On Cringila Hill

by Noel Beddoe

  Listening, watching closely, this fact comes into Gordon’s mind – no media statement has yet been made by police to reveal the number of shots fired that night. David Lawrence has moved across the quadrangle away from the group, he has his telephone out, is jabbing at numbers. Jimmy narrows his eyes, ‘I s’pose you wonder why we didn’ come see ya before, tell ya this.’

  Gordon watches the confident head, slightly cocked to one side. ‘Oh, no, Jimmy, I don’t wonder that. No, I don’t care very much about that. I’m sure you’ve got a reason for me and I’m sure that it’s a very good reason, convincing, something to absolve you, win you sympathy. Let’s just imagine that you’ve told me your reason and that I’ve pretended to believe you. Then we’ll move on to the next thing.’

  Jimmy turns from the waist, his thumbs still hooked into his pockets. David Lawrence is still talking somewhat urgently into his telephone. Jimmy looks down again at Gordon. Jimmy’s smile has gone, he has now a look of intense concentration.

  ‘Now, ’nother thing. S’pose there wasn’ jus’ one killin’. S’pose there was two. S’pose one happen a long time ago, years an’ years ago. You could do somethin’ about that?’

  ‘You’ve seen two murders?’

  ‘Nah, never seen nothin’.’

  ‘But there’s a witness to another murder?’

  ‘Nah, well, no one still alive.’

  ‘So, what, we’ve got a body?’

  ‘Never gonna be no body.’ Jimmy is scowling, not liking what he’s hearing himself say.

  ‘Well, Jimmy, I’d say maybe we’ve got enough on our hands just now dealing with Abdul. Shall we just get done what needs doing about that, and talk about other things when Abdul’s been sorted out?’

  After a while, Jimmy says, ‘Sure.’

  David Lawrence is back. ‘Reach Edna?’ Gordon asks.

  ‘Yep. They’re putting things together.’

  ‘Well, Jimmy we’ll have to go down to the station. And nothing’s going to happen until we’ve got a support person for you, maybe your mother, I imagine. You can have a lawyer, if you want one.’

  Jimmy watches the detective, but doesn’t answer.

  To Leon, Gordon says, ‘Is there somewhere comfortable where the boys can wait, until we can get down to the station and start?’

  ‘Sure. Should I keep them apart?’

  Gordon watches Jimmy for a while, looks across the quadrangle to where Piggy’s sitting.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘truly, I don’t think it’ll matter too much. I’d guess any talking out a story that’s going to be done has already happened.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jimmy watches the backs of sheets of paper while, on the other side of them, Detective Gordon Winter intones the details of the statement. Jimmy looks through the clear glass walls of the office in which he’s been interviewed. Bored-looking people in uniform or civilian dress move slowly between desks, show written material to each other, peer into the illuminated screens of computers. Jimmy looks at his mother. She is seated next to him. Her face is set in a look of deep displeasure.

  Jimmy hears Gordon Winter say, ‘So, that’s pretty much it? You’re happy to sign this?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The sheets are placed on a desktop, spun across in front of the boy. Jimmy takes the proffered plastic pen, painstakingly writes his name across the bottom of a page above a dotted line. He looks up to see that he still has Gordon Winter’s close attention.

  ‘So, Jimmy, that’s that. We may need to come to you from time to time to check some details in your statement. I think it very unlikely that you’ll ever need to appear in court. Now, earlier, at school, you told me of another matter.’

  ‘Yeah. Stupid. Jus’ havin’ a laugh wit’ ya. Forget ’bout that.’

  ‘Well, it was a pretty intriguing thing. Something about another murder?’

  ‘I say that? You sure ’bout that? Maybe wrong words come out my mouth. Don’ know nothin’ ’bout that.’

  ‘You’re sure.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure as anythin’ in the world.’

  Winter is watching him.

  ‘See, I’ve got this feeling, Jimmy. Something’s troubling me. Something I heard once. And now I wonder has it got anything to do with this matter I’ve got on my mind?’

