The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne

by Barry Jonsberg

  “I told you, Calma,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice. “Maybe once you could explain away. But who in their right mind keeps on going out in the middle of the night, particularly when they've got a job to go to? I tell you, she is up to no good. And we have to find out what it is. Come on.”

  Now, I know I have given the impression that I was getting a little tired of that casuarina tree. But I can tell you, when the time came to leave, it had never seemed more attractive. It's one thing to hang around outside someone's house, but quite another to follow them down deserted streets at some godforsaken time in the morning. But I had no opportunity to voice my misgivings to Kiffo. He was off like a rat up a drainpipe and I had no option but to follow him. I didn't fancy trailing the Pitbull, but neither did I fancy hiding under a tree, alone, at that time of night.

  Let me tell you something. In the movies, following a person looks like the easiest thing in the world. All you do is walk a discreet distance behind. When they turn around, you feign interest in the shop window of an oriental emporium or something. It isn't like that in real life. Okay, I know the circumstances were somewhat different. For one thing, there wasn't an oriental emporium within ten miles. But the main thing was that there was very little cover. I mean, if the Pitbull turned around, there we'd be, frozen under a street lamp. Difficult to explain away as a casual late-night jog. Kiffo and I zigzagged from one side of the road to the other, moving from bush to bush, crouching behind the odd parked car. But for a lot of the time we were out in the open. It's a horrible feeling to know that just one backward glance would be enough to pin you in a metaphorical spotlight.

  Problem number two. It's quiet at night. Unbelievably quiet. Even the night insects seemed to have taken a vow of silence. So we couldn't stay too close on her heels for fear that either she or the evil hound, Slasher, would hear our footsteps. That didn't bother me, mind. I'd have been happy with a fair distance. Something like twenty-five miles, for example. But it did make it difficult to keep her in view. When she turned a corner, we'd run like hell, keeping on the nature strip to deaden the sound. It was okay for Kiffo—he didn't have to keep a protective arm across his boobs. I was running flat out, and mine threatened to knock my glasses off.

  Problem three. When we reached a corner, we had to peer round very carefully. For all we knew, she could have been a yard or two away and a couple of peering, sweaty, disembodied faces might just conceivably have drawn a little unwanted attention. This meant that all the time we made up on the mad sprint was lost on gingerly peering around the next corner. God, it was a nightmare. Once, we turned a corner and there was no sign of her at all. A couple of roads radiated off and she could have taken any one of them. So we had to take a chance and run to the point where we could get a good view in every direction. As luck would have it, we spotted the pooch's backside as it turned yet another corner.

  Finally, we came to a large intersection. This time, though, we could hear voices. Kiffo and I crouched down and very carefully looked around the corner. About ten yards down the road, the Pitbull was talking to a man. They were standing under a streetlight and we had a clear view of them. The man was small, thin-lipped and bloodless. Like a ferret. He reminded me of the little guy you see in gangster movies. You know, the one who's always next to Robert De Niro, the one who's completely off his head and liable to shoot someone in the groin if he doesn't like the look of him. The runt of the litter, but mean as anything.

  They were having an animated conversation, two sets of arms flapping all over the place, though we couldn't make out the actual words. It was a residential street, but they were outside a large hall, a likely meeting place for Scouts or other paramilitary organizations. You know the sort of thing. The man was jangling a bunch of keys. After a few more moments of semaphore practice, he unlocked the door of the hall and they disappeared inside. A few seconds later, a light came on. I glanced at Kiffo, raised my eyebrows, and he gave me a quick nod. Having come this far, there was no way we were prepared to give up now.

