Off the Record

by Craig Sherborne

  ‘It’s wrong you got nosepicked, Words. But it happens. We’re not angels in this game. And would you really want the competition to know you let that happen? Fact is, I’m working for the other side,’ she said. ‘Streetmouth’s put me on a retainer. I’m doing PR for this infanticide yarn. You’re on my list to tip off and get coverage.’ She laughed with chesty rasps. ‘That Katie Brooks girl, she wants jail time. She’s crazy. Not crazy so much as—I’ve never seen more ambition. She’s going places.’

  Mai came in and muttered something to Ryan. I hung up on Peeko and Ryan looked frightened. He said sorry but he and Mai had disobeyed orders.

  ‘We went onto streetmouth. You’ll want to see this, Words.’

  I followed them out to Mai’s computer and there they were, Katie and The Cat, railing against court injustice. They cut to Kelli telling her tale of the killing. Then back to Katie in tears, for real or just acting, you couldn’t tell. Would have been acting. Then Kelli again, pleading for mercy from the judges: ‘Jade’s my reason for living. Just to touch her face again and explain her mum was sick and feels such shame.’

  As she spoke, up came footage of the shrine room and doctors’ documents, pages being turned by The Cat. ‘So much supporting evidence,’ he said. ‘What more can the judges need, unless they’re callous and wilfully ignorant of science and decency.’

  ‘We’ll probably go to jail for reporting this story. We will not back down,’ crying Katie said, taking her glasses off to rub her eyes clear. ‘It should be our right to report on the court of hearts. Not gagged by ignorant judges who wield their power behind closed doors.

  ‘We have here one of our city’s most respected clergymen. I’d like to call to the camera Faithflock’s Pastor Ezekiel Shaw.’

  I could not watch any longer. ‘Turn that crap off!’ I yelled. ‘Court of Hearts. They even stole my Court of Hearts. They even got their fucking grammar right.’

  *

  On the radio it was the third story after a cruise-ship sinking and a migrant riot in Germany. By the evening it was the lead story on TV.

  Ollie rang, confused. ‘Isn’t that your story, Dad? Doesn’t Katie Brooks work for you? Mum says she does. We met her at your office.’

  Oh, the hubris! A man tricked and defeated. Mark me down as a fool, world. Nosepicked. At my age. By mere children, not by pros.

  I took a deep breath to think within. I began to save face. ‘I dumped the story. Had a smell to it. Not worth going to jail for, son. Katie and her boyfriend want to run off and do it, that’s at their peril.

  ‘I think the law’s been soft on Kelli. If I ran a story it would be along those lines. No mother who kills her baby should have access to her living child. She should be in jail and made to have her tubes tied. You tell your mum that.

  ‘All this heart-on-sleeve nonsense from doctors and experts. It almost seduced me. If I killed a baby I’d expect to get life. Not living in a nice house with my mother’s cooking and my dad doting on me.

  ‘I have to be responsible in my position. I feel sorry for Kelli, don’t get me wrong. But I do not advocate for killers.’

  I told Ryan and Mai infanticide was wrong and should be punished not forgiven. That was pry’s official angle on the issue now. I would not tolerate any suggestion that I ever supported Kelli. When Pockets returned next week I would say the same to him.

  ‘Have I made myself clear?’

  Yes.

  ‘In fact, I’m glad this episode happened. It exposed Katie and The Cat for what they are: nosepickers. We don’t want people of that ilk working here.’

  Those nosepickers were arrested but didn’t last one night. They spent five hours in the Supreme Court cooler and The Cat became claustrophobic and needed a doctor. He apologised to the court for his misguided idealism and Katie did the same a few hours later. For all her dead glitter she wanted to be home in her bed. Wanted her pyjamas and hot chocolate. She wanted her mum. The judge guffawed at that pitiful irony. Called her venal, a dilettante, self-serving and out of her league.

  I wrote an opinion piece mocking them—their childish disregard for the law. Their middle-class softness. Amateurs. Cowards. Buffoons. When you’re trying to make a name for yourself don’t suck your thumb at the first sign of trouble.

  I had a spring in my step again and a spring in each sentence.

  Then Emma rang in a complaining whine. Ollie had received his first ever B for English.

