Animal Kingdom

by Stephen Sewell

  ‘It doesn’t matter what we did,’ Darren said to break the silence. ‘They’ll never pin it on us.’

  ‘Why?’ Smurf asked. ‘Because you’re all so bloody smart?’

  But in a sense he was right. It didn’t matter what they did; they were still her kids. There was a lot to do, a lot to think through. Swallowing her misgivings, she looked at Craig. ‘They’ll want to talk to you as well,’ she said. ‘You need to call Ezra and take yourself in tomorrow.’

  Craig looked horrified. ‘I’m not going in there. Are you fuckin’ nuts?’

  ‘If you don’t,’ she answered, recovering her composure, ‘they’ll think you’ve got something to hide.’

  ‘I fucking do!’ Craig cried. Cool, calm and collected he wasn’t. ‘I’m not going in there.’

  ‘They’ll come looking for you if you don’t, sweetheart,’ Smurf said, sounding like Mum again. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Craig squawked, sounding like he was dazed and stumbling a bit too close to the edge.

  ‘Where’s J?’ Pope suddenly asked, glancing about and noticing he wasn’t there.

  Looking quickly at him, Smurf demanded, ‘Why? What’s he got to do with this?’

  ‘Nothin’,’ Pope repeated. No-one had anything to do with anything.

  ‘Where is J?’ Craig echoed, looking accusingly at Darren. ‘Is he still in there?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Darren answered. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know?’

  ‘What’s he know? What’s he saying?’ Craig asked quickly, his paranoia erupting into full psychotic meltdown.

  ‘What does he know?’ Smurf echoed.

  ‘He doesn’t know shit,’ Pope answered, trying to put the lid on it.

  ‘Then what’s he still in there for?’ Craig demanded.

  ‘All right, calm down,’ Smurf said.

  But she was worried herself. J was a nice boy, but that’s what he was—a boy. He wasn’t like the others; he was soft. There was no telling what the cops might be able to wheedle out of him. If they applied some pressure, got up to their usual tricks, he’d be out of his depth and wouldn’t know what to do. She wasn’t really worried about him or his welfare. He was her daughter’s son, for sure, but they had drifted apart over the years. She loved him, of course, and she’d do everything she could for him, but he wasn’t the one in the firing line. Her boys were. It was trouble; it was trouble for sure.

  ‘Where’s J?’ Pope repeated.

  And looking at him, Smurf wondered how it had come to this.

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ Darren spat back angrily. ‘Like I’m supposed to know where he is.’

  TEN

  After they let him go, the last thing J wanted to do was go back to the house. It wasn’t that he thought he’d done anything wrong, because he was sure he hadn’t, but he had a lot to think about, and that place was nowhere to think at the best of times.

  He’d stolen the car. He’d stolen the car and acted as their alibi; he’d covered for them. While they were killing two coppers.

  And now he’d lied to the police about it.

  J didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t that he was in trouble with the police; that wasn’t it. He was always in trouble with someone. It was what they’d done, the immensity of what they’d done. Killed two people. And not just two grizzled old coppers who could’ve fought back—that would have been bad enough. By now he knew they were two young constables, not much older than himself. Two young men at the beginning of their lives and careers, with the kinds of concerns young men have—family, girlfriends, ordinary simple things—executed. That’s what they did to them: they executed them, when all they’d been doing was try to help someone whose car had been stolen.

  J kept coming back, trying to comprehend it, and then reeling away at the thought of what they’d done.

  He had to go somewhere. He couldn’t just wander the streets, and the only other place he knew was Nicky’s. He knew how Nicky’s mother felt about him, but he needed to go somewhere safe, so that’s where he went. You couldn’t say Alicia was pleased to see him, but Gus was a little more sympathetic—maybe he’d been in trouble when he was a kid.

