Ghost Child

by Caroline Overington

  I told him the price and he agreed to buy a portrait, so I went about setting up the scene. The children weren’t at all difficult to manage. I lifted them, one at a time, and put them onto the table, in front of the cloud backdrop, one behind the other, as though they were sitting astride a log. They were wiggling and jiggling but all children do that, and I had few tricks up my sleeve. If you’re going to photograph children, you need a few tricks, let me tell you. I kept a rattling clown and often times, I only had to hold it up and shake it for most children to at least stop crying and stare at its face. I had some little jokes, too, designed to focus them. I would stand behind the camera – it was a monster of a thing, not the little digitals you have now – and I’d say, ‘Now, in your loudest voices, children, say, “Funky Monkey!”’ And that would normally get a giggle because they were expecting me to say, ‘Say Cheese!’

  The boy who was bashed, Jacob, he was in a particularly excitable mood. He kept saying silly things like ‘I don’t like monkeys’, and perhaps I did get a little exasperated, but still, I was completely shocked when the man walked over and belted him.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the kind of person who says, ‘Oh, you mustn’t smack the children.’ I’m old-fashioned. I believe that a swift kick up the backside, as my husband used to say, can do a child the world of good. I used to put my own children over my knee from time to time. But this was something quite different. The blow made a sound like a cricket ball on a bat. I was so startled I dropped the flash and ended up taking a picture of the light bouncing off the polished floor.

  The little boy’s hand flew to his head. I thought, ‘Oh, poor mite, he’s going to cry, and that will be it, no portrait today,’ but he didn’t make a sound. There was a look on the man’s face that said something like, ‘Don’t you dare!’ And then he walked back to where I was standing, and he said, ‘They reckon you’re not allowed to give them a hiding. I reckon it’s the only thing what works.’

  That’s how he talked. I suspect he had no education at all, not that I’d want to condone his behaviour.

  I went on and took the photograph – the flash was okay, thank goodness – but I was very distressed about the image. I liked the children to be happy, so the grandparents could be proud, but the Cashman children had these fake smiles plastered on their faces. Jacob said quietly, ‘My head hurts.’ He was clutching that part of his skull that had reddened under the blow. It was all I could do not to gather him into my arms, but the man, he said, ‘Yeah, well, that’ll learn ya. You’re gonna learn to do what you’re told, mate.’

  So when I saw that photograph of the children in The Sun, I realised the police must have taken it off their mantelpiece or wherever it was kept and given it to the media, because at that stage they were still looking for the man that bashed the boy. That’s when my daughter said the newspaper wasn’t allowed to reproduce it like that, not without permission, and she said she would ring up and see if they would pay me, but I suppose it slipped her mind. Then, of course, the rumours about what really happened in that house started swirling, and I thought, ‘No, better let it go.’

  Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Muggeridge

  Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve been called to a house on the Barrett Estate responding to a police matter, as opposed to being there as a guest at somebody’s barbecue. I don’t know exactly, but Barrett definitely gives me a steady list of things to do. Lately I’ve started to think I’ve seen inside every house on the estate. I’ve pulled up marijuana plants. I’ve broken up teenage parties. I’ve been present when the sheriff – the court sheriff, that is, not the American kind – wants to repossess the car. There’s been the occasional house fire – there was a spate of them, actually, when those oil burners became popular and people went to bed with them burning under the curtains – and, yeah, I’ve had my share of domestic-violence matters.

  The Cashman case was definitely a strange one, and it kept getting stranger. I’d left the house on DeCastella Drive quite late in the evening and returned the following day. The little boy wasn’t there, obviously. He was still in hospital. The story had been given good coverage in The Sun and, like normal, the shock jocks had picked it up and were reading it out on the radio, tut-tutting and referring to Jacob as ‘Little Jake’. They were telling everybody he’d been bashed by a man and the listeners were upset. They were calling up the radio stations to express their rage and to offer assistance to the family. I thought, ‘Great, once again the police station will be full of cans of Campbell’s soup, stuffed toys and, for some reason, torches.’ People always give soup, old toys and torches, don’t ask me why.