  ‘Great news,’ I said. ‘Next parent and teacher night why not push Mr Oxford for As?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  I did back down but as usual couldn’t help jibing: ‘If you say so, Emma. I’m sure mother knows best.’

  There was a bank siege at Docklands. Enough dwelling on my personal life, I said to her—I had work to do.

  34

  I was last out of the office that night. My bank siege was written. A good bank siege. A shootout. Security guard dying of his wounds. I was walking to my vehicle not even thinking of a danger. I was thinking of what Emma would do when the papers were served on her. Don’t think about that, I said to me. I closed my eyes and shook the vision from my head: her crying and hating me, abusing me to Ollie. Were we too far gone to reconcile the marriage? Of course we were. Best get it over with. Can’t we do it gently? No, be hard with this. Be strong. A year, two years you’ll have fetched up vitalised. Young lady on your arm at the Melbourne Cup or the tennis. Yes, you’ll miss your house, Words. Can you transplant hibiscus? A whole garden of them? Hope property prices stay up and we get top dollar at auction.

  Someone was following me into the car-park darkness. I was talking to myself as loudly as conversing.

  He stepped out from a blind spot and yelled, ‘You arsehole!’ I spun around and stumbled. Danny O’Bough, fists clenched. ‘You piece of shit.’

  ‘Steady, Danny.’

  He sprang. He punched me, flush on the temple. Followed up on my jaw. I fell. My hearing was gone, just for a moment. Ears ringing, sight blurry. Ears ringing, sight clearing. The ringing stopping.

  O’Bough kicked me. My stomach. Ribs. I couldn’t catch breath. He drove my face into the concrete. A tooth loose on my tongue. Blood taste. My nose bubbling blood. No pain. Not yet.

  ‘This is for Kelli. I don’t care what cops do to me. She’s in hospital, you total piece of shit. Smashed a mirror and harmed herself with the glass. Your fault. Your lies. Your whole lying mob. You piece of filth, writing my daughter should never see Jade again. You turned on her.’

  I swung my elbow back at him but he punched my head. Shoved my face down again.

  Then he was gone. I rolled over and spat a tooth onto my chest. My lips and chin were slimy with blood.

  ‘Help,’ I whimpered. I had to squeeze the word out. ‘Help.’ Now pain as if my lungs were splitting. I passed out.

  I woke in an ambulance. Blue rubber hands wiping my face. A choking neck brace. I mouthed, ‘Very sore.’

  I love the pipe they let you suck—morphine? My nose was broken, tooth missing, cracked ribs: they were nothing to me sucking on that peace pipe as if lying beneath heavy blankets on a freezing night, drifting, sleeping. Dreaming with my eyes open, the real world carrying on above. A doctor, two nurses. Being fussed over, spoken to like a loved child. No responsibilities.

  ‘Am I going to die?’ I whispered.

  ‘No. You’re not going to die. We’re taking scans,’ said the nurse. ‘You’ve been in the wars, sweetie. Lie still.’

  They kept asking how my injuries happened. I was not sufficiently seduced by the opiates to give in to honesty. I’ve trained my wits to stay sober. Years of second-guessing and guardedness. Years of preparation for an evening like this where I weigh the situation and what’s best for me. I know I’ve had unfortunate lapses but not lying in that hospital on a rattling gurney.

  To be sure, O’Bough had gifted me a first-person gem: a man of my station assaulted for his courage. For expres
sing his opinion on a murderous mother. For trying to protect an innocent toddler. Under normal circumstances I’d arise a journo king. Problem was the ugly nosepicking incident. There was too much risk someone would raise it if I blew my trumpet. Peeko, for instance. Rivals, as she herself said. Gullible Callum Smith was nosepicked. Who’d want him working for them, the clown?

  No, I could not risk the humiliation. Better to say nothing. Say, ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  That’s what I told the doctors and police.

  My mouth fat with swelling. Coughing red phlegm.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I dribbled. ‘Didn’t see. I think it was youths. Gang of them. Hoodies and trackpants.’

  They asked, ‘Who shall we call—your next of kin?’

