The Way It Is Now

by Garry Disher

  The kitchen was a mess of chipboard and scorch marks, and Charlie felt the pain of it. The shack in Menlo Beach was no mansion but it was better than this. The sooner they sold it and his mother had the money to rent a nicer place—by herself—the better.

  ‘Anyone home?’

  The dingy walls took his voice and gave nothing back. He crossed to the sink, downed a glass of water and peered through the greasy window at his mother and his brother, shoulder to shoulder at one of the garden tables from Tide-pool Street. Charlie watched for a moment, noting his mother’s bowed head and Liam’s jaw jutting as he laid things out for her, her hands clasped in his.

  Alerting them with a slam of the back door, Charlie took the concrete steps onto the dying grass and crossed to the table. His mother slipped her hands out of Liam’s and into her lap as if she’d not been engaged in secret business. Otherwise, her face lit up. ‘Charlie!’

  He dodged behind Liam, who was getting to his feet, and planted a kiss. ‘Mum.’

  Then the brothers faced each other, their affection landlocked. An agonising instant passed. Finally, a quick clasp and release, and Liam returned tensely to his chair. ‘You’ve been home?’

  Charlie avoided his gaze. ‘Yep.’

  ‘See Dad?’

  ‘He was there.’

  They could have entire conversations like this, fragments laden with history, tension mounting. Their mother knew that. She rested her fingers on Liam’s forearm until he deflated.

  Charlie said brightly, ‘I walked here, like an idiot. Took forever.’

  ‘Still,’ his mother said, ‘a lovely day for it. See anyone?’

  Another pitfall for Charlie. He said, ‘Mark. Noel,’ offhandedly, feeling rather than seeing renewed tightness in Liam.

  ‘That would have been a thrill for you,’ Liam said.

  The brothers shared their father’s physical grace, but where Charlie had thrown himself into games as a kid—thrown himself into winning and losing—Liam, the better athlete, simply didn’t care. He’d grow distracted and wander off or just not turn up. He was genuinely puzzled by the remonstrations of Mark Valente or their father, or whoever happened to be organising the beach cricket or footy that day. Vicious old homophobes, he called them now.

  Charlie sighed loudly. They all looked at the table, the grass and the back wall.

  He broke the impasse with a safe topic. ‘Looking forward to school going back?’

  His brother taught at a private school, his mother at a state school, and they groaned in unison. The summer break had passed too quickly. Soon it would be all feral kids, lesson plans, principals, parents from hell.

  There was another silence, but Liam was building up to something, shifting around in his seat. Finally he blurted, ‘Charlie, Mum’s been having problems with her lodger.’

  She touched his wrist quickly. ‘Oh, Liam, it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.’

  Liam swung around on her. ‘It doesn’t sound like nothing. It sounds like the guy’s a creep.’

  Charlie had never met Lambert but, watching his mother’s face, saw the truth of it. ‘Mum?’

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Okay, but how come he keeps his bike in the carport and you have to park in the street?’

  She tried to wave it off. ‘It’s nothing. The place is a rental—it’s not as if I own it. Not as if I have more rights than he does.’

  ‘You do, actually,’ Liam said. ‘The lease is in your name. He just rents a room from you.’

  ‘I don’t want to rock the boat.’

  Charlie turned towards her. ‘Why? You think he’d turn nasty?’

  ‘It’s just…’ She fell silent, looking for the next word.

  Charlie said, ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He works at a timber supply in Hastings.’

  ‘But his bike’s here.’

  ‘He gets a lift from a workmate.’

  Liam cut in, shooting Charlie a look: Can we get back on track, here? ‘Mum, he’s a creep and you’ve got your head in the sand about it.’

  ‘That’s not fair, Liam,’ she said, with some grit, and Charlie saw her spirit and her pain and her shame. Curiously, she shapeshifted then: she was not his mother but Rose Deravin, a woman separate from him, a woman slim and tired, who taught PE at Westernport Secondary College. Tan cargo pants, a white T-shirt and red toenails. Fine pale hair in an untidy knot. A strong, searching nose. Capable, attractive, and she saw him looking and there was defiance in her. It unsettled him.