  Was J in trouble? Yes, he was. Big trouble. When they found out about the car, he’d be in the shit big-time. J didn’t know much about sentencing, but he knew that if they wanted to be tough they could be; why would they want to be soft on him, a Cody who knew more than he was letting on? There was enough there to get him locked up for a year at least, if they felt like it, but that didn’t really feel like trouble. That was just a threat, something they could use against him. That’s not what people mean when they say trouble.

  Trouble is when the shit’s really flying and you might wind up dead. That’s real trouble, and this didn’t feel anything like that, not yet. Not unless the cops decided to take things into their own hands the way they had with Baz.

  True, his mother was dead and there was no-one there he could count on, but it wasn’t like he’d ever really been able to count on her. He was seventeen years old, almost a man. Someday soon he’d be looking after himself; he was practically doing that now, making his own breakfast and things. There were lots of things he didn’t know about, didn’t understand—how to get a job, that sort of thing—but he figured when the time came there’d be people who’d tell him, if only just to make sure he did it.

  He was smart, or smart enough. He could drive a car. And he was strong, he knew that. He’d had to put up with a lot of shit in his life, and somehow he’d always pulled through. Things hadn’t always been easy. But they’d never been as hard as they were now.

  Nicky wasn’t home yet, but somehow that made it easier. Gus was watching TV with Nicky’s little brother and Alicia was cooking.

  ‘So how was your day today?’ she asked J, like it was the most normal thing to ask. And, in this family, it was.

  His day? What was he going to say? I got interrogated by the police for a cop murder my three uncles committed last night in a car I stole for them.

  ‘It was okay,’ he said, adding a polite ‘How was yours?’

  ‘It was good,’ she said, and it sounded real, like it was really true, and she wasn’t worried she was about to be killed or tortured or have her whole life turned inside out by a bunch of maniacs.

  ‘Do you want to stay for dinner?’ Gus asked.

  That was the nicest thing anyone had said to him for a while.

  Setting the table was just about the best thing he could imagine doing. This was what normal people did. They watched TV with the kids and cooked dinner and set the table. It wasn’t crappy takeaway that was going to make you fat and give you a heart attack in twenty years. No-one was yelling; the only drama was on the TV: it felt good.

  He watched Alicia bustling around the kitchen for a while, and Gus and the kid. He wondered what it would be like to have a father. He’d thought about it sometimes, when he was younger—had asked his mother, but she’d been evasive, like she was about a lot of things. And not for any reason that he could work out; just because that’s what she was like, even with him. What was the big secret? Your father is the King of England, some shit like that.

  He guessed now that he’d been an accident. She’d never said that, and always said he was the best thing that ever happened to her, but it didn’t feel like he was the result of the greatest love story ever told. If you believed that sort of thing. J didn’t. Not really. That only happened on telly. Not here.

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ Nicky’s mum said at last.

  Nicky still wasn’t home, but J was feeling okay sitting with her family.

  ‘How was your friend’s … funeral?’ Alicia offered, curious but respectful.

  ‘It was okay,’ J answered, putting his knife and fork down. He didn’t really want to talk about it, but she’d asked. ‘Sad and everything,’ he added.

  ‘Yes, we saw it on the news,’ she said.

  He supposed that meant she saw everything, about him, his f
amily, the types of people Nicky was hanging out with. He knew that was what she was worried about, that she just wanted the best for her daughter; the funny thing was, so did he. He wanted the best for Nicky, he really did, and maybe the best for her was to drop him, like her mother wanted. Nicky had never said that, and neither had Alicia— not to him directly—but it made sense. If Nicky had been his daughter, he wouldn’t have wanted her hanging around with a person like him either.

  He hated his life, everything about it. He hated his mother and grandmother, hated his uncles, hated the shit they were into.

  Why did they make it so hard just to be? He couldn’t see what was so wrong with what Alicia’s mum and Gus had. What was so boring and stupid about it? It took a lot of effort to keep things like this, with all the shit and madness in the world trying to tear it apart. They were the heroes, not losers like Pope. Not even the good guys like Baz.

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ Nicky said as she slid the door open and kissed her little brother. She was still wearing her school uniform, and glanced around the table, catching his eye in passing.

