’t got muddled up in his own head with a confusion that had nothing to do with Tim, or Mrs Beal… or Kirsty.

  But to do that would be a final betrayal and the Beals can’t take any more. Mrs Beal might even lose Melanie. So he doesn’t tell the Coroner of the storm in his head. What would be the point? Wouldn’t change anything for Kirsty, would it.

  He looks up at the Coroner and says instead, ‘Just that I’m sorry, so sorry about the way it ended.’

  ‘We all are, Dylan,’ she tells him solemnly. ‘You are free to go.’

  Free to go. She wouldn’t say that if she knew what he’s apologising for, that he could go on apologising for the rest of his life and it wouldn’t wipe away the stain he can feel on his skin. He leans forward in his seat and stands up. Where has his energy gone? He feels a hundred years old.

  After a few steps he stops and turns back to face the Coroner. Trust her, Emily has told him. She’ll sift out the truth. Surely she’s seen through him. She’s going to stop the circus now and laugh at him. You didn’t think you were going to get away scott-free, did you? We’ve known all along it was you. Whether you pulled the trigger or not doesn’t matter to us. You, Dylan Kane, you’re the killer here. At least Ian Cartwright admitted his guilt and took his punishment.

  But there is no more from the Coroner, who busies herself writing on the note pad in front of her. When she looks up, she’s surprised that he’s still there.

  ‘You’re free to go,’ she says again.

  Eric and his mother have risen to their feet as well and join him in the aisle for the short walk to the doors. Then he’s outside, in the foyer.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re glad that’s over,’ says Rosemary as she wraps him in a fleshy hug. ‘I was getting so angry at that man, the way he goaded you. But you held out.’

  Yes, he’d survived. Oh, Kirsty you were right after all.

  ‘Very brave,’ says Eric. The words scythe through Dylan, bringing blood that no one can see. He can’t look at his grandfather any more without seeing him five steps up an extension ladder, sending down his answer to a question he didn’t even know had been asked. It’ll stay on your mind for the rest of your life. The trip to England is only three weeks away. How the hell will he survive that?

  He walks along the corridors beside his mother. They’ll be at the car in a matter of minutes. ‘Mum,’ he says without looking towards her. ‘Could we visit Kirsty on the way home?’

  ‘If you want to, darling. If you’re feeling up to it. Not far out of the way, really, I suppose.’

  He’s a hero, he’s had a hard day in court. Of course, she’ll cut him a bit of slack. She’ll wait in the car like last time, to give him some space. What will he say to Kirsty that he hasn’t said already in the privacy that is uniquely theirs now? How many times can he say he’s sorry, when she doesn’t even know why? Tim can’t tell her, he’ll never tell anyone and even if he does, no one’s going to believe him. Nobody knows, nobody but Dylan Kane.

  No Charges After Domestic Tragedy

  Sue Lenane

  POLICE will not lay charges against two teenage boys as a result of a fatal domestic dispute in April.

  Timothy Thomas Beal is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment after recovering from gunshot wounds sustained during the siege. A second youth who cannot be named has immunity from prosecution after he gave evidence to a Coronial Inquest about the theft of a rifle used in the shooting.

  Police believe the pair stole the gun from Beal’s estranged step-father, Ian Terence Cartwright. They have conducted extensive investigations in an attempt to determine who instigated the violence in the Beals’ home when Cartwright demanded the return of the unregistered weapon. The Coroner handed down her preliminary findings yesterday with the final report expected next month.

  Spokesman, Det. Sgt. Keith Vlarnic said, ‘We’ll never have an entirely clear picture of what happened inside the house and don’t intend to pursue the matter any further.’

  Beal’s sister, Kirsty Louise Beal, was shot dead during the incident before Cartwright turned the gun on himself.

  about the author

  James Moloney has worked at a fruit market and in a truck factory but it was his experience as a young teacher in western Queensland that led to his early novels, Crossfire, Dougy and Gracey. His short novel, Swashbuckler, won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award in 1996 and in the following year, A Bridge to Wiseman’s Cove was named Book of the Year in the CBCA’s Older Readers category. His other titles have appeared regularly on shortlists for literary prizes and children’s choice awards ever since.

  ‘I like to get inside the head of today’s adolescents, to connect with the passion they have for life and understand what they care about. The challenge then is to express it in a story. That challenge keeps me young. I love it.’

  James and his wife, Kate, live in Brisbane with their three children.