  With a warning look for Liam, he said gently, ‘Tell us what bothers you about him, Mum.’

  ‘He’s just, I don’t know, a bit off.’

  ‘Has he, ah…’ Charlie felt himself blush. ‘Has he tried it on sexually?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Mum!’ Liam cut in. ‘What do you mean, not really?’

  ‘He usually watches junk TV all evening but one night there was an SBS documentary on the female orgasm’—she shifted in her chair—‘and he said he thought I might like to watch it with him. I said I was too busy. When I went out of the room, he turned the volume up.’

  ‘Mum!’

  Charlie kicked his brother under the table. ‘What else?’

  She shifted again, as if sorting through a list, and it came pouring out:

  ‘He’s inconsiderate. Leaves the toilet seat up—well, you boys always did that—but he’s not very careful, if you know what I mean. Dumps his dishes in the sink as if I’m supposed to do them. One day I found him cleaning some engine part at the kitchen table. We agreed to buy our own food, but he never has any—he keeps taking my eggs and bread and whatnot without asking. I always shut my door at night, but I hear him in the hallway sometimes, as if he’s just standing there, and one day I found him in my room, looking in my sewing box. He said he needed scissors but, you know…And he owes a month’s rent. I asked him about it, and he said, “You’re a teacher,” as if I’m supposed to carry him whenever he’s short of money.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Charlie.

  ‘But what can I do? It was hard enough finding someone to rent the room in the first place. Now I have to start all over again, and it could take weeks.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t afford it.’

  Blackbirds had been hopping around under the gnarled old pear tree, pecking at the fallen fruit. Now they began to squabble, a squall of bluster that bowled them all over the yard as the sun sat mildly in the sky.

  Charlie said, ‘Would it help if we talked to him?’

  ‘And say what?’ demanded Liam. ‘We get rid of the guy—that’s what would help.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ their mother said miserably.

  Yes, you do, Charlie thought. ‘I think you feel scared.’

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘Not a healthy way to live, Mum. We’ll help you get rid of him,’ Charlie said. He checked with Liam: ‘And help you with the rent until we find someone more suitable.’

  Liam nodded.

  Their mother worried the top joint of one thumb with the ball of the other. ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

  ‘You didn’t ask: we’re offering. When does he get home from work?’

  Her watch was loose on her thin wrist. She shook it into place, glanced and said, ‘Mid-afternoon.’

  It pained Charlie to see some kind of hope build in her as she looked at each of them. ‘Can you both be with me when I tell him? In case it gets awkward?’

  ‘We’ll do you one better,’ Liam said. ‘You drive over to see Grandma or Karen Wagoner for the afternoon. Charlie and I’ll pack up his things and when he gets home we’ll tell him he has to find somewhere else to live. You don’t have to face him at all.’

  She agonised. ‘What if he comes back when you’re not here?’

  Liam gave Charlie a look. ‘You keep a spare uniform in your car, right?’

  4

  LIAM DROVE CHARLIE to fetch his car and Charlie followed him back to Lo
ngstaff Street, where they emptied Shane Lambert’s room, stacking his belongings into cartons and a Kmart suitcase. Charlie expected a foetid bog, but Lambert was man who’d pared his life to the bone: few possessions and obsessive neatness. Decent quality clothing, a spare range of toiletries. No private papers but for an employment agreement with the timber merchant dated November 2019. A serious-looking Canon camera in a well-travelled case. Charlie couldn’t work the guy out. Jail time? A bit footloose, so he rented a mailbox somewhere? A creative streak—he liked to shoot sunsets, driftwood, faces on the street?

  They wheeled the motorbike out of the carport and onto the footpath, next to the cartons, then Charlie changed into his police uniform and they sat and waited. They barely talked; they never did, which would flummox Jess sometimes. ‘What is it with you two? You’re not strangers, you have common ground.’

  Some common ground. Not enough of it.

  Time passed. They consumed tea and cheese sandwiches and watched the street, deckchair canvas complaining under them, the veranda iron flexing as the sun poked in and out of banking clouds. This close to the farmland that trapped the town along the shoreline, there was little traffic. Longstaff was a stubby street. A handful of other tired weatherboards, one or two cramped new places trying to be townhouses and overreaching, and a nearly vacant block at the end, just a concrete slab and plumbing pipes, waiting for bills to be paid. A stillborn street.

