by Jock Serong
‘So I’ll go back to the first question,’ says Craigo. ‘Have you been interviewed?’
I’m trying to compose a reply but Craigo gestures vaguely to Meth Man.
‘Check his knee, will you?’
Meth Man approaches, standing squarely in his own puddle of piss, and grabs hold of my thigh. With his other hand he cups my shattered knee and finds the hole. Then he slides his grubby fucking finger into it and wiggles it around, leering at me as he does it. I can feel bone moving. A tendon pulls taut under the probing finger. I don’t know if it hurts as much as he probably imagines, but the shock of it is enough to make me retch. The shock, and the notion that he might be finding this somehow sexual. He withdraws the finger after three or four hideous chemical breaths and wipes it casually on my thigh.
Craig hasn’t moved. He’s seen this, done this, before.
‘Is there a statement, Daz?’
He picks up the gun again, points it at my other knee. Meth Man puts his fingers in his ears this time.
‘Yes.’
He lowers the gun. Looks at me inquiringly.
‘I met some people in an office, Docklands. Gave them a statement.’
‘Did they give you a copy?’
They’d frisked me on the way out. They were very uptight about me not retaining anything that might identify them.
‘No. Nothing went in or out of that room.’
‘All right, so what did you tell them?’
So I start explaining to him about the statement, the things I’d thought were important to the Royal Commission, knowing now that I’d been miles off the mark. I’d told them the TV network often requested we string things out a bit towards the end of the short-format games; that we were positively encouraged to tamper with the ball provided we kept it discreet. I’d told them I was once asked by a player, since deceased, to get myself stumped at a particular stage of a particular game, and that I’d fucked it up and hit the ball out of the park. I’d told them that I’d got a much closer look at the culture once I moved into TV; that commentators would routinely check with the players in advance about tactics; that we’d report back to the network with batting orders and bowling changes so they could tailor their advertising to the appearances of the big names. I’d told them about the organised doctoring of pitches to suit particular bowlers, not as some sort of informal pact between a groundsman and a local official, but as an ongoing program that involved men in suits on Skype hookups, almost none of them cricketers.
I’d told them about the seminars in which the production team were encouraged to understand the game as a product, and not as a contest at all. The spruikers and management types who explained how the product could be ‘optimised’ with an eye to a thing they called ‘maximal peak viewer penetration’. I’d admitted the whole thing is a reality show on grass. I’d told them about the time I watched a cowering franchise captain in a Twenty20 game being berated by an executive producer for instructing his most menacing fast bowler to bowl a conservative line on off-stump. The guy was trying to make legitimate cricket. The producer was making prime-time telly. I’d told them my own house was not entirely in order on things moral and legal, but that one thing I’d never done was throw a match.
At first Craigo’s listening with interest. Then his eyebrows start to rise on his forehead. Then a smile appears at one corner of his mouth, spreads and pushes his hamster cheeks out towards his ears. Then he’s laughing, slapping his thigh in a slightly alarming way with the hand that’s holding the gun. The baby-faced guy’s taken up another couch and a home interiors magazine, ignoring us completely. I’ve just been shot, you big turd. At least feign some interest.
‘So you’re saying you haven’t mentioned me at all?’ Craigo looks like a weight’s been lifted.
‘What was I going to say? I didn’t know what the hell you’d been up to.’
He sighs elaborately as the laughter turns to reflection. ‘Turns out we were both feeding on the same carcass. But I was making money, eh.’
He’s fiddling with the gun, still smiling to himself. A well-fed man of forty-two, receding slightly at the temples, spreading at the waist. He’d have enough money lodged in betting accounts, fed through companies, to do whatever he wants. Dress better, for one. Buy a holiday pile among the finance barons at Portsea. He could swindle some poor grid girl or nightclub hostess into bearing him a family, stand around with a takeaway coffee in his mitt watching his fat kids trying to play soccer. He’d love that. He’s got the charm to pull it off and the wits to stay ahead of prosecution. So why is he stuck in this perpetual man-child bullshit? The open-all-hours micromanagement that others could take care of. The suburbs are swarming with aspirants to his role: the car rebirthers, pill wholesalers, standover merchants and mixed martial artists, itching to graduate. As in any industry, the rookies must have their time, and the journeymen must evolve.
