The Enemy Within

by Tim Ayliffe

  ‘I hope you’re wrong.’

  The house where Margie was supposed to have been visiting was not hard to find. Jules had called it a share house but it was clearly much more than that. Rubbish in the front garden. Busted letterbox. Paint peeling off the brickwork. Sheets hanging from windows instead of curtains. A guy in a singlet on the front porch sitting on a stained and torn sofa, smoking a cigarette and nursing a longneck of beer. Knee bobbing. Neck twitching. Eyes wide open and alert with paranoia. Probably high on ice.

  ‘Wait a sec.’

  They were about to cross from the other side of the street when Bailey noticed two men walking towards the house. They stopped at the gate, saying something to the guy on the sofa who nodded, gesturing for them to join him on the porch. He reached underneath the cushion he was sitting on, handing something to one of the men, who slipped him something in return. Then they were gone. Drug deal done.

  ‘You been here before?’ Bailey said.

  ‘Yeah. That’s Nicko. He runs the place.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Nicko recognised Jules as they were crossing the street and his eyes tracked them all the way through the front gate.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Nicko said to Jules as he sat back on the sofa, arms spread like an eagle. Arrogance driven by the drugs pumping through his veins.

  ‘My sister here?’

  ‘Who the fuck’s this?’ Nicko ignored the question, pointing at Bailey without looking at him. ‘And I’m not asking a third time.’

  Nicko brought his hands together, cracking his knuckles, the muscles in his skinny arms bulging like the eyeballs in his head.

  ‘Calm down, Nicko,’ Jules said. ‘He’s a friend of the family. We’re looking for Margie. She here?’

  Nicko reached for his beer, sitting back, taking a swig. Seemingly reassured that Bailey wasn’t a cop or some do-gooder social worker threatening to interrupt his business.

  ‘Inside with Blake. Upstairs bedroom.’ He smiled, patting the cushion beside him. ‘Why don’t you send the old man in, hang here with me for a bit.’

  Bailey went to say something but Jules cut him off. ‘No, thanks. I want to see my sister.’

  ‘I’ll be gentle.’

  Bailey felt like grabbing the longneck out of Nicko’s hand and using it to put him to sleep. The guy was a cretin. Drug-dealing scum who had just hit on an underage girl.

  ‘Bye, Nicko,’ Jules said, turning towards the open front door. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You better not cause me any trouble in there, old man,’ Nicko snarled.

  Bailey ignored Nicko’s threatening words and followed Jules through the door.

  It was dark and humid inside, the air tinged with mould and pot smoke. Jules knew exactly where she was going. Down the hallway, up the staircase, right on the landing, past a bathroom which had clothes and towels on the floor, stopping outside the closed door of a bedroom that, Bailey guessed, opened to the balcony that overlooked the street.

  ‘Let me go in first,’ she whispered.

  Bailey nodded.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Jules gently knocked on the door.

  Nothing.

  Knock. Knock.

  She used her knuckles this time. Louder.

  ‘Margie, it’s Jules. Can I come in?’

  Still no sound from inside.

  Jules opened the door wide enough so she could peer inside, before pushing it all the way.

  ‘Margie, I’m coming in.’

  She slipped inside and Bailey took over her position in the doorway. The evening sun was strong enough to shine light through the sheet that was pinned to the window frame and Bailey could see two people asleep on the bed, their bodies half-covered by a blanket.

  Jules went around to the side of the bed where a woman’s long, blonde hair was resting on a pillow. ‘Margie. Margie. Wake up.’ She was shaking her shoulder, whispering. ‘Margie, it’s Jules. Wake up.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ The bloke in the bed rolled over, sitting up on an elbow. ‘What the fuck, Jules? What you doing here?’

  Blake.

  ‘What did you give her, Blake? What’s she had?’

  Jules may have been a teenage girl but she clearly wasn’t intimidated by guys like Blake and Nicko. She was smart. Wise for her years. Wisdom garnered through the tragedy of losing her mother and the sadness of her father’s rejection. No way to grow up. No way to learn. She had Bailey on her side now and he wasn’t going anywhere. Listening in the doorway, he felt drawn to helping her. To be there in a way that he had never been for Miranda when he was off chasing stories in foreign countries, abrogating his responsibilities as a father. Bailey would never get over that feeling of failure, but he’d do his damnedest to make amends. Any way he could.