  And that was it until a sun-faded white station wagon drew up at the front gate. The man in the passenger seat gazed at the boxes and the bike, then at the brothers on the veranda, and Charlie imagined him instructing the driver: ‘Stick around, I might need a hand with my stuff.’

  The car crept forward again and pulled into the kerb a few metres beyond the house. Charlie memorised the numberplate.

  The brothers stepped off the veranda and out onto the footpath, waiting as the motor shuddered and died and two men got out. The driver, a pudgy, anxious-looking man, closed his door softly, as if unwilling to disturb the air. The passenger gave his door a casual slam. Nodded and said, unhurriedly, ‘So she called the cops on me.’

  ‘I’m her son,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Great.’

  Charlie looked hard for bad faith but saw only a weary figure brushed in a fine layer of sawdust. Shorts, a work shirt and dirty, steel-capped boots. Short hair; work-abraded hands browned by the sun; one earring.

  Eyes flat, Lambert lifted the tailgate and told his mate, ‘Give us a hand,’ as he turned to the closest carton. The driver, soft, confused and unformed where Lambert was hard and economical, tripped over his own feet as he stepped onto the footpath, hand outstretched. ‘Kevin-Maberly-pleased-to-meet-you,’ he babbled, then stared helplessly at the cartons. Finally he bent to pick one up.

  There was a thrumming tension in Liam, as if he found Lambert’s polite, even manner disconcerting. He coughed. ‘Look, Shane—can I call you Shane?—I hope you understand, our mother feels it would be better if you found another place. It wasn’t working out.’

  Lambert paused. He seemed to stretch his spine to the sky, then sneezed explosively. ‘Sawdust.’ He continued bending, hoisting, stacking, a tidy dance that had his mate stumbling.

  ‘She’s prepared to overlook the rent,’ Liam continued. ‘And just to let you know, we’ve booked and paid for two nights at the motel in Hastings.’

  ‘Just to let me know,’ Lambert said, eyes dark, knitted. He grabbed the final carton and stowed it. He murmured to his mate, who glanced apprehensively at Charlie before getting behind the wheel. The car wouldn’t start, and then it did, pulling away from the kerb and performing a U-turn like a wallowing boat in the narrow street, trailing smoke. Lambert watched it go, shaking his head. He strapped on his helmet, mounted his Ducati and burbled off in his contained way. Seconds later the engine pitch altered as he reached the main road, a howl coming to them on the wind.

  Liam slumped. ‘Boy, am I glad that’s over.’

  Charlie deflated, too. But he felt stained, somehow. The way he’d postured in his police uniform—bullying behaviour. It left a taste in his mouth.

  5

  EIGHT DAYS LATER, the last week of January and the first week of the school year, Charlie was back in Swanage, bussed to the grounds of the youth camp with twenty other probationary and newbie constables from the south-east region. A kid had gone missing.

  And there was no mucking around. As soon as he stepped off the bus, he was directed to join a motley group of Emergency Services volunteers, shire rangers and camp staff, all of them shuffling their feet under one of the massive gum trees. A few minutes later, a Rosebud leading senior constable named Frances Bekker was briefing them. She held herself tensely, as if time was wasting and everything was going wrong. Sunglasses were perched on her forehead; her red hair was frizzy in the humidity. She held a bottle of water and shook it for emphasis.

  ‘In a moment we’ll form three search parties: one for the town, one for the beach in each direction and one for the creek and wooded area between here and Balinoe Beach.’

  She waited, as if expecting some idiot to split hairs with her. ‘We’re looking for Billy Saul, aged nine. Olive skin, dark hair, small for his age. He’s here with a bunch of upper primary school kids from Berwick. They arrived yesterday, staying for two nights. He was seen at beach activities this morning, and he answered the roll at lunchtime, but didn’t show up for afternoon activities.’

  She looked at her watch. ‘That was two hours ago. It took everyone a while to check the campground and the immediate beach area before calling triple zero.’