  ‘Where have you been, Nicole?’ Alicia asked, tense annoyance already flickering in her voice. And it was like the magic spell had been broken, and the bare bones of the family feud re-emerged.

  ‘Detention,’ Nicky said, sitting on J’s lap and starting to pick at his plate just to annoy her mother. ‘I told you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Alicia snapped back.

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ Nicky answered. ‘You had to sign that form.’

  ‘I signed the form,’ Gus confessed.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Well then, get angry at him for not telling you,’ Nicky said.

  J didn’t really know why Nicky didn’t see how good she had it. Maybe that’s just the way it is. We never know what we’ve got till it gets blown away.

  After dinner they went back to her room for a while and listened to some music.

  Nicky hadn’t really been in detention; she’d just gone down to the mall to smoke some cigarettes. If she’d known he was there, she would have come home instead.

  ‘How come Gus said he signed the form for you?’ J asked.

  ‘I just gave him an old detention form, and he was too dumb to notice it had already been signed,’ she said.

  ‘Why are you so mean to them?’ he asked her.

  She looked at him, hurt. ‘I’m not mean,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ J replied. ‘They all love you and you just treat them like shit all the time.’

  ‘That’s the way kids are supposed to treat their parents, isn’t it?’ she said meekly. ‘You gave your mum shit.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said, ‘and anyhow, she’s dead.’

  ‘So what?’ Nicky asked, looking at him.

  ‘Well, what if your mum was dead? What would you think then?’

  ‘If my mum was dead?’ Nicky repeated.

  ‘Yeah. Then you’d be sorry for all the times you talked back to her.’

  ‘My mum’s not going to die,’ Nicky said, looking away.

  ‘How do you know?’ J said. ‘One day she will. What will you say then?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Me?’ J asked, remembering he’d hardly said a thing.

  ‘Yes, you,’ Nick said. ‘If you could speak to your mum now, what would you say?’

  J didn’t know what she’d done, but she’d done something, turned some key inside him, and he said, ‘I’d say that I loved her, and I miss her, and I’m sorry that I was such a hassle to look after when I was a little kid, and that if there was anything I could have done to save her, I would have, but I didn’t know what to do, I just didn’t.’ He wasn’t crying, but there was something inside him making its way up.

  Nicky took his hand and pressed it against her face. She didn’t say anything, but he thought she understood.

  He hadn’t meant to go to sleep, but he did, and the next thing was Nicky’s mum was knocking on the door, saying, ‘J, are you in there?’

  Rousing, he saw that it was already morning, and Nicky was asleep in her jammies beside him.

  ‘Yep,’ he said sheepishly, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Your uncle’s at the door.’

  Shit, which one? What did he want? J had no idea how they’d found him. It wasn’t that he’d kept her address secret, just that he’d never told them it.

  ‘Coming,’ he said, standing quickly. ‘What did you let me fall asleep for, Nick?’ he hissed at her. It was Romeo and Juliet all over again, though maybe they didn’t know it. It was every young couple there’s ever been since Adam and Eve.

  ‘I fell asleep,’ she said, stretching and yawning.

  Darren was standing at the front door, with Alicia instinctively blocking the way inside, protecting her home from someone she knew in her bones she didn’t want to let in.

  Stepping into view, J glanced at the floor as he passed her.

  Darren said, ‘Hey, we gotta go.’

  ‘All right,’ J said, guiltily glancing at Alicia.

  Putting his hand out to shake Alicia’s, Darren tried to be civil, saying, ‘It was nice to meet you. See ya.’

  It was such a dumb thing to do. J couldn’t believe it even as he was doing it. Here he was, one of the murderers, one of the killers who had shot those coppers pretending to be just another friendly Joe who’s pleased to meet you.

  Was he still wearing the same shoes? J looked, and saw he was. All bright and shiny, from where he’d washed all the blood off.