  ‘Blake? What did you give her?’

  Jules tried again.

  ‘Fuck off, would you!’

  Blake lay back on the bed, closing his eyes. Margie still hadn’t moved.

  ‘Margie. Margie.’ Jules shook her sister again, panic rising in her voice. ‘Wake up.’

  Bailey had had enough. He walked over to the side of the bed where Blake was lying flat on his back, enjoying his drug-fuelled slumber.

  ‘Blake.’

  Blake’s eyes shot open. ‘What the fuck? Who are you?’

  ‘Someone who is about to get the cops in here to raid this house. Search your belongings. Tear this place apart for stolen goods. Drugs. Whatever else you’ve got going on.’ Bailey was trying his best to sound menacing. Force Blake to cooperate. ‘Now answer Jules’s question. What’d you give Margie?’

  ‘Jules?’ Margie was moving on the other side of the bed, slurring her words, still at the mercy of the chemicals that had gripped her body in a dizzying vice. ‘Jules? Julie… Jules… hey, babe. Hey, lil sis.’

  Jules sighed. ‘Margie, we’ve got to go.’

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Blake went to sit up but Bailey pushed his head back down, holding up his phone. ‘Stay there, Blake. One call, mate, and you’re fucked.’

  Blake looked like he was contemplating Bailey’s threat, wondering whether the man looming over him was someone to fear, or fight. Then he sighed, dropping his head back onto his pillow. ‘Just fuck off. Take her with you, if you want. I couldn’t give a toss.’

  ‘What’d she take, Blake?’

  ‘Just a bit of junk, man.’ Blake laughed. ‘She’s such a lightweight.’

  ‘Margie. Margie. We need to go.’ Jules was shaking her sister’s shoulder again, trying to turn her onto her side. ‘Mr Bailey, can you help me?’

  ‘She’s naked under there, you perve,’ Blake said, laughing again.

  Bailey found a pile of clothes on the floor and handed them to Jules. ‘Can you dress her?’

  Bailey kept his eyes on Blake as Jules dressed her sister, hoping that the prick didn’t change his mind and decide to forcibly evict them from his room.

  ‘C’mon, Margie. You’ve got to help me here.’

  Margie was so out of it she barely had control of her limbs. Heroin highs lasted for hours and her tiny pupils and slurred speech suggested she would remain in her drug-fuelled coma for a while.

  ‘Sorry, sis,’ Margie said. ‘I’m a bad big sister, aren’t I? I wish Mum was here.’

  ‘It’s okay, Margie. We’re good. We just need to get you out of here.’

  It took a few minutes but Jules had managed to dress her sister in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

  ‘Mr Bailey, can you give me a hand getting her up?’

  Bailey walked around to the other side of the bed, clasping Margie under her armpit, pulling her up and resting her arm around his neck. She was actually quite tall, so Bailey had no trouble balancing her beside him.

  ‘Blake, where’s her bag?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Blake murmured without opening his eyes or lifting his head. He’d lost interest. ‘Over there somewhere.’ He clumsily pointed his finger at the window.

&
nbsp; Jules found the bag and led Bailey and Margie out of the room. ‘You okay with her?’

  ‘All good.’

  Bailey took his time negotiating the stairs because he wasn’t getting much help from Margie, who still hadn’t registered that she was being helped by a stranger.

  ‘Hold up, bitch.’ Nicko leapt off the sofa just as Jules and Bailey made it outside. ‘Your sister still owes me a fifty. Actually, a hundred. She was shouting Blakey boy.’

  Bailey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Nicko was the lowest of the low. ‘Are you bloody –’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Jules unzipped Margie’s backpack and Bailey caught sight of a pile of fifty-dollar notes stuffed inside. She handed two of them to Nicko. ‘We won’t be back. Tell Blake to stay away from my sister.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ Nicko smiled, snatching the money, patting Margie on the head, stroking her hair. ‘See you soon, Margie. Whenever you need your Blakey boy or something to make you fly, we’ll be here.’