  Jimmy smiles. He finds himself in confident territory, baiting an authority figure. ‘That what you thinkin’?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘An’ what sort of answer you givin’ youself?’

  ‘Not sure yet. Still working on it.’

  ‘Well. Good luck wit’ that.’

  ‘You’re Lupce Valeski’s grandson, aren’t you?’

  Jimmy can feel his smile go. He frowns down at the desktop.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, it’s a strange thing. It was Lupce said to me the thing is troubling me so.’

  ‘That right.’

  ‘Mmm. Mrs Valeski – you have your father’s name, I see.’

  ‘Did a long time. Husband went away a long time. Helped, that people knew who I was, who my father was. Helped, when there was people I didn’ meet before.’

  ‘Did you ever meet another detective? Big man, very long face, not so much hair, a Detective Laecey?’

  Jimmy keeps his eyes on the desktop.

  ‘Maybe,’ he hears his mother say. ‘How I can say no, meet so many people. Carn remember nothin’ ’bout that.’

  ‘Well,’ Winter says at last. ‘Jimmy, if ever there’s anything you want to talk to me about, this is my card.’ He hands across an oblong of cardboard. ‘I’m always ready to listen.’

  It’s good for Jimmy to get outside. The air seems a lot fresher to him, there’s a breeze that feels good. He walks with his mother towards a car where a uniformed policeman waits to take them home.

  ‘What all that?’ his mother says. ‘About a murder?’

  ‘Jus’ forget it. Had a stupid moment. Nowhere to go with that, I know that, nowhere wit’ the police.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Jus’, you know, feel like somethin’ should happen. Not jus’ be like he never was alive, my father, what happen to him didn’ matter nothin’ to no one.’

  ‘I unnerstan’.’

  ‘Jus’ dunno what I should do.’ He rubs a hand across his face. He says, ‘Not too sure who I should be now, Mama.’

  A heavy man of middle-age, roughly dressed, not recently shaven, walks towards them in the carpark, raises his eyebrows in recognition.

  ‘Jimmy!’ he says. ‘Jimmy Valeski! Didn’ see you long time. How you, boy?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jimmy says. ‘Good.’

  ‘Good to see you. An’ say hello to your grandfather! Great man. Great man, Lupce! An’, course, you two jus’ so close, so close like this.’ Grinning, he presses together the palms of his two hands to show how close he proclaims the Valeskis to be.

  ‘Sure,’ Jimmy says. ‘I’ll say hello.’

  ‘Jimmy,’ his mother says when the man has moved on. ‘Can I give you a hug?’

  ‘Nah, Mama. No disrespeck. Love you real good, Mama. Not gonna be a time hugs from your mama gonna be no help.’

  Chapter Twenty

  It’s cold, up on the street, and it’s dark and quiet. Jimmy stands hunched against a wind. He looks down into Luz Solomona’s home. The house is in darkness. Nothing is moving. The houses nearby also are silent and dark. No dog comes to the Solomona’s fence to challenge him, so he imagines that the animal must be chained in the yard behind, or locked inside the house. He opens the gate, walks down some stairs, then steps up onto the verandah.

  He can hear the heels of his steelworkers boots clump on floorboards. He can hear the scrape of the legs of the plastic chair he draws a little away from the front wall of the house before he sits down. He repl
aces his hands down into the pockets of his jacket. He leans his head back against the wall. He knows that Luz will be inside, asleep. He thinks of her curled in her bed, maybe just on the other side of the wall. He closes his eyes and feels it, that she’s so near.

  Light floods across him through a window. He blinks, lets his head roll on his shoulders. The front door swing open. Samuel Solomona emerges. He’s in Y-front underpants and a t-shirt. He pads onto the verandah boards.

  ‘What you doin’? What you doin’ sit on our verandah? Where you think you are? What you think you doin’?’

  Jimmy doesn’t shift his head. His hands stay in his jacket pockets. ‘I come to be near her, Samuel, near Luz. Don’ need talk to her or nothin’. Even see her. Jus’ come, be near her. Makes me feel better.’

