Blood River

by Tony Cavanaugh

  And, as he slept, oblivious to the anger within his partner Lara, on the other side of the city, of the horror about to unfurl at Jen’s house in Ascot, he remembered being a kid and the sounds of bombs.

  Silent bombs. Doodlebugs.

  Bombs that were dropped from a German plane way above the streets of England in what became known as The Blitz. The doodlebug was an effective incendiary not in that it caused catastrophe as buildings tumbled into rubble and debris and families died into smithereens in their sleep, but because it had a unique sound.

  Or, in fact, two unique sounds: the first was a screeching high-pitched shrill as the bomb fell towards the earth, sounding its approach, awakening the people below, readying them for destruction wherever this one may fall and the next sound was of silence.

  Ten or fifteen seconds before the bomb hit it was like it had gone away. And then: bam. With the silence came slow moments of terror. Which is why Billy liked to listen to the rain on the tin roof, why he liked to live in the raucous suburb of West End with its fights and screaming domestics up and down the main street, up into his street. Noise makes him content. Silence terrifies him.

  After a few weeks of this shrill and then silent terror, his ma packed him off into the countryside. The government had responded to the Blitz by informing parents there was a scheme where they could send their kids, under the age of eleven, having registered them at the local council office and then taken them down to the local railway station whereupon they would be trained to Suffolk or wherever, in the country, where it was safe from the doodlebugs.

  He waved goodbye to his ma and then after a bit of sleep and a rollicking on the train, he got to Nottingham (like the Sherriff) and they all trooped onto the platform and stood in single file and this geezer said, ‘Follow me’ and they did, being taken to a local town hall. Where they all sat on the floor in a circle and after some time local villagers, dressed in good clothes, came in and stared at them and walked around the kids and said, ‘I’ll take her’ and ‘I’ll take him’, and Billy was always the last, the very last to get chosen.

  Don’t Leave Me

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF BRISBANE, UP ON ASCOT HILL, WHERE Jen, Anthea and their mum lived in the house with big windows, soft Moroccan carpets and Indigenous artworks, in the still-dark of pre-dawn, Jen lay awake. She could hear the soft snoring of her sixteen-year-old sister through the wall and vowed to tease her, yet again, when they got up.

  In the far distance Jen thought she could hear a helicopter.

  Through the other wall, where her mum lay, she could hear the first stirrings. Megan had a routine.

  Every morning Megan would wake up at four in the darkness and reach across to touch her husband Hugh, but for the past sixteen months it had been a cold and empty space and she would remind herself: oh, yes, that’s right, he is in Sydney with that Serbian girl he pretends not to be with, and she (Megan) would hold herself, knees scrunched up into her chest and try not to get emotional and reach out to the pill box and slip a Xanax into her with a little tonic water, a bottle of which she always kept by her side, and slumber back to sleep, but of late, the Xanax wasn’t really helping as it used to and a friend had told her about lithium and I might try some of that, she thought, as she then slowly climbed out of bed and padded across the floor of the bedroom, softly so as not to wake up the girls, into the corridor, turning on all the lights as she was afraid of the dark and gently, lest she tumble and fall, step down the stairs and into the kitchen where she would put on the kettle to make some Earl Grey tea (with just a splash of vodka) and, as it was rumbling, the kettle, to a boil, she would open the side door and artfully step out into the little laneway and down to the front of the house where there was a lawn with plants and shrubs, the names of which she could never recall, and lean down to pick up the morning newspaper which she loved to unfurl and read, with her tea and vodka in the slow approach of dawn, at the little table in the kitchen, not the dining room table where she and Hugh would host dinner parties, back when they were a couple, before he fell in love with the Serb girl and she did this, now, this morning. Sometimes she would have some toast as she did this, sometimes not. She would always go to the social pages to see who was getting married, that she would do first, go straight to the back without nary a look at the headlines on the front page but this day, this morning, before dawn and light and the sound of birds awakening, as she prepared to read the social pages with her vodka and toast to come, she noticed, on the front page, as she was actually turning it, she noticed an indistinct but clear-enough photo of her daughter.