  Like every cop in Melbourne, I had my radio tuned to Triple M. Between ‘Flame Trees’ and the prize wheel, they were reading from The Sun and putting their own spin on the story. They described Lisa Cashman as a ‘single mum’ and said she was ‘struggling by on the single mother’s pension’ and ‘doing her best’. One of them said, ‘You should see the photograph on the front of the paper! These kids are so clean you can tell they’re properly cared for.’ Another guy said, ‘This family doesn’t have much, but the mum – the single mum – always makes sure they have a proper lunch in a lunchbox for school every day.’ And I thought, ‘How on earth can you possibly know that?’

  I found Lisa in the kitchen, pretty much where she’d been the day before. She was holding a mug of tea. The string from the bag was dangling down over the back of one hand. She had an Alpine Light in the other hand and she had that look about her, like she’d been up all night. Her hair was like a bird’s nest. Although it was still early, there was a forest of cigarette butts sprouting from the saucer she was using as an ashtray. The TV was on loud and the kids were crouched around it. Harley’s eyes were still crusty from sleep and he was still wearing last night’s nappy. I hate that, when I see a kid wearing a nappy that’s hours old, heavy with urine, hanging down between their legs. I’ve had kids of my own, so I can just sense the rash, and I know how it makes them scream. But he wasn’t screaming. He was standing on plump feet, watching Humphrey Bear.

  Hayley was there and she, too, had that goggle-eyed look kids get when the TV is on. I’d say she was no more than eighteen months old. I didn’t see Lauren, but the boyfriend – the big bloke, Peter – was there, and still half-naked, wearing boxer shorts with cartoon reindeer. He was in good shape, I remember that: he had a line of dark hair running from his navel to the elastic band around his waist, and he was ripped, like he worked on his abs. He was sitting in a Jason recliner, one ankle across the other knee, and he was slapping the rubber of his thong against the sole of his foot. I had to avert my eyes because, from where I was standing, I could see up the legs of his shorts, where a testicle squeezed against its sac. The place smelled the same as the day before: a bit like a nursing home, and a bit like an empty pub after a Friday night, when the beer hasn’t been cleared from the troughs and the smoke still hangs in the air.

  Now, I’d never pretend to be an expert on trauma, and certainly I’m not a psychologist, but as I’ve said, I’ve come to expect certain things from a house where there has been some kind of drama. It’s like a particular atmosphere: people go into shock, and that pretty much puts a lid on their emotions, at least for a bit. Say a child has fallen into the pool, or gone and got electrocuted in the shed or, like in this case, supposedly been set upon by a man, in the first instance there’s the wild panic as everybody tries to save the kid and blame each other – ‘Why weren’t you watching him? I thought he was with you!’ Then, by the next day, the shock settles on them, and they go kind of numb. I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, it takes a while for the bad news to sink in,’ but it seems to me that bad news doesn’t so much sink in as press down. You see it on their faces, even over the course of a morning. Their face will literally start to fall – the skin droops from the cheekbones, the mouth drops at the corners and the jaw slackens. Actually, now I think about it, the shock affects the whole body that way. The sho
ulders slump and the hands get heavy. You end up with grown adults standing there like dumb gorillas, their clothes hanging off their bodies, like they belong to somebody else.

  That’s what I was looking for in the house on DeCastella Drive, that pressing down, that slumping look, and let me tell you, it wasn’t there. The atmosphere in the house, it was just different. For one thing, Lisa was there, and I thought, ‘My God, why isn’t she still at the hospital? How did she get back?’ But there she was, with Peter, and they were talking, and talking quick, and they weren’t making eye contact with me, which also doesn’t happen that much. The thing is, when there’s been a genuine accident, people are relieved to see you. It’s like they think you can help. They’re excessively polite. They might not want to look at you, but they want to sit you down, make you a cup of tea, like they’ve got this idea in their head that if they’re well-behaved, if they behave like everything’s normal, the world will set itself right.