  J was amazed at the nerve. Was it nerve or indifference? Indifference to what people thought? Or just plain stupidity? Was that what had happened to them? They’d gotten so hardened to their own crimes, they didn’t care what people thought any more, didn’t even notice, because everyone in the world was a fool except them. Yeah, these are the shoes I killed those dumb pricks in. It actually washes off pretty easily. Have a nice day.

  But underneath, Darren was shitting himself. And it wasn’t just that they’d get caught. He knew they would, of course they would. It was the memory of what they’d done, killing those two men, the blood, the horror in their eyes, the diabolical—Darren didn’t even know the word, but he knew that was the word—the diabolical look on Pope’s face as he took aim at their cowering figures. Darren had never even imagined anything as ghastly as what he’d done. It wasn’t easy to kill a man: you had to turn yourself into something else, and they had. The three of them. They’d turned themselves into something else. Only Darren didn’t know what, exactly.

  ‘I do a lot for you, Nick,’ Alicia said as she closed the door on them. She was looking at her, her own daughter, still wondering how to talk to her. ‘You’re still at school and you’re allowed to have your boyfriend sleep over. That’s a big thing for me.’

  And it was, and you’d have to have been a total moron not to see it, and, for the moment, Nicky dropped the attitude and hugged her mother. She knew it was a big thing, and somehow the talk she’d had the previous night had mellowed her. Putting her arms around her mother, she hugged her. ‘I love you, Mum,’ she said.

  And Alicia knew it was true.

  ELEVEN

  Following Darren out through the oleander bushes and across the front yard, J’s pace slowed as he saw Pope. There he was, sitting with his arm resting on the window in the parked car out on the street. Seeing him was like being punched in the solar plexus. It was Pope, as large as life, sitting on the passenger side of Darren’s car. He was the one behind the murders—he had to be, because the others were too stupid to do it by themselves. And there he was, sitting, waiting in the car for J, grim and unsmiling.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it: now, Pope knew where Nicky lived. That was something J was definitely not happy about.

  ‘Where are we going?’ J asked quietly as he got in the back seat.

  ‘See our lawyer,’ Darren answered nervously, starting the car.

  From the way he said it, it sounded like trouble.

  As
they drove off, Pope made sure that J saw him give Nicky’s place the once-over.

  The trip to the lawyer’s only took about half an hour, cross ing the city, but was further than a lot of people went in a life time. Going in a diagonal that took them from the weather board dumps that used to service the port and the refinery up across the bridge and over to the leafier part of town where the 7-Elevens were replaced by the fashion stores and the girls in cardigans were replaced by the supermodels in Gucci, Darren drove like he was on autopilot, hardly saying a word.

  But, as the scenery changed, J started to sit up and pay attention. He’d never been over this side before, so it was a bit of a surprise to see so much money parading itself around when the rest of the country was going to shit. This was different. The cars, the clothes, the look of people. They didn’t look sick; they weren’t fat. When you looked them in the eye, they didn’t look away because they were frightened you were going to hit them; they looked straight back, like they had a right to.

  J was impressed.

  ‘This is really fucking important, mate,’ the bloat in the polo top leaning on the kitchen bench said when they finally arrived. ‘I need to know word-for-word. You know?’

  They were in the lawyer’s smart, upmarket, two-storey house, all marble and stainless steel, set back on a block behind a high security fence with its own cameras. Who said crime didn’t pay? Pope, Darren and Smurf were sitting at a big mahogany dining table, with Pope sprawled out across it like he’d collapsed, as the prick in the Lacoste gave J the third degree about what he’d told the cops.

  J knew the lawyer was a prick because he’d now realised anyone associated with his family was. Baz hadn’t been, but, the more he thought about it, the less he understood what Baz had been doing with them at all.

  Maybe they’d had something on him, or maybe they’d gone back to the time when they weren’t pricks themselves. J wondered whether there ever was a time like that, when they were ordinary people.

  ‘They just kept asking me a couple of questions,’ J answered, feeling hemmed in and even more vulnerable than he had with the police. ‘I said I don’t know, and then they let me go.’