by Gary Kemble
‘Mr Hendrick.’
‘Dr Rowe.’
They shook hands. She gestured to the lounge. Harry took a seat and crossed his legs. Dr Rowe sat opposite him.
‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Hendrick.’
‘Harry – please. I was surprised to receive your call. The last time I visited, I was thrown off the grounds.’
Dr Rowe smiled. ‘To be fair, you had not been invited. And Mr Packard – well, he’s very loyal to the school.’
‘Yes, that’s what I’ve heard too. Loyalty isn’t always a good thing.’
Dr Rowe cleared her throat. ‘Mr Hendrick . . .’
‘Harry.’
‘Harry. We take any accusations of inappropriate behaviour . . .’
Inappropriate behaviour? Harry thought of what Johnny had been through.
‘. . . very seriously. But in order to act on them, we need information.’
‘Dr Rowe. Is this on the record? Because if it is, I’d like to record it, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course. We have nothing to hide here.’
Harry set up his phone. ‘Dr Rowe, if I could just start by asking, how long have you been here at this school?’
‘This isn’t an interview, Mr Hendrick, but I can tell you that. I’ve been here for eight years.’
‘Right. So you weren’t actually here when the alleged incident took place.’
‘No, but this is the thing, Mr Hendrick. I have gone through the school records. I have spoken to the former deputy . . .’
‘What about the former principal?’
‘He’s no longer with us, unfortunately. But he was a great man. He did a lot for the community.’
‘How did he die?’ Harry said, trying to quell the anger.
‘He . . . he died suddenly.’
‘Committed suicide, you mean?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Harry grunted. He stared out the window. The kids formed a scrum and packed down against the scrum machine, on which the coach stood, bellowing.
‘Dr Rowe, my source tells me that he went to the school chaplain, and nothing was done.’
‘Who is your source?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Dr Rowe raised her hands, wrinkled her brow. ‘And this is the problem. I have no record of any inappropriate behaviour taking place at this school – ever. If you give me the information, I can follow it up and take action on it.’
‘Did you ask Mr Packard about it?’
Dr Rowe looked out the window. ‘Mr Packard and I had a long conversation about it, yes.’
‘And?’
‘I’ve told you. He’s very loyal to the school.’
‘Are you saying he’s covering something up, out of loyalty to the school?’
‘Of course not, Mr Hendrick! I’m saying to you that I want to work with you. It will do you no good, publishing information that is wrong. In fact, part of the reason I invited you here today was to make sure you’re aware that I will do everything within my power to defend the honour of this school.’
Harry shook his head. ‘Is that a threat?’
‘You have someone, one person, a former student of this school, who is telling you that he was abused here. By several people. And that other boys were abused. Don’t you think, if this were the case, that something would have come to light by now?’
‘Dr Rowe. It takes someone with real courage to open up about something like that. If I thought this person were lying, I wouldn’t be chasing the story.’
‘You’re going on your instincts. That’s admirable. But don’t you think that’s a huge risk to take?’ She smiled again. Harry thought she was going for the ‘caring’ look, but it didn’t touch her eyes.
‘Dr Rowe. You’ve got your lawyers. Bring it on.’
* * *
On the way back to his car, Harry’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw Sandy’s name on the screen. He answered.
‘Elizabeth Tawny,’ she said. She sounded slightly out of breath.
‘In my country we usually start conversations with “Hello”, or sometimes the informal “Hi”.’
Sandy hissed in frustration. ‘Harry! This is important.’
Harry stopped and looked back at the school. Rugby training was over. The grounds really were quite beautiful. If it wasn’t for the pain in his gut and the crazy woman breathing down the phone, it would be almost pleasant.
‘Okay, so tell me why,’ Harry said.
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she said.
Harry rolled his eyes. ‘Of course you don’t.’
‘Harry, how many times have I told you . . .’
‘I know, I know, there’s no email in the afterlife.’
Silence.
‘Sorry, Sandy,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it. Elizabeth Tawny. Tawny as in the port?’