  And the headline, emblazoned across the front page:

  IS THE SLAYER A SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL?

  —

  WHEREUPON THERE WAS a darkness falling across her vision, searing, this darkness, like black ink in water, into her skull, but she could still make out the kitchen and she could still feel her hands as she got out of the chair and steadied herself on the surface of the table as she walked to the cupboard and reached out for the vodka, as she unscrewed the lid again and swilled from the bottle; actually, not swilled. Sculled. Half of the bottle in one full stream of gulps.

  As the cold flow of booze iced down her throat into a warm pool in her tummy, as she began, in her mind, to deal with this, as the darkness began to lift and her faculties of logic and thought returned, the phone went off. She reached to answer it, thinking: did I hear the phone ringing last night, like in the middle of the night? and thinking: who would be calling me at this hour, before dawn?

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Megan White?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh hi. My name is Spencer Christianson from the Courier Mail and I’d like to ask you about the story in today’s paper.’

  She hung up on him. The phone rang almost straight away, again.

  ‘Is that Missus White?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, this is Clarissa Rees from the BBC. I am calling you from London. Can I speak to you or your daughter, Jen, about the story in today’s newspapers?’

  She hung up.

  The phone rang again. She pulled out the connection from its socket.

  And that’s about when a flood of brilliant white light illuminated the front lounge room, from outside, like there was an alien spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind out the front and she ran to the front room to see four mobile TV broadcasting units, vans with lights and antennas and journalists with microphones being filmed and more vans driving up to join them and then pounding on the front door with a cacophony of ‘Missus White!’ ‘Jen!’ ‘Open the door!’ ‘We have questions for you!’ ‘Jen, are you The Slayer?’

  And then: the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter coming in closer to hover above the house and another beam of white light, this time from above and now her Blackberry is going off and –

  And –

  I lay in bed listening to all of this, now hugging Anthea.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t,’ she said, and held me tighter.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ she said.

  But I could not.

  PART III

  LIFE IS NOT LIFE

  God gave Moses the rainbow sign

  No more water, but fire next time

  Pharaoh’s army got drownded

  Oh Mary don’t you weep

  Mary wore three links of chain

  Every link was freedom’s name

  Pharaoh’s army got drownded

  Oh Mary don’t you weep

  Wacol

  2015

  DISPATCHES

  (I)

  IT’S FOUR IN THE MORNING. I’M WRITING TO YOU FROM THE Wacol Women’s Prison in Brisbane, my home for the past fifteen years. In the previous century, and the one before that, women and men, found guilty of any crime which required incarceration, were sent to the notorious Boggo Road Gaol. A brutal penitentiary erected in the ashes of the convict days, stone and bashings, whips and subjugati
on.

  My trial was fast-tracked through the system due to the Queensland Attorney-General responding to what he called ‘community fears’. He passed special legislation to ensure I could be brought before a judge and jury in a ‘timely manner’. They can do that, you know. A year ago, in 2014, the Victorian government brought in special and unique legislation to make sure that mass killer Julian Knight would stay behind bars for the rest of his life. Maybe they were inspired by the Jen White Queensland law.

  Even though they fast-tracked it, the trial was delayed until after my eighteenth birthday so I would be up there in the box in the courtroom as an adult.

  Thanks for that, guys. Thanks, Mister Attorney-General.

  —

  ‘IT’S REALLY QUITE nice,’ said an officer of the court as he led me to the van that would transport me across the city, down south, to Wacol, where I would be stripped naked and showered with jets of hot and cold water and given the prison greens – all the while being told not to talk back, not to look at anyone, not to speak unless spoken to, not to have an opinion, not to smile, not to laugh, not to pretend you are innocent (Bitch, you fuckin’ tell me you’re innocent and I will fucking bash your brains in because I have been hearing that shit from bitches like you from the moment I walked in here). But I was told I could make a phone call, though only one, and I could talk to a counsellor. And then it was here’s your ID card and your cell.