  Like I say, Lisa wasn’t in that kind of mood. She had a fierce temper on. The first thing she said to me was, ‘Have you got ’im?’ At first, I didn’t understand what she meant. She had smoke coming out of her mouth and she was bending a cigarette into the ashtray and taking another from the pack at the same time. When I didn’t immediately answer, she said, ‘You find the little prick what did this to Jake?’ And while the words might sound right, the tone was all wrong. It wasn’t like, ‘Have you really found him?’ It was more like, ‘Are you actually looking?’

  She turned from me and hit the button on the base of the kettle. Her cup was empty and it seemed she was going to make more tea. That in itself was kind of weird. If you’ve ever been in any shock yourself, you’ll know the last thing you feel like is putting anything into your body. Your hunger, your thirst, it just shuts down. I once heard it said, at one of the training courses we had in those days, that it’s normal for the body to do that without you even knowing it. You’re in shock, you see, and you’re fearful, and if you think there’s a chance you might have to run, you keep yourself light. I don’t say people don’t make tea. They certainly make it, but they don’t drink it, is my point. They go through the motions and then they stand there looking into the distance while it goes cold.

  Anyway, Lisa didn’t rinse her cup. She messed about with some canisters, unfolding a tea bag and dropping it in, and leaving the old one in a puddle on the counter. She did say to me, ‘Do you want a cuppa?’ and I said, ‘Thank you, that’d be great.’

  She asked, ‘How do you have it?’ and I said, ‘White, with two.’

  She opened the fridge, looked inside for a moment and said, ‘Yeah, well, you’re gonna have to have black. We’re out of milk.’

  I said, ‘Black is fine. Let’s sit down, Lisa. Let’s see if we can find out what’s happened here.’

  I was wondering how to approach the subject of the man in the schoolyard. There didn’t seem much point saying, ‘Look, I don’t believe this, Lisa,’ because then she’d just clam up, and anyway, that’s not the way to approach an investigation. Our rule is: assume nothing.

  She said, ‘I wanna know what’chve got. I wanna know what you’re doin’ here, when that man is out there. I wanna know why you aren’t out findin’ ’im, and stickin’ ’im in jail and throwin’ away the bloody key.’

  I pulled myself into my professional stance: clipboard in front of me, pen in my hand. I said, ‘Lisa, you’ve said that Jacob and … is it Harley? … you’ve said that Jacob and Harley went out to the shops at around 5 p.m. to get cigarettes …’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I have to ask you, is that unusual? Jacob’s how old? Five? Does he go to the shops by himself quite often?’

  She said, ‘He’s just started goin’.’

  I said, ‘Okay. Can I ask you: how much money did he have?’

  She had a temper, that woman. Sharply, she said, ‘I’ve told ya all this. I gave ’em some change, outta the jar. We needed fags. What I wanna know is what you’re doin’ about the man what done this.’

  She’d moved out from behind the bench in the kitchen and was sitting with Peter, on the arm of his Jason recliner, flicking a Bic lighter with her thumb.

  ‘You’re obviously upset,’ I said, twisting my body to face her again. ‘I understand that. But what we need are a few more details so we can get this investigation properly underway.’

  Peter took the Alpine Lights and began fiddling with the packet, trying to work a cigarette loose.

  ‘Can you not pinch my packet?’ said Lisa.

  ‘You gone and smoked all mine,’ he said.

  I tried to focus their minds.

  ‘Let’s see if we can go over it again,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if there’s anything I’ve missed, anything I can do, to get this man under arrest.’

  Lisa sighed, a great, melodramatic sigh, like this was the most boring thing she’d had to do in a while. She said, ‘I told ya. Peter gave ’em some money. I said to ’em, “Get some Alpine Lights, and you can get some lollies with the change what’s left.” They left here at five o’clock. I know it because they were watching Happy Days and it was just finished.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘And … Peter? Do we have a surname for you, Peter?’