  I said to call Emma. Then I said no. On the one hand I’d like to watch her giving sympathy. On the other she knows my fakes too well. She’d work out what had happened. She might say that to doctors. Police might resume their questioning. They’re not fools, those detectives. They’d piece this together. I’d be a laughing stock of my occupation. They’d name the nosepick after me: ‘The Wordsmith–O’Bough.’

  ‘Call no one,’ I said. ‘Let me sleep. I’m too tired.’

  35

  ‘Jesus,’ I coughed, waking to a face staring down at me. It was God’s Brylcreemed representative from the Faithflock congregation, Pastor Shaw. Eyes twice the normal size in his spectacles’ thick lenses. His name on a badge on his thin blue tie. A lanyard with a swinging tag: Counsellor.

  Blasphemy is wasted on Christians. It’s all their forgiveness babble, their turn the other cheek. I swore Jesus again and then Jesus fucking Christ. No reaction. He blinked, a condescending smile. He placed his hand on my shoulder like a faith healer, closing his eyes to pray. He advised me to save my breath so my battered ribs would mend faster. We all have spooky nightmares where we think we’ve met ghosts. This was such a dream surely, or so went my reasoning.

  It was not a dream. It was him. I was not in a position to defend myself against his ministrations. I had a fleeting fear of a vengeful ritual: his sect had tracked me down determined to make me suffer until I converted.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I coughed. ‘What are you going to do to me? Help. Nurse…’

  He shushed me. ‘Callum, stay calm.’

  He kept shushing me. I did not mind nurses doing it. But I did not like this shushing. His superior tone. I was not a disobedient teenager.

  ‘Danny O’Bough contacted me, Callum. He was very distressed after watching your two protégés on that streetmouth video, with me standing behind them as an endorsement. “It all began with Callum Smith,” he said. He confided what he’d done to you in that car park. An eye for an eye, if you’ll allow me to be biblical. I counsel in this hospital as well as in others. It was not difficult to find where you’d been taken. Both Danny and I feel betrayed and used. But that is the way of the world and my reaction is different from Danny’s. My reaction is to feel sorry for you. And also to harbour hope that you’ll change.’

  ‘What do you want to do to me? Nurse!’

  ‘I don’t intend doing anything except pray for you.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, spare me.’

  ‘And show you this.’

  He waved for someone to enter the ward. A woman. I knew her. Alice, the grotesque creature from the stoning. Tidied up in a pink frock, her hair plaited. No longer coated in grime as I’d first seen her but human-looking as one does when showered. A face pallid with feminine powders. Her mouth still smiled with rotten teeth but was rimmed with purple lipstick.

  ‘You see, Callum. Even out of the depths of your wrongdoing you end up doing a good deed for someone. Inadvertently, I admit. But the Lord doesn’t mind as long as we get results. Say hello and thank you to Callum, Alice. For leading you out of the gutter and into our guidance. Say thank you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to me. ‘God bless you. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get you in the end, Callum Smith,’ grinned the pastor.

  I knew it. He was making a move on my soul. I’d be a prized scalp, an impenitent heathen. I pressed the bed-button. Another press. Nurse. Nurse.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll get you in the end. You’re a project. I do believe you’ve been sent to me by God as a project.’

  A nurse arrived.

  ‘Can you get this crazy fucking preacher away from me.’

  ‘Not good language for use around the pastor.’

  She was Filipino or Korean, I can never tell which. She bowed to him and he called her Crystal. Crystal, he informed me, was a Faithflock regular.

  ‘Lovely voice when she’s singing. Always sits in the front pew.’

  She told me not to buzz the buzzer unless it was serious. Buzzers weren’t there to play with any more than Pastor Shaw was there to be insulted.

  ‘Out of the gutter and into our guidance. You are next, Callum. We shall make sure of it. We will be watching you. We have many eyes. We will not let you go without a fight.’

  He said fight using a soft-menace tone. The kind of tone I’m expert at. He said it with a small black Bible drawn from his shirt pocket. He smacked the Bible against my battered ribs. The force of the blow went beyond the reach of opiates. So fierce a sting and burning that I lost consciousness.