  ‘Listen!’ The big man’s mouth opens and closes several times. He points a finger at Jimmy, his hand trembling. It’s clear to Jimmy that he’s dealing with a very aroused person. ‘Listen … you fuck off! Got no business. You fuck off or I’ll set the dog on you!’

  Jimmy rolls back his head, closes his eyes. Quietly he says, ‘Set the dog on me, Samuel, an’ I’ll kill the dog.’

  ‘Kill the dog?’ Jimmy hears Samuel go back inside. Samuel will know that barefoot is no way to go into a street fight. Jimmy imagines the big man pulling on pants, dragging on a top, reaching for heavy boots. Jimmy waits, not knowing what’s going to happen next, not much caring. He hears her voice. It’s muffled, too far away for him to know the words. He imagines that she’s talking to her brother. She comes onto the verandah. He turns his head. She’s in pyjamas and a cotton wrap that looks like silk. Her hair is long, down over her face. She walks over, sits on the chair beside him.

  ‘Jimmy,’ she says, ‘what you doin’?’

  ‘Bad thing come to me, Luz. Bad thing. Not too sure who I am no more. Not sure how to go on bein’ a person. Got up, went walkin’. Seen your house. An’ what I need was to sit near you, be near where you was.’ He shakes his head. ‘There wasn’ nowhere else. There wasn’ nowhere else for me.’

  He sees the darkness of her eyes as she watches him. She says, ‘Jimmy, you look like shit. My God. What happen’ to ya?’

  ‘Not sleepin’ too good, Luz. Tha’s part of the thing. There ain’t been no sleep for a coupla days now. Is why I look like this, I guess. This thing … I got this thing. Dunno what to do. Be honest, I dunno how to be a person no more.’

  ‘Jimmy, you carn stay here. Samuel’s upset. This is his home too. He got the right, no one said you could come.’

  ‘Jus’ need to be near ya, Luz. Makes me feel better.’

  ‘You stay he gonna fight ya. I mean, you two, fightin’! Someone get hurt bad, Jimmy. There’s been enough bad things happen. Nobody needs no more.’

  Jimmy looks up at the uninhabited hill to the west. It’s a mass, heavy and dark. In the end he says, ‘Sure.’ He’s very tired. He rises from the chair, stands awhile.

  Luz says, ‘Jimmy.’

  He looks down. Luz reaches up her big hands. He lowers his face to be between them and she draws it down. She kisses his mouth with her damp lips, then she moves his head to press it against her cheek. When she releases him, he straightens.

  She says, ‘I go down the jetty sometimes. That jetty goes out inta the lake. Catch fish wit’ my brother. Come down, sometime I’m there. Come down, talk to me, proper time when the sun’s shinin’.’

  He draws a hand from a pocket, runs fingertips across her cheek. ‘Sure.’

  He leaves her, gets up onto the street. He stands up there with his hands deep in his jacket pockets, against the cold. He watches her go within the house, close the door. Eventually he watches as the light goes out in the window. He turns and walks towards his mother’s home.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The heavy car shakes in the wind. Peter Grace listens to the pounding of rain that lashes over it. There’s lighting further along the beach and, under it, he can see the foam of waves running up onto sand. He frowns through the sodden windscreen at a very bleak scene, and settles deeper in his seat, waiting.

  He sees the slash of headlights through the darkness. A vehicle comes slowly into the carpark, pulls up near him. For a moment, while its cabin light is on, he can see trainee journalist Ian Battle, who is hunched against the weather, thickly covered by an old woollen overcoat. Then the car door closes, it’s dark again. Peter reaches across and opens his passenger door. Battle slides in, curses, shuts the door against the wind-driven rain.

  Battle says, ‘This, my friend, had better be good.’

  Grace snaps on the interior lighting. For a while they study each other. Peter hands the younger man a piece of paper. He says, ‘You read that. Remember it. Anything you want to write down, write down. Then you give that paper back to me and you forget where you got it. I’m down the coast, in my caravan, cursing the weather. And let me tell you this, my young friend, at one stage there might have been those crossed me about such matters. No one does any more. There’s people’s learned crossing me is a very silly thing to do.’