  Kiffo and I padded around the side of the building, looking for a convenient window, the kind that in movies are invariably positioned to afford maximum spying potential. It soon became obvious that the builder of this place had wilfully ignored this architectural necessity. The only window likely to offer any view was impractically positioned about eight feet above the ground. A possibility if you were a member of the Australian basketball team, but not a great deal of use to us. Fortunately, a quick exploration of the grounds revealed a number of milk crates, and we piled these up in a rough pyramid underneath the window. It didn't look particularly safe, but unless we stumbled across a cherry picker in the undergrowth it was going to have to do. Kiffo and I climbed gingerly up the crates, stopping every few moments to sway gently as the whole arrangement shifted under our weight. Finally, we were able to grab hold of the windowsill and peer into the room.

  I'm not the most house-proud person in the world, but that window was a disgrace. The accumulated filth of two millennia seemed ingrained into its surface. Nonetheless, we could just about see the runt and the Pitbull sitting at a table. Or rather, we could see the Pitbull pretty clearly, old Slasher sitting at her side, but only the disembodied arms of the runt. There was a briefcase on the table in front of them.

  I had to admit that it all looked like very funny business. Why would you need to meet someone at that time of night? What could possibly be so important that the telephone wouldn't do? Why would a small spider choose just this moment to go for a predawn amble across my cheek? Weighty questions indeed. And then, just as the tickling on my cheek was reaching unbearable proportions, the runt reached across the table and undid the briefcase. He pulled out a small bag and dropped it in front of the Pitbull. I felt Kiffo's hand tighten on my arm. The Pitbull reached out and for one fleeting moment I caught a glimpse of white powder before she took the bag and shoved it in her coat pocket. Yet more questions raced through my mind. Could the contents of the bag really be drugs? Could we really be witnessing what is known in all the best movies as a drop? Could this really be a sneeze building at the back of my nose?

  At least I got the answer to the last question. It was. And it was one of those unstoppable ones, the kind that if you try to contain it with your hand or something, it'll blow the back of your head off. I have to confess that when it arrived, it did so with maximum decibels. I don't know who was most surprised: me, Kiffo, the spider or the trio inside the hall. At least I had about one-tenth of a second's warning. For Kiffo, it must have been like a shotgun going off in his ear. He leaped about three yards in the air, his face twisted into an expression that, under other circumstances, would have been quite comical, and the whole flimsy structure we were standing on collapsed in a crash of cascading plastic.

  “Sorry,” I said, after we had landed in a tangle on the ground. Kiffo turned a disbelieving face in my direction.

  “Better out than in,” I added.

  Maybe he would have hit me. I wouldn't have blamed him. There wasn't a chance, though. We heard a startled gasp, the unmistakable sound of a door being opened hurriedly, a large dog tearing at the ground with its claws and the rattle of a chain clasp being released. Slasher had been building up a fair bit of momentum while on the leash. Like one of those old windup cars. You'd rev the wheels against the floor and when you released it, the car would zoom off at about two hundred miles per hour and smash your mum's prize vase in the corner of the living room. Well, old Slash was clearly a bit like that. We could hear the thud of giant paws crashing against the ground. It sounded like a Sherman tank was coming toward us.

  “Run!” yelled Kiffo, a little unnecessarily. I already had a twenty-yard head start on him.

  Have you ever seen those films where they use a handheld camera during action sequences? Everything jumps around and all you can hear is the sound of heavy breathing? Think of that and you will get some idea of the next few minutes. I had never run so fast. The only thing that crossed
my mind was whether it was possible to get whiplash in the mammaries. Head up, arms and legs pumping. I'd have amazed my phys ed teacher. If an athletics scout had been around, I'd probably have made the national squad for the one hundred meters. But whatever I did, I couldn't shake the dog. I could hear it pounding along behind me, the sound of its harsh breathing getting closer by the second. I had no idea what had happened to Kiffo. Under the circumstances, I could only worry about myself.