  In a hospital bed, a victim of violence. No one believed me: The medication’s befuddling you, they said. Pastor Shaw was such a nice individual. People like him do a good turn and people like me throw it back in their face. I discharged myself next morning and went home, locked the doors. Many eyes, he said. I drew the blinds. A project, he said. Amounts to stalking. The kind of thing I’d write about if not for the nosepick embarrassment.

  I had a meeting arranged with my Cobblestone lady lawyer but had to cancel it given my injuries. I called up Ryan Scullen and told him to close pry until tomorrow.

  ‘I’ve had a run-in with a crime gang. I’ll write about it when I’m well.’

  My missing tooth was at the front beside a canine. My tongue could poke through. How much would a plate cost or a screw-in? You can’t smile in my business with a missing-tooth greeting. A rat with a gold tooth is the smile used most often. A rat with a tooth missing? Unthinkable.

  My dentist said he couldn’t see me for two days.

  Two days with my mouth shut. I could manage it.

  I fell asleep, awoke in agony, swallowed painkillers with a glass of vodka. I slept again, then repeated the painkiller process. My bowels were gummed up. I sat on the toilet till bleeding—not the black blood of cancer, the bright stuff of haemorrhoids. I peeped through the blinds because he’d given me the creeps—Pastor Shaw with his Many eyes and You’re a Project talk. No one on earth would feel settled with the prospect of being followed. Followed and watched by the eyes of God’s freaks intent on adding to his numbers and his treasury.

  I would have taken his talk as nothing but harmless bluff except the O’Bough bashing and that Bible in the ribs had put the wind up me. The wind made my neck hairs prickle. The chill. I comforted myself that that was the pastor’s intention: he might bully weaker targets and get away with it but not Callum Smith. I’d been stood over by the best of them: murderers, millionaires, cops, con men and thieves. The trouble with God’s freaks is that they serve a higher power. Your average criminal serves his wallet and addictions. The Pastor Shaws of this planet had no rational limits.

  I was forced to go outside, I had to buy something soft for lunch. Soup from the supermarket so I wouldn’t have to chew. I shaved with my electric razor, the whiskers on my bruises getting a light skim, an uneven spruce. I locked my door but locks and doors had skeleton keys to open them. The wind up me did not trust a flimsy lock. I stuck a strip of sellotape from door frame to door. If anyone entered the sellotape would warn me.

  I walked keeping a distance from people in front and behind. What was that blue car doing slowing, not turning just slowing? I walked past it, quickened pace and glanced. Male, fifty, suit and tie. Had the
car broken down? Or was he watching?

  Female on the opposite footpath. Thirty. She was watching me. Was it my limping she watched or was she following?

  The girl at the checkout. The liquor-store Indian. The old man selling war-veteran raffle tickets. They all stared too much. The old man said it was my bruises. Was he lying?

  I had to get off the street, it was safer at home. The sellotape across the door was still stuck. I was inside, I was safe. I was exhausted.

  The sudden ringing of my phone made me flinch and wrench my rib bones.

  ‘Dad, I’m in trouble.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘I’m getting bad marks again. Mr Gumm’s been sacked. I’m back to failing.’

  Mr Oxford had put the blame on me, he said. For pressuring him into tricking the boy’s marks up and encouraging other teachers to do the same. ‘Mr Gumm told the headmaster it was your fault. You were threatening to ruin St George’s name with a story.’

  I told Ollie to renounce such accusations. Mr Oxford had got his wires crossed.

  ‘I suggested he give you confidence, that’s all. If he saw that as threatening then that’s his problem. I’ll have a word to this headmaster. I’ll set him straight.’

  That’s when Emma took over the handset.

  ‘You will not do any such thing,’ she commanded. ‘You will not interfere any more. You’ve done enough damage with your nasty games. I’m going to apologise to the headmaster for your behaviour. I’m going to find a different school for Ollie. One that helps his learning problems in a proper and honest way.’

  ‘Please, I’m not well at the moment. I’m not up to your arguing.’

  ‘Of course you’re not. How convenient.’

  ‘I do not need your sarcasm. I’m not faking…’

  She’d hung up before the sentence ended.

  I rang her back immediately but she said, ‘Callum, please, don’t.’

  I asked her to let me come visit to prove my injuries.

  She said she and Ollie were the injured ones. So was anyone who ever knew me.