‘As in the owl.’
‘I’ll look into it. Did you see what I did there? Look. Owl.’
‘Harry . . . are you okay?’
‘No, not feeling great.’
‘Hmm. Just . . .’
‘Yeah, I know. Be careful.’
Sandy chuckled. ‘Maybe it’s you who has the clairvoyance.’
CHAPTER 23
Harry stared at the screen, not really seeing anything. He was having trouble concentrating. He was having trouble thinking of anything except Mistress Hel. The relief he had felt after booking the session had been brief, and now he was back to thinking about her, wondering what it would be like. Fantasising about what she would do to him. He was sweating, despite the cold.
‘Come on, come on!’ He took a slug of coffee and forced himself to focus on the words. After his interview with the school headmistress he’d returned home and typed out the conversation, but he wasn’t helped by the fact that she kept morphing into Mistress Hel, telling him that he’d been a naughty boy, reaching for the cane. He knew there was nothing sexy about being sued, or being threatened with legal action. And yet his whole body craved discipline. He was hard. Had been all morning. His lower abdomen was aching so badly it felt like gastro. But without the shitting.
The back of his neck burnt. What Would Rob Do? It was a question he asked himself often, when he was trying to draw on the knowledge the former SAS soldier had. There were no answers there this time, so he fell back on the basic breathing techniques he’d been perfecting in tandem with his karate training, focusing on the sensation of the breath coming in through his nose, out through his mouth. Concentrating on the everyday sounds he could hear through the front windows. Just trying to let it all go.
Harry opened his eyes. In the moment of clarity he remembered the name Sandy had given him. Elizabeth Tawny. Like the owl. He plugged it into Google. It spat out just under six hundred results. Harry considered. Tried combining it with ‘Lily Sweeney’. Nothing. Already, the clarity was fading. Harry rubbed his face. ‘Come on!’
He typed ‘Elizabeth Tawny’ and ‘Brisbane’. He got one hit. A news story from a few years before: SUSPENDED SENTENCE FOR ‘SUICIDE PACT’ TEEN, read the headline.
A Brisbane teenager who survived a suicide pact with a friend has been spared jail time . . .
Harry scanned the article. Elizabeth Tawny, sixteen, had died after swallowing a cocktail of alcohol and prescription medicine. A friend, who also went to Darra High and wasn’t named for legal reasons, had been given a two-year suspended sentence. The article said the magistrate had taken into consideration the defendant’s grief at her friend’s death, and a statement from a psychologist saying that she believed the teenager was suffering psychosis at the time of the incident, with a recommendation for ongoing treatment.
Harry’s phone rang three times before he realised it was his. He turned, disorientated. Where had he left it? He got out of his seat, went into his room and found his phone. He was half expecting whoever it was to hang up.
‘Hello?’
‘Harry? It’s Phil.’
Harry felt a
stab of annoyance. He’d told Phil that if there were any developments he’d let him know. Part of the annoyance was guilt that he hadn’t really been thinking about the case, hadn’t really been thinking of much of anything lately, except her.
‘Nothing new, Phil, I told you . . .’
‘No, it’s not about that.’ Phil’s voice quivered slightly.
‘Oh?’ Harry walked through his sunroom.
‘I hear that you’re chasing a story about paedophiles, at that posh school?’
Harry opened the door and walked out onto his front steps. He stared up at the stark white water tower and the pure blue sky behind it. Telephone wires leading up the road. An old black cat, sunning itself.
‘Yeah?’
‘Just wondering if there’s anything I can help you with?’ Now Phil sounded distinctly uncomfortable.
‘If there was, I would have told you. Who told you about the story, Phil?’
Phil cleared his throat. Said nothing. Harry’s impulse was to ask him about Marcus Wilson, put it all on the line and see what he said. Wilson wasn’t a cop anymore, but he was part of the brotherhood. Once a part of it, always a part of it.
But Phil was fishing.
‘Is someone recording this, Phil?’
Silence.
‘Is someone recording this? Because if I find out I’m being recorded, without a warrant . . .’