  Just when I felt that the damn thing was about to clasp its yellowing teeth around my ankle, I did a sort of sideways leap over a low fence bordering someone's property. The dog attempted to change direction too, and I heard it smash into the metal chain-link. I had an image of its face being squeezed into about six separate diamond shapes—you know, like in those cartoons where the cat gets sliced up into segments. It gave me a few precious seconds, though. I ran straight across the yard, dodging the odd palm tree that suddenly loomed up at me in the dark. It wasn't enough. Old Slasher had obviously had lessons in fence hurdling because all too soon I could hear the sound of his breathing closing in again. He sounded pissed off as well. Trust me, you can tell these things when you are being pursued by a creature whose sole raison d'être is to supplement its normal diet with human rump steak.

  Even a massive burst of adrenaline wears off pretty quickly. I was tiring and I knew it. Just when I felt that it was all over, that, frankly, I couldn't be bothered anymore, a sort of miracle happened. One moment I was running over grass and the next a dark mass appeared at my feet. Before I had time to even think about it, I jumped and cleared an in-ground spa by about two yards. Slasher wasn't quite so lucky, though. I could hear a huge splash as he dived straight in. Must have been quite a surprise. One moment he's got the scent of blood in his nostrils and the next he's doing the breaststroke. Mind you, the size and sheer bulk of the hound might have drained the pool, for all I knew.

  For a while, though, I had clear space behind me. I summoned the last of my fading strength and made for the fence at the rear of the yard. This fence was much higher. Perhaps the security-conscious owners had decided that if they could only afford decent perimeter fencing on one side, they'd put it at the back. This was one serious fence.

  I threw myself at it and scrambled up the chain-link. Even with my momentum I was still a ways from the top and I had to scrabble with my feet for purchase. Then I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a very wet, seriously pissed-off dog making a final lunge for its quarry. I guess it thought that it was game over. There I was with my arse wriggling at a tempting and achievable height. I could feel it launching itself like an Exocet missile.

  It was then that I felt a strong hand grip my wrist and pull me forcefully up the fence. I had no time to register what was going on before a sharp pain shot through my left foot. Slasher had finally made contact. Bear in mind that this was one heavy dog. Remember also that I'm hanging from a chain-link fence with this dog attached to me like a plumb line. Looking up, I could see Kiffo's face, red with strain as he tried to lift me to safety. I knew what it was like to be the rope in the middle of a tug-of-war. For a while, I thought Slasher would win. The veins were standing out in Kiffo's neck like sausages. The next moment my shoe came loose and the dog plummeted to the ground with a satisfying thud. The weight gone from my leg, I soared over the top of the fence, adding high-jump expertise to my newfound sprinting talent.

  Kiffo and I lay in a heap on the other side of the fence. Slasher, enraged beyond endurance, threw himself at the links. I took a good look into his eyes. Believe me, he was not in a charitable mood. This was not a dog that was inclined to forgive and forget. But he was also a powerless dog. The fence was too high.

  Kiffo and I scrambled to our feet and took off into the darkness. We had no idea if there was a hole somewhere that Slasher could slink through, or if the owners of the property, woken by the hellish racket that the dog was now making, would not appear with sawn-off shotguns. Anyway, we needed to be as far away from there as possible.

  Twenty minutes later, we arrived at my house. It was only then that I realized how badly my foot was hurting. Kiffo and I didn't talk much. We were both too exhausted to spend any time with words. He just loped off into the darkness and I let myself in. Luckily, the Fridge was asleep. I had left the house via my bedroom window at about nine-thirty that evening and she had obviously found no reason to disturb what she must have thought was her sleeping daughter.

  I bathed my foot in antiseptic and put some Band-Aids on it. I had read somewhere that a dog bite carried all sorts of nasty germs, that you should get a rabies shot, but under the circumstances, I decided to trust to luck. My foot wasn't as badly cut as I had thought at first. It would probably swell and bruise, but apart from one rather nasty puncture mark, I had gotten off lightly.

  The only problem was my shoe. Slasher still had it. A red Converse. Distinctive. Physical evidence linking me to the scene of the crime. But I was too tired to worry about it. I put its mate securely in the bottom of my wardrobe, sank into bed without bothering to shower and was instantly submerged in a dreamless sleep.