  A young woman standing behind her seemed to shrink a little.

  ‘This is Miss Jaffe, Billy’s teacher,’ Bekker said. ‘Apparently Billy is picked on by the other kids, so it’s possible he ran away.’

  Bekker’s tone suggested that if Jaffe had been doing her job, Billy might not have run away or been snatched by a paedophile or washed out to sea. Then she switched gears, assigning everyone to a search party, simply by pointing and saying: ‘Beach’, ‘Town’ and ‘Creek’. When she reached Charlie, she said: ‘You’re with me.’

  Why him? Did she know him? He didn’t know her. He stood to one side and waited as leaders were appointed, instructions issued. The sunlight freckled the ground at his feet. He was damp with perspiration. He hadn’t brought water or a hat and heard an old voice from his childhood: You don’t have the brains you were born with.

  Then Bekker was there in his face. ‘You’re Rhys Deravin’s son.’

  ‘Correct.’ God knows what she’d heard.

  ‘Spitting image.’ She paused. ‘Mark Valente says good things about you.’

  Charlie found himself concentrating furiously. Valente was a detective, but Rosebud wasn’t a huge police station: there would be crossover between the uniform and plainclothes branches, opportunities for water-cooler chats, tearoom gossip. That didn’t explain why he’d come up in conversation, though. Had Lambert lodged a complaint: his landlady’s son using his cop muscle to evict him? Charlie shifted his weight from one foot to the other and told Bekker he was only a probationer.

  ‘Did you think to bring water? A hat?’

  Charlie shuffled uncomfortably. ‘We only had a few minutes’ notice.’

  Jaffe had been waiting dispiritedly. ‘There’s water in the dining-hall fridge,’ she offered.

  The dining hall was cool, echoey, empty, tables bare. As if on firm ground now, Jaffe hurried to a refrigerator behind the service bench and returned with two bottles of water. ‘The lost property office might have a hat that would fit you.’

  ‘Lead on,’ Bekker said.

  Jaffe took them to a hallway cupboard, where Charlie grabbed the biggest towelling hat he could find. It was like being at school again, like being a no-hoper kid. Pull your socks up. He was relieved when Bekker said, ‘Right, Miss Jaffe, tell me more about Billy Saul. Is it Billy or William?’

  ‘Everyone calls him Billy. Please call me Melissa.�
�

  She’s older than me, thought Charlie, but not by much, and she looks ready to crack from side to side.

  ‘And the other kids bully him? You’ve witnessed it?’

  Jaffe looked miserable, a woman stippled with freckles and moles. Looking past them she said, her voice muddled, too hurried: ‘He comes from a mixed…His father’s Thai.’

  ‘And that’s why he’s bullied?’

  ‘I try to stop it, but I can’t be on the spot every minute of the day. He’s not very big and he’s a bit…a bit…he doesn’t stand up for himself.’

  Then she seemed to hear herself. Aghast, she said, ‘Of course, that’s no reason…Would you like to see where he sleeps?’

  She hurried to the door and took them across a patch of powdery dirt to a weathered cabin block, their shoes kicking up dust and gum leaves and twigs. ‘He’s in number two.’

  Bekker stopped her at the door. ‘Was he bullied this morning?’

  ‘There was a bit of pushing and shoving on the beach.’ ‘And?’

  Jaffe gave up. Hunched her shoulders. ‘I tried to stop it but there’s only so much you can do, and sometimes it’s so covert…’

  Bekker grunted. ‘Let’s see what’s missing and what’s been left behind—it might tell us what he had in mind.’

  The room was small and stifling. A set of bunk beds against one wall, a chest of drawers, two wooden chairs draped with beach towels, two sprawling backpacks spilling clothes onto the floor. Billy Saul’s was marked Billy in black marker pen on the top flap. Bekker knelt and began pulling out and sorting the contents: underpants, socks, a pair of jeans, two pairs of shorts, two T-shirts, a windcheater, a pair of runners and a toiletries bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, sunblock and a bar of soap in a Ziploc bag.

  ‘Does this match the checklist of things the kids were expected to pack?’ Bekker asked.

  She’s a parent, Charlie thought.