  Bailey refrained from saying anything, knowing they just needed to get away. Find somewhere for Margie to dry out. Somewhere safe.

  When they were clear of the house, Bailey dug his phone from his pocket, searching for a contact, while he and Jules helped Margie stay upright as they walked up the street towards his car.

  The old man answered after three rings.

  ‘Joe, it’s Bailey. You home?’

  ‘I knew it was you, dumb dumb. Name showed up on my little screen.’ The old priest chuckled down the line. ‘Footy’s about to start. Almost didn’t answer.’

  ‘I need a favour. See you in five.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Jules climbed in the back seat of Bailey’s wagon, fixing a seatbelt around her sister. ‘Margie. Margie.’ She was clicking her fingers, trying to get her sister talking. ‘Margie!’

  ‘She doesn’t look good,’ Bailey said, spinning his head from the driver’s seat.

  Margie was mumbling to herself as Jules put on her own seatbelt, letting her sister’s head slump on her shoulder.

  ‘I’ve seen her worse, to be honest,’ Jules said. ‘By the way, who were you talking to on the phone? Who’s Joe?’

  ‘An old priest I know. A guy who has spent his life looking after street kids.’

  ‘We’re not street kids,’ Jules fired back. ‘And you can drop us back near St Mary’s. I can look after us from there.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jules. I didn’t mean to offend you,’ Bailey said, angry at himself for putting a label on them. ‘You’ve trusted me so far. Joe’s a good guy. His place is just around the corner. A place where Margie can dry out. Somewhere you’ll both be safe.’

  Bailey’s initial instinct had been to take them to the nearest hospital but he had to try Joe’s place first. The priest had seen enough drugged-up kids in his time to know whether Margie would be okay sleeping this one off, or whether she needed medical attention. Taking the girls to a hospital would create a whole load of trouble they didn’t need. Family and Community Services would get involved because Jules, at least, was underage. Their father would get called and if he didn’t want them back then they’d get thrown into foster care or a boarding house somewhere. It was a can of worms to be avoided. At least, for now.

  ‘What do you reckon, Jules?’ Bailey asked again, catching her eyes in the mirror.

  She looked away, staring at nothing out the window.

  ‘Okay.’

  Father Joe Henley lived out back of a little Catholic church in Redfern and he always had spare beds for kids in trouble. People like Jules and Margie. The church was only a couple of kilometres away, near Redfern Oval, so Bailey had a slim window to ask Jules about what her sister had seen on George Street that morning. Ask her whether she knew who gave Margie the pile of cash that Bailey had glimpsed inside her bag. He didn’t want to have those conversations in front of Joe. He also needed to know exactly what kind of trouble he was delivering to the old man’s doorstep.

  ‘Hey, Jules?’

  She looked up, meeting Bailey’s eyes in the mirror again. ‘I know what you’re going to ask me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jules. I just need to know.’

  ‘It wasn’t a group of African guys that attacked that American guy, Augustus Strong, or whatever his name was.’ She was talking while monitoring her sister’s breathing with the back of her hand. ‘We were given money to lie. I told Margie not to take it. It all happened so fast I couldn’t stop it.’

  ‘Who told you to lie?’

  ‘Me and Margie had set up on the corner of the QVB. We were asleep when it happened. We woke up to someone screaming for help. They bashed him really bad. Kicking his head on the ground. I knew they’d killed him. No one could survive that.’

  ‘Who did it, Jules?’

  ‘No idea. It was still dark. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway because they were wearing masks, like the ones bank robbers wear in movies. Four guys. They bolted straight past us down the street. I didn’t think they noticed us but –’

  ‘Julie… Julie… Jules…’ Margie was smiling dazedly at her sister. ‘I love you, Jules.’

  Bailey was steering his wagon with one eye on what was happening in the back seat.

  ‘What happened after they ran, Jules?’

  Jules sighed, rolling her eyes at her sister, before catching Bailey again in the mirror. ‘A guy appears out of nowhere. Starts talking to Margie. Asking her if she wants to make an easy five hundred bucks. She just needs to tell the police when they arrive that the guys in masks were African-looking, or something. “Black guys,” he said. “Just say African or Black.” ’

  ‘And she said yes?’