  Year 6, First Term

  You wait for the fist to land but nothing happens. You open your eyes. The boy's hand is still cocked, but is covered by another. The fat boy's head is turned to one side, surprise, like a stain, over his plump features. He looks at the other boy—a boy with red hair and cold eyes. They stand for a while, staring, sizing each other up, hands locked together in unlikely intimacy. The red-haired boy is smaller by far, yet he seems big somehow. The silence is like a tight thread.

  “Leave her alone,” says the boy with red hair.

  His voice is so calm it scares you more than the fist poised above you. The heavy boy licks his lips nervously. He is weighing his chances. But it's not the physical threat. The two are hopelessly mismatched in terms of weight and physique. It's in the eyes. The sense that body size is unimportant compared to strength of will. His eyes slide away as if looking for escape. Finally, he shrugs the restraining hand away.

  “Ah, she's not worth it, anyway,” he says, and walks off. He seems smaller somehow. You look at the red-haired boy.

  “Thanks,” you say.

  The boy looks at you and he is difficult to read.

  “Fuck off,” he says, without malice.

  Chapter 11

  Cinderella complex

  By the morning, my foot had swollen to the size of a watermelon. I woke up and the first thing I was aware of was a pulsing pain, as if someone was rhythmically beating the sole of my foot with a large piece of bamboo. I carefully removed the bedsheet. To be honest, I was a bit worried that my whole leg had dropped off in the middle of the night and that I was suffering from those phantom pains that amputees experience. When I saw my foot, I actually wished it had dropped off. Hanging from the end of my ankle was a bruised pulp, like a gigantic and overripe plum. It was as if someone had carefully inflated a very large cane toad, spray-painted it inexpertly with the primary colors and then attached it with liquid nails to the end of my leg. It was a mess.

  I tried walking. That was fine until I put weight on it and the bolt of pain threatened to lift my entire brainpan from the cerebral cortex. So I tried favoring my right foot. That was okay for a while. With practice, I developed a shuffling gait that made me look like an extra in a B-grade zombie movie. Or I could have put a hump on my back and I would have been a dead ringer for Quasimodo.

  Next problem. The obvious thing would have been for me to take the day off school. That would have been easy. I could hear the Fridge downstairs making coffee and coughing over the first cigarette of the day. All it required was a halfway convincing display of stomach pains, the odd heartrending groan and I would have been home and dry. The trouble was I wanted to go to school. I wanted to talk to Kiffo. We had shared an adventure and there is nothing worse than not being able to replay all the details with someone who had been through it with you. The other thing was I wanted to see the reaction
of Miss Payne. I couldn't swear that she hadn't seen me and Kiffo, that she couldn't positively identify us, but somehow I doubted it. I felt convinced things had happened so quickly that she might have had her suspicions about the phantom sneezer and the target of Slasher's blood-lust, but that she couldn't be entirely sure. It gave me a curious tingle of anticipation to think she could be teaching me, thinking I was the prime suspect, but being unable to prove it. I wanted to be like one of those movie criminals who sneer derisively at the cops because they know that the evidence won't stand up in court. I wanted to say to her, “Listen, bud, either you charge me or I'm out of here.” I wanted to see her frustration and hear her say, “Okay, Harrison, you're free to go, but don't leave town.”

  It was a battle. On the one hand, I could barely walk. On the other, I was rigid with anticipation. I decided on a cold shower. For about ten minutes, I let the spray play over my injured foot, but it didn't do much good. It still looked like a diseased pig's stomach. After I dried myself off, I rummaged around in the bottom of my wardrobe until I found them. A pair of my dad's running shoes. They were unbelievably hideous—all piping and white canvas, the sort of thing that might have been in fashion in the mid-eighties but were now a testimony to bad taste. God knows why I had kept them. Perhaps, when I was younger, I had had fond ideas of clutching them to my chest in bed and sobbing over his desertion. I couldn't remember now. But they were the only items of footwear in the entire house that could cage the swollen bladder of my foot.