  —

  DAD HAD COME back from Sydney and left the Serb on her bed in Lane Cove, scrolling around with his credit cards, while mum appropriated the world of victim, but only for a little while – it didn’t resonate with the luncheon set. Instead, it morphed into the psycho-speak of nature versus nurture. It wasn’t her fault; I was born evil. Go read Robert Hare. Well, Hugh and I did all that we could and more, in providing her with the best, most loving environment a girl could wish for. I mean, look at the children in Somalia. Do those little girls grow up to be killers?

  These were the dwindling conversations with the ever-decreasing set of mum’s friends, in order for her to cling to a sense of meaning when not, in public, proclaiming my innocence and how outrageous it was that I, a mere teenage girl with a brilliant future, had been so badly treated by a raft of corrupt police.

  DISPATCHES

  (II)

  THEY CAME IN waves.

  Wave One.

  Dad

  By the time we were used to an encampment of press in the street and the anger of the neighbours, none of whom I liked anyway, we had got into a routine of siege. Do not exit the house, do not open the curtains, do not answer the phone … do not, do not, do not.

  For a week or two we just ate all the dried and canned food in the pantry. Then, when that was all gone, mum called up one of her friends and asked them to go to the supermarket for us, and the friend came over late one night with a box of groceries and refused mum’s money. Then he left with a sideways look at The Slayer as I was reaching in to get some Doritos.

  —

  DAD CAME HOME.

  To great fanfare, as if we were all meant to welcome him, as if he had been away climbing Mount Everest instead of fucking Serbia. Mum spent two hours grooming herself with make-up and crimson lipstick and straightened hair and a discreet squeeze of Chanel No 5 and a too-short dress and, three drinks later, a hello and a kiss while Anthea and I stood back and watched as he juiced his way back into our lives as if nothing had happened.

  After the party died down and he had left the bedroom – where mum and him had fucked so loudly that Anthea and I had to go out the back and stare at the palm trees and talk about what sort of dogs we might get when we leave home – after the lunch that mum had worked on for two days when she heard he was returning (for me?) for her, in an ‘all is forgiven’ and ‘I have left Serbia’ flourish (you haven’t, you liar; Anthea and I know she has you in her tight grip, her flowing dyed red hair and extra-sized boobs, her fake smile, her fake everything but for one thing: your money), after his favourite – steak-and-kidney pie with mashed potatoes and the swish-fuck of red wine and a let’s-go-up-to-the-bedroom, huh? seductive smile – after all that, dad came down and dragged me out of palm-tree-staring reverie and said:

  ‘Hey kiddo, you wanna come inside?’

  No. But I did.

  I left Anthea scrabbling around the edge of the pool, scooping out leaves, dodging the rain, and I followed him inside, into the lounge room with its fat white Balinese couches and icons. I sat, and he sat opposite me and said:

  ‘So. This is pretty fucked, huh?’

  I nodded. There are no words, dad.

  He leaned forward and this is when – you know, there are big moments in life, and I have contemplated them through my years in Wacol, where you turn a corner, where you become you, a person, not the daughter or the girlfriend or the anything but just the you, and this was one of those moments, and I wonder how many of those moments are good, not bad – when he leaned forward and said:

  ‘You can tell me. Okay. Just you and me …’

  Don’t, dad, please don’t.

  Please.

  Please, dad –

  – just don’t.

  ‘Did you do it?’

  He asked.