‘No, Harry. No-one’s recording it!’
‘Good.’
‘Harry, listen very closely.’
Harry tilted his head to one side. This was something new. Anger. He’d never heard Phil angry in his life. Why had his fear transformed into anger? What had Harry done to deserve this?
‘I’m listening.’
‘You need to be very careful about what you choose to do from this point forward, okay?’
Harry paused. Closed his eyes. Laughed. ‘This is incredible. I’ve had this same speech twice in two days. I must be on the story of the fucking century here!’
‘Look . . . most of the cops here, they hate paedophiles. Have devoted their lives to bringing those fuckers to justice . . .’
‘That’s comforting . . .’
‘But there are others, others who believe that protecting other cops – regardless of what they’ve done – is more important than anything else.’
Harry blinked. He’d suspected as much, but having someone connected to Queensland Police actually lay it out for him was still shocking.
‘You just need to be careful.’
‘Phil . . .’
‘I gotta go.’
The phone line clicked off.
Harry paced up and down in the sunroom. Emotions fought for dominance. Excitement. He must really be onto something if the cops were trying to shut him down. Fear. Could he really trust Johnny? Could he get enough corroborating information to make the story stand up? Would these bad apples come after him? Why hadn’t Wilson cancelled the interview he’d scheduled with him? Relief. To be finally thinking about something else. He felt free, for the moment. Free from . . . from her.
At the mere thought of Mistress Hel, he felt himself drifting back under. He thought of her legs, her waist, her breasts. He thought of sweat dripping off her body. He thought of the taste of it on his lips. The sting of the crop against his back. The taste of his own blood . . .
‘No!’
He ran. Left the front door open and ran, out of his garden, up the road. Sprinting up the steep hill, focusing on his body, on his breathing, on the gentle burn at the back of his neck. Arms pumping. Sweat beading on his forehead, in spite of the chill air. He ran to the top of the hill, pushing all thoughts from his mind as he did so.
He ran, taking random streets, trying to get lost, trying to exhaust himself by running further and further from home, knowing that eventually he would have to find his way back again. And when he did, she would be waiting for him.
CHAPTER 24
Harry put the buds into his ears and clicked through his music collection to the HEAVY m/ playlist. He’d put it together partly as a joke a year or so before, and partly because he was going through a phase where he was nostalgic about his angry youth. Rage Against The Machine, Rollins Band, Metallica, some early AC/DC. He cranked the volume. He’d lost the best part of a week thinking about Mistress Hel. It wasn’t even thinking, it was just like white noise, some sort of porn supercut that looped over and over again. By the end of the day he’d feel disgusting, worn out, but not satisfied. Never satisfied. Pain pulsing up into his stomach. He couldn’t get relief.
The adrenaline rush when Phil called him was the only thing that spiked through the haze, but it was enough to show him that something could get through it. The only thing that came close was listening to heavy music too loud, and so that’s what he did.
And it was weird. At first, it was worse than thinking about her. But after he got used to the music, he found that he could ignore it, and yet it still blocked her. And with her blocked out, he could keep fighting. But it was so exhausting.
He cranked the volume up another couple of notches as the opening riffs of ‘Bombtrack’ blasted through his brain. If this carried on beyond his ‘session’ with her, he was going to kill his hearing. But he could worry about that later.
He scanned through the documents Lee-Anne Stewart had sent him. Photocopies of union credit card statements. She’d helpfully highlighted all the ones that marked payments to Mistress Hel, or the Lilith Foundation, as it appeared on the statement. Harry didn’t know how Clack was explaining it away, but he could see the payments: $500 every time. He rifled through the pages and checked the calendar on the computer. Every fortnight, regular as clockwork. It was almost unbelievable. Every fortnight. None were on Clack’s own credit card – every one was being paid for by the union. Shit. Clack just didn’t care anymore. Harry went back through the pages. Six months this had been going on. Six months. Despite the thrashing guitars and howling vocals, he felt his cock twitch in his pants, wondered what it was that she could offer that would make this man so blind to the danger he was facing. He was going to lose his wife, his job. He was going to go to jail too.