But not Craigo.
The only logical answer must be that he’s trapped. Trapped like me, stuck in a loop of denial about the dull decline of ageing. I’ve been a performing parrot, a larrikin everyman. He’s been a plywood cut-out villain. Most of my income-producing activities have been approximately legal, but aside from that we’re no different. His pleasures, as mine, have been ephemeral. Nothing has lasted or accumulated, other than the money. Nothing can be satisfying in reflection, because there’s no one to reflect with.
He’s just put a round through my knee, but I pity the poor schmuck.
Craigo finishes laughing and gives a nod. Meth Man appears from my right with the pool cue, eyes wide with intent. He takes a giant backswing as he lines up my head.
The next moments are like music from a scratched disc. Fragments, passages, severed or blurred just as they promise to acquire meaning. I know I‘ve been carried by the two lackeys. I know I’ve been dropped heavily. I’m aware I’m in a car boot, as I can smell the strong auto rubber of a spare tyre.
Ah well. So. Doesn’t matter.
But then the footage rectifies itself momentarily, comes good in terrible clarity. Craig is above me, one hand on the boot lid, looking down.
Could I plead with him? No, I could not. His face tells me I’m already dead as far as he’s concerned. The others must be taking their seats in the car, because presently I feel the springs rock a little then hear the doors slam. He looks down again, lighting a smoke with his other hand. Drags on it, pulls it free. From a pocket he removes a roll of black gaffer tape. Roadie tape. Tears a length of it with his teeth and reaches down to press it over my mouth.
‘You do know what happened to Hannah?’
His words are the first thing that’s struck me with any force since the bullet. It’s the framing of the sentence, as much as it being such a surprising thing to say. You do know. Not inquiring as to whether I might know, nor assuming that I actually do, but implying that I should know.
‘Sydney. Your stupid lob when you were supposed to be stumped. Everyone did their dough on that deal, you know. Everyone.’
His face changes in a tiny way. Those eyes narrow a little and the eyeballs trace a vague circle around the inside of the boot as he brings the lid down.
Oh God.
I’m what happened to Hannah.
Release
I’ve been asleep at some point, dreaming my way through these things.
The boot. The dark. The pain and the looming end.
We must be coming to the end. The physics have changed. We’re going slower, and I’m being pressed from side to side: head against one mudguard, feet against the other. It’s colder. There’s very little discussion in the car—just occasional directions. Left here. Don’t take that exit. Of course they wouldn’t risk the sat nav. They’ve probably turned their phones off altogether. Craigo is no longer his ebullient self. Maybe he’s reflective. Isn’t life funny. I’m off to bury my childhood bud Dazza.
Just like when I was fiddling with the tail-light, I can feel half an instinct to have a go. Do somethi
ng, anything, to disrupt the sad and inevitable progression of things. Another part of me is deep in fatalism. We’re nearly there, and this part won’t hurt as much as the previous part did. It’s absurd: escaping would be nice, but I’m not really fussed.
At least one of them must be seated in the back, as there were three present for the kneecapping. I’m fairly sure Craig would be driving because it’s his style to take charge. So it’s one of the others I can hear snoring. For a ridiculous instant I’m tempted to thump the back of the seat to get him to shut up. In the midst of that idea I raise a fist and then remember with some surprise that it’s free.
My hands.
I’d forgotten about them, must’ve fallen asleep right after I got them loose. Squibbly’s a sticky mess, but of course he doesn’t hurt. The rest of my left hand hurts. I flip it over and feel where it was lying. My fingers close around the big shard of the tail-light casing, like a prehistoric stone tool digging into the heel of my hand. My kingdom for someone to stab.