  —

  WAVE TWO:

  The Raid

  Unlike what you see in the movies, the police who raided our house – about two hours after dad asked me if I had actually killed those three guys, whereupon I never spoke to him again, despite his entreaties – were polite. Hey, we’re only doing our job and can we come in and just go through everything and Jen, can we have your phone and your laptop and if you wouldn’t mind just going back downstairs in a minute and we promise we won’t make a mess in your bedroom, and we are the good guys and do you have a key for that filing cabinet and look, nothing to be distressed about, Jen, but we are going to strip your bed and take the sheets – yeah, you know, just a routine thing we have to do – and Roscoe! where’s the vacuum? Because Jen, nothing to be concerned about but we will be vacuuming the floor of your room, and can you take off your clothes for us? Thanks – Rhadika will be overseeing that; Rhadika! Can you come up and get Jen’s clothes? We need them, okay; where are you? Rhadika? Sorry Jen, she’s coming. Don’t move. Don’t do anything. Rad will help you take off the clothes. We’ll get them back to you. We just need to send them off for a bit of testing.

  Rad took off my clothes and bundled them, along with all my other clothes, into plastic zip bags without a word and left me in the bathroom. I sat there, on the side of the bathtub for an hour, maybe two, maybe three, as I listened to them ransack the house with the occasional distant shout of: ‘Has anyone found the flick-knife yet?’ And then finally I heard them leave, and there was a distant murmur from downstairs where I guess mum and dad had emerged and clinked some drink.

  When I came downstairs in my sister’s pyjamas and dressing gown, I noticed they were shaking. We were all shaking, although Anthea had vanished into a dark hole with her bedroom door firmly closed. Mum and dad were sitting on the couch staring at the floor and drinking vodka, and neither of them looked up at me, as I sat on the couch opposite and held my hands and also decided to stare at the floor, and after about twenty minutes I got up and said: ‘Night,’ even though it was only mid-afternoon and left them to their contemplation of how their oldest daughter had ruined, totally and completely, ruined their lives.

  The cops didn’t find the flick-knife because I actually had lost it, on the way home from school a few days before they turned up at the house that first time. Stabbing trees. And in the middle of an angry rant on the trunk of a ghost gum, one of my teachers drove by and I saw her out of the corner of my eye and fled, lest she see me with the knife because, you know, by then the knife had become a bit of an issue after I used it on the girls I hated and wanted to kill, as I sat in the office as the lady from the Seychelles talked to me about calm and surf and tranquillity.

  —

  I COULDN’T GO outside,
which is what I normally did when feeling depressed, because the front yard, beyond its low wooden fence, was hostage to news crews and TV camera vans, like from something you’d see in the movies – which made the neighbours even more gracious towards us. And it had begun to rain again, so the back yard was out unless I wanted to get drenched.

  Mum and dad talked about the rain a lot. When they weren’t staring at the carpet and dousing themselves with vodka, that’s what mum and dad talked about. The rain. A coming flood. A spill at the dam. A mass of water that would roar down the river until it hit the city and maybe submerge houses like it did in the 1970s. We lived on a hill with a view over the city and the river, so what did they care? It’s not like we were going to be submerged.

  My not-friends were still going to school but we, all of us, including Anthea, had just left the planet on a one-way ticket to a dreadful passivity of waiting for something to happen. For the police to make a move. And if they chose not to make a move, would they tell us? No. If the Director of Public Prosecutions (by this stage I knew this shit; I had spent the previous few days reading how the justice system worked) decided not to prosecute, then they – Detective Constable Lara and Detective Inspector William Waterson – sure as hell won’t be dropping over with cake and balloons. They’ll just move on to another homicide and keep us in suspended animation.

  But that would not happen. I might only have been seventeen but, and I really don’t want to sound vain and conceited, because I am not, but with that rabid media and now with the TV cameras on me, The Slayer, twenty-four-seven, there would be only one ending; I was smart enough to know that the public, voracious readers and watchers of my profile, could be sated in only one way. Arrest. Trial. A guilty verdict. No other outcome was possible.

  I bided my time, listening to the rain smash-smash onto the windows of my bedroom, reading Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Just waiting for the next knock on the door.