Harry stopped, gazed over the keyboard to the aqua tongue-and-groove wall. For the briefest of moments he had it in his mind to cancel his appointment with her. Fuck her, he just wouldn’t keep the appointment. Then the track ended. Silence. Like a gate opening, his body filled with lust, the sensation so strong he actually grabbed the table, trying to stop himself from being swept away. Then the next track started and when the drums were beating so hard he felt like his brain was going to start leaking out of his ears, the feelings receded like a tide. This was fucked.
He googled ‘Lilith’. A female demon from Jewish mythology. He tried ‘Lilith Foundation’. There was a company in Texas, but no information about what they did, and one in Brisbane. Harry clicked. A basic brochure-ware website. Lilith Foundation – Making a Difference. Vague text about Outward Bound-style camps for abused kids. A bunch of obviously stock photos of smiling children in outdoor gear. No address. No phone number. An info@ email address.
He picked up the phone and dialled Lee-Anne, then stood and stretched his back as much as he could with the earphones tethering him to his laptop. The phone rang and rang, went to messagebank.
‘Hey, Lee-Anne. It’s Harry. Call me back when you get a chance?’
His phone bleeped, drowning out the music for a couple of seconds. He checked it. Coffee with Dave. Shit. He’d forgotten all about it. That’s why he’d started putting every little appointment into his calendar – he was forgetting a lot these days. He pulled the headphones out of his ears and almost immediately felt a veil of fuzziness descend. Desire, lust, frustration. He rubbed his face. Saw Mistress Hel smiling at him.
He packed up the documents and put them in his room. Caught the photo pinned over his bed. Him and Bec before the break-up. He’d put it away then but it was back out now, because he liked it so much. He and Bec, sitting on a low
rock wall, with the Irish Sea in the background. He liked it because they both looked a bit rough around the edges – they’d been backpacking for a while by this point – but they both looked happy and satisfied. For a long while, he didn’t recognise either of them.
Harry grabbed his keys and headed out the door.
* * *
Harry met Dave at one of their usual haunts in the West End. Harry chose a booth at the back but, even so, being out was almost too much. He was edgy and disorientated. He tried to remember the last time he’d left the house. With a bit of effort he recalled meeting the headmistress, but he couldn’t remember much of their conversation, nor how long ago it was.
Dave was big, loud, impossible not to love, even when he was offering advice that Harry didn’t want to hear. Same as usual, in other words. Harry looked at the coffee he’d ordered, realising he didn’t want it.
‘Look, all I’m saying is, you’ve been through so much,’ Dave said. A smile touched the corners of his mouth, as though this were some sort of soap opera. From Dave’s point of view, it sort of was. Harry should have been angry at that expression. It wasn’t impossible to get angry at Dave, but it was extremely difficult.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah? Are you okay? Expecting someone?’
Harry forced himself to focus on Dave’s face. Managed it for a couple of seconds before his eyes darted outside again.
‘No. I . . . I’ve just got a lot on.’
‘So tell me about it. Set Bec to one side for a moment, if you like . . .’
Harry found the idea comforting: setting Bec aside for a few weeks, so he could pull her back when he had his shit together. But would he ever have his shit together? After what had happened the previous year, Harry should have been dead, or in jail, or in psychiatric care. He thought that was enough excitement for one lifetime, and yet here he was again, neck deep. He rubbed his tattoo.
‘Harry?’
‘Sorry, Dave. Okay, where do I start?’
‘Well, you know what Dame Julie says.’
So Harry started at the very beginning, unpacking it. He had no idea if it meant anything to Dave. Had no idea if the words he was stringing together would mean anything to anyone who hadn’t lived through it. But it helped to talk. And Dave was listening. Really listening: brow furrowed, smile gone. He could see why Ellie loved him so much. Harry realised this was the reason he found it so hard to get angry at Dave – when Harry needed him, Dave was there.