  Battle gives the policeman an irritated glance, reads the material.

  ‘Need to write it?’

  ‘No, I’ll remember all that.’

  ‘Names, dates, everything?’

  ‘Sure. These people, they’ll say yes to all this, this is what happened?’

  ‘I wouldn’t give it to you otherwise. I’m not the only one she’s upset.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They sit for a while, listening to the storm. Peter takes the paper, turns off the light. ‘Any good to you?’ he asks the journalist.

  ‘You know the answer to that.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Feizel says, ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I carn fucken believe it.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you.’

  ‘I carn believe anyone could be that stupid.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Maybe not so much stupid as weak.’

  ‘An’ you hearin’ this from more than one source?’

  ‘I got it from people who are serious people. You can trust me, what I’m saying is the truth. That’s what this kid’s doing. That’s what he’s said.’

  Feizel’s companion is mid- to late forties. He’s seated on the opposite side of a heavy table with a top made from a plastic material, in the vast retail hall of the Sydney fish market. People are bustling by carrying bulging bags. Between Feizel and his companion are cups half-filled with coffee.

  ‘Vincenzo, you say it to me, sure, I believe is true. But is so hard to believe. Such a strange thing a person might do. Goes against it all, you know. Goes against everything makes sense.’

  Vincenzo is swarthy, carefully barbered, gym-trained fit. When he smiles he shows a set of even teeth, dazzling white. He has on an orange-coloured t-shirt, across his shoulders is a pink lambswool sweater with the arms dangling down over his chest. He’s wearing thick gold around his neck and a wrist.

  ‘So, what,’ Feizel says. ‘You gonna say the names?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But you know who they are?’

  ‘I do. And, Feizel, let me tell you it’s a heavy connection. Them, it’s not just Mary Jane. They bring in coke, H. They do the car theft and rebirthing. They got this thing where, there’s a hotel with big profit, some boys come in, there’s a scene, people get hurt, then next day there’s old men in suits got briefcases. They come in and say, “So, there’s been a problem, look, we’ve got a program, you pay each fortnight, we can guarantee no more violence, nice peaceful place.” And, Feizel, this is the point, then there is no more trouble. Some unconnected kid comes in wants to show off he’s a hard man, soon enough he gets his head broken, everything settles down. A good thing for you to remember, my friend. These people promise a thing, it happens. Both ways, good thing to happen, some
thing not so nice. They promise it, it happens. In spades.’

  Vincenzo looks through the throng of people. He lifts his arm, smiles, waves slowly. Feizel turns to look. There’s a tall woman with long dark hair over by an island of display cases filled with crushed ice and lobsters. She is maybe Feizel’s age and she’s wearing high heels, tight jeans up her long legs, a scarlet buttoned-up shirt tucked into her jeans, a white leather waist-length jacket. Feizel decides that he’s never seen anyone more beautiful. He can’t prevent himself from a little speculation as to the potential of her long legs. She points at the lobsters, raises her eyebrows at Vincenzo. He shrugs back as though replying, sure, if that’s what you’d like. Watching her, and because he is in fact a young and somewhat inexperienced man, Feizel wonders in a flash what it might be like to have a relationship with a woman so beautiful. He watches her dark eyes and bronzed, lustrous skin, the way she tosses her long hair back behind her shoulders. He wonders what she smells like, up close, and wishes he were near enough to her to get her perfume, to hear the rustle of her clothing when she moves. He glances at the Vincenzo across the table, sees how he too is watching her. Feizel wonders what the appeal is that binds her to this man. Probably several things, he supposes, though, for sure, the money wouldn’t do his appeal any harm.

  It’s cement, underfoot. Feizel’s feet feel cold through the rubber of his shoe soles.

  Vincenzo says, ‘Yeah, a nice lobster lunch, some salad, good bread, glass of wine, out on the balcony, be nice, watch the yachts having races down on the harbour.’

  Feizel must stop himself from imagining the afternoon pursuits between the two, following the lobster and wine. He replies, ‘So let me run through what you’ve told me: there’s this kid, one of three, he helped Abdul do that bad thing to Luz.’