  ‘Before I could even stop her she took the money. The guy starts going through our stuff. Gets Margie’s ID. Tells her he knows who she is now and if she doesn’t do what he said, he’d come back and hurt her. Hurt both of us.’

  They drove alongside Suicide Towers, where a policeman was talking to a group of kids standing around with their bicycles.

  ‘What did he look like, Jules? The guy who threatened you, who gave you the money. Can you describe him?’

  ‘Aussie guy. Blondie-brown hair. Kind of trendy looking. Button-up shirt. One of those fashy hipster haircuts.’

  Jules was describing the type of men that Bailey had seen at Augustus Strong’s talk the other night. He grabbed his phone, typing as he drove, taking a punt on a name and a face that he knew he would find in Google.

  He held up the screen so that Jules could see. ‘Look anything like this guy?’

  ‘Shit,’ Jules said, pointedly. ‘That’s him.’

  Benny Hunter.

  ‘Who is he?’ Jules asked.

  ‘He’s a Neo-Nazi. Leads a group called the Freedom Front.’ Bailey paused, thinking carefully about what he’d say next. ‘You already know he’s dangerous. I think it’s time you told the police the truth.’

  ‘I’m not doing that,’ Jules snapped, shaking her head. ‘I’m not talking to the police.’

  ‘Jules –’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Tell me. Why won’t you talk to the police?’

  ‘He told us he knew cops. That his police friends would let him know if we didn’t say what we’d agreed to say. Why do you think we were heading for Byron? We wanted to get the hell away from all this.’ She stopped talking, looking out the window. ‘Until my idiot sister felt she had to say goodbye to Blake.’

  Bailey was relieved that he’d decided against taking the girls to a hospital. Any call to Family and Community Services may have also triggered a phone call to the cops, which would have most certainly put the sisters in even more danger than they were already in.

  ‘You’ll be safe where I’m taking you, Jules. Joe’s an old friend of mine. Helped me out when I wasn’t that much older than you. He’ll feed you and give you a room to stay as long as you want,’ Bailey said, trying to reassure the girl in his back seat. ‘He won’t tell anyone you’re there. You’ll be saf
e. Okay?’

  Jules nodded. She was done talking, preferring to focus on her sister, hugging her close.

  ‘You’ll be okay, Jules. Both of you. I promise.’

  The orange dusk was fading to black and the street lights flickered on just as Bailey turned alongside Redfern Oval, the home of one of rugby league’s oldest teams, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Diehard supporters like Father Joe Henley called this footy ground ‘the holy land’ and although the Rabbitohs played in much bigger stadiums these days, they still trained here, and the fans came along to watch.

  ‘Here we are.’

  Joe was standing in the narrow driveway beside the church, waving for Bailey to follow him up the path and park his wagon out back.

  The old man had devoted most of his life to helping street kids. Although he’d been a priest for more than six decades, he wasn’t exactly loved by the conservative establishment. Joe was one of the renegades who had publicly supported issues like same-sex marriage, while criticising the Vatican’s handling of child abuse. The Archbishop of Sydney didn’t like him but, with Joe already in his eighties, the church wasn’t prepared to cut him loose. He just didn’t get invited to many church parties any more, which was fine by him.

  Bailey had first met Joe more than thirty years ago when he was studying up the road at Sydney University, wondering what the hell to do with his life after losing his younger brother in a car accident. Joe had taught Bailey to box at the gym he’d set up to give kids a safe place to hang out. A place to learn discipline and respect – for themselves and for others. A place where they could punch out their pain on a heavy bag, rather than the street.

  Getting old had never held back Joe Henley and the priest still ran his gym six days a week. He didn’t spend much time at the altar any more. Joe was happy for others to wear the robes and teach from the book because his religion was helping people.

  ‘Joe.’

  The two men shook hands, only briefly, because the priest seemed more interested in the two girls sitting in the back seat rather than the scruffy journalist who’d transported them to his house.

  ‘C’mon, Margie. Out you get.’

  Balancing Margie’s arm around his shoulder, Bailey helped the drug-addled girl out of the car as her sister slid across the seat, climbing out beside them.