Then a tiny idea forms.
I rub the palm of one hand against the vertical surface of the back seat. It’s lined with carpet and feels like it’s backed with board of some kind. It doesn’t take me long to trace my way to the edge of the board, where one section of the split-fold rear seat meets the other. I dig my fingertips into the fabric until I find the slim groove where it’s been tucked over and stitched in. Then I take to it with the shard of plastic. At first, nothing happens, and I stop for fear that the scratching sound is audible. But the snoring continues and the rhythm of the car hasn’t changed.
I slash downwards again, pulling at the edge of the covering with my other hand. This time it gives a little, and I can jam a fingertip into the opening I’ve made. I poke around and find there are staples, and I’ve pulled three of them out. I yank down harder and another three pop out. The sound of the tearing is slightly louder, so I have to wait again to see if I’ve been heard.
By rolling over and changing my angle, I can now get my flattened left hand inside the back of the seat. Fingers and palm dart about, painting me a picture: flat springs, padding. I can visualise the pattern of curving wires. Pinching with the good thumb and a forefinger, I can pluck out little scraps of the padding foam, and before long I’ve dug my way through the full thickness of the seat, about a foot up from the floor of the boot. I think about that height for a moment and I figure my tunnel would be located at roughly shoulder-blade height for a person sitting in the back seat. But I still don’t know which side Back Seat Guy is sitting on, and there’s only one way to find out. I press gently against the cloth at the back of the hole I’ve made. It feels firm. The snoring drones on. I poke hard and there’s an abrupt snort.
‘Bout time you clocked on, fuckhead.’
The voice is from the front seats, but it isn’t Craig’s. The reply comes from much closer to me, sleepy and gruff. I remember the voice. It’s the skinny one, Meth Man.
‘Fuck you. We there yet?’
‘Ten minutes. Anything from the boot?’
‘Nothin.’
Silence for a moment. Then Meth Man’s voice again, whiny.
‘When do we get fuckin paid?’
There’s no answer at first.
‘Huh?’ he whines.
‘You know how it goes,’ responds Craigo. ‘He’s paid a deposit, and I’m holding that. Not on me, obviously. When the job’s done, he hands over the balance, and you get paid. Got a problem with that?’
It seems Meth Man doesn’t, but I do. If Craigo had his worries about the match fixing and needed to find out what I knew, then that’s all covered off. He’s done the work himself, and got the answer. So who’s paying here? Who’s he?
Within seconds, the snoring resumes. I start the process again on the other side of the divide between the seats. This is the passenger side, and it’s wider than the other side where I made the first cavity. This time I can cut the covering fabric more cleanly and pull it away from the backing board, revealing the tops of the staples. By jamming the tip of the shard under each staple, I can wiggle them free one by one, until the whole right side of the seat backing comes free without a sound.
Once again, I start digging away at the padding, flicking the lumps behind me until I’ve made a fist-sized hole. When I reach the fabric on the cabin-side of the seat, I stop for a moment. It’s clear there’s no one sitting on this seat, but I need a little think. I could cut open the fabric and get a hand through into the interior of the car, but what would I do then? I have no way of knowing where the back seat recliner latches would be. And I can’t very well feel around like Thing from The Addams Family until I accidentally pat Meth Man.
So I retreat for a moment and cradle the sticky, insensible form of Squibbly while I reconsider.
The latch that drops the back seat has to be connected to some sort of mechanism within the seat. So the answer is not to access the latch, but to find the mechanism. I start randomly picking at the foam, taking a pinch at a time, thinking all the while about those ten minutes and how fast they’re ebbing away. I’m a hopeless, banged-up Houdini, unpicking padlocks while I slowly drown.
When I’ve emptied the near side of the seat without result, I start working towards the far edge. Almost all the way to the wheel arch, my fingers close around something unfamiliar: a plastic tube like electrical conduit, running vertically from top to bottom of the seat.
Pick, pick, pick.
At the top, the tube ends at a plastic box of some kind. I imagine the seat latch is contained within it.
More picking.
I’ve revealed the whole area around the tube and the box. Although the tube is one piece of plastic and is unlikely to be broken open without a lot of noise, the box is made of several pieces, clipped together somehow. The ends of my fingers are registering the fine seams where the pieces join together. I crowd as many fingernails as I can along the seam and heave downwards.
Shit. Broken nail. And to no effect.
Taking the tube in both hands, I pull my weight over towards the corner. Crowded up against it, I can apply a little more weight to the task. And sure enough, leaning on a bunch of burning fingertips, I can feel the plastic start to give way. I release the pressure for fear it’ll snap. Now I can slip the shard into the gap that’s appeared, and pry away, the fingers of both hands now curled like whacked spiders’ legs by cramp.
If I was briefly ambivalent about living and dying, that time has passed. Now I can feel it, the beginnings of a desire to solve the puzzle, shooting in synaptic pulses from my pounding chest all the way out to the fingernails that are currently responsible for my fate.
And it won’t happen fast enough. I can’t pull harder, can’t risk the noise. And every time I get a good purchase on the tiny edge of the plastic, the car lurches from side to side, pressing me into the corner and then pulling me away. Left, right, left, right…it can mean only one thing.
They’re in the hills.
In the end, physics does what I don’t dare to try. Just as I’ve got a four-finger grip on the edge of the plastic, easing a little pressure into it, the car swings violently to the left and I’m ripped away from my work, sucked towards the driver’s side with my fingers still jammed in the gap—inside the little plastic box, inside the back seat. The plastic gives way with a loud snap.
‘Fuck was that?’ I hear from somewhere in the car.
‘Came from the boot,’ is the reply, much nearer, from Meth Man in the back seat. Edge of concern in his voice.
‘Just round the corner anyway. Fuck him.’
‘I could pop him through the seat.’
‘Don’t be a fuckwit. You’re not firing a gun in the car.’
Meth Man’s got his ear pressed against the seat, listening for me. I can tell because I can feel the rounded lump of his head against the back of my hand. I feel like punching him hard in the scone. So tempting—the surprise, the stinging wonder of the one you don’t see coming.
But no tim
e for that.
Inside the box is what I expected to feel: the spiral steel wire that controls the seat release. It’s guitar-string taut and hard to grip. The car lurches, and I flail hopelessly in the dark to grab onto something: I only succeed in jamming my right hand in the tail-light cavity again. Struggling for something to secure against, the hand closes around the electrical wires that led to the globe.
Answer.
I rip at them, caring little now about noise. They come free from their moorings, about a hand’s length of wire. The car swings again, flopping me over onto my other side, conveniently facing my work again.
I want to live because I want to beat these morons. To my great surprise, I want to win.
I wrap the globe wires with their soft insulation around the steel of the seat wire, winding them tight until they grip the big wire firmly. Wrapping the rest of the wires around my hand, I start to heave upwards. Immediately, there’s the sound of a spring twanging against a latch somewhere deep in the base of the seat.
No time to take stock now. Meth Man must be upright, because the car’s last couple of lurches have brought me back to face the seat, and I can feel no pressure from the area where his head was. I rotate ninety degrees so I can crouch with both hands prepared against the seat back. The pain from the shot knee is like a volley of deafening, discordant music.
The car keeps swinging from side to side.
I have nothing left to do and no other chances. Just this chance. Right now.
I press the foot of the good leg against the metalwork near the tail-light and spring forward, crashing through the back seat and into the cabin of the car. I see the headlights on trees, the blips of colour from the dashboard display. Two large, dark blank shapes which are the backs of the two front seats. In my peripheral vision is Meth Man, just inches to my right, starting to move.
But I’m looking straight ahead, at one thing only.
The handbrake.
The forward momentum has carried me all the way to the handle, resting between the two front seats. Time compresses as I land on the flattened back seat, right hand outstretched. First stab at it misses by a mile but the second one doesn’t.