  ‘Tabone,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, right, Peter Tabone. You were here, too? Do you actually live here?’

  ‘I been here a month.’

  ‘Six weeks,’ said Lisa.

  ‘Jacob’s not your son?’

  Lisa snorted.

  I said, ‘Are you the father of any of these children?’ I didn’t mean to put the emphasis on ‘any’ but it came out that way.

  ‘Nope,’ said Peter.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Lisa.

  I said, ‘Whose children are they?’

  It’s a dangerous question, that one. You don’t want the mum to think that you regard her as a town bike, or a welfare mum, or anything like that. I was still thinking that Peter likely had something to do with the bashing, and I was determined to keep Lisa on side, so I said, ‘Where’s the kids’ dad? Did he do a runner? Shoot through?’

  She dragged back on her cigarette and, breathless now, she said, ‘Yeah, they shot through.’

  She paused then, waiting for the smoke to clear her nose, and said, ‘They all shoot through, don’t they? They want the fun, but not the responsibility, right? They want to get in the sack, naturally, but not deal with the consequences.’

  I said, ‘What age is your oldest, Lisa?’

  ‘Lauren’s six,’ she said. ‘I had her at twenty and her father, arsehole that he is, wasn’t even around on the day she was born.’

  Peter put a hand on Lisa’s naked ankle, a gesture I understood to mean: ‘Yeah, but I’m here, aren’t I? I’m actually a good guy, so don’t shop me.’

  I said, ‘And Jacob came along next?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And his dad’s a dead leg, too. Not welcome in this house. Then there’s Harley, and you might as well know, Harley’s actually got the same dad as Lauren. He turned up for five minutes when she was four, long enough to knock me up again, and me believin’ all his bullshit, and then he’s shot through again.’

  I said, ‘And there’s another one? A fourth child?’

  And she said, ‘Yeah. Hayley’s me youngest.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘And these blokes, they’re off the scene but I’ve got to ask you. Is there any idea in your mind that one of them might have had something to do with this?’

  Lisa said, ‘Are you bullshittin’ me? I ain’t seen jack of ’em in years. If you find ’em, can you let Family Services in on the secret, because I’m owed child support.’

  She lit another cigarette. Humphrey had disappeared from the screen and Hayley, the toddler, was getting restless and clingy. Lisa reached down and picked an old dummy up off the carpet. She sucked it for a minute, to clear it of lint, and put it in the child’s mouth. I remember thinking, ‘My wife would have a heart at
tack.’

  I tried to get back to the events surrounding Jacob. I said, ‘Okay. So you’ve given Jacob and Harley the money to go to the shop for cigarettes …’

  ‘I gave ’em the dough,’ said Peter. Why he wanted to make a point of that, I cannot tell you.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Peter, you gave them the money. They left here around 5 p.m. Did you give them any instructions? Do you know which way they went? Do they always go the same way?’

  ‘I told ’em, you go straight there and you come straight back,’ said Lisa.

  ‘Yeah, and they do whatever the hell they want,’ said Peter.

  Lisa turned sharply toward him. ‘Nobody’s askin’ you, mate. If you gave ’em any discipline, if you’d get off your arse, instead of sitting there smokin’ bongs …’

  Peter shrugged and said, ‘Not my kids.’

  ‘Not my kids,’ she mimicked him.

  ‘Not my problem,’ he replied, smiling in a slightly menacing way, his foot slapping against his thong.

  ‘Not my problem.’ Lisa mimicked him again. ‘You bloody live here. You’re the one hangin’ around here, demanding to get your tea cooked … you’re the one who decided to make ’em your problem.’

  I thought, ‘Now, that’s a strange thing to say.’ In what way had Peter made the children his problem? But Peter said, ‘You’re the one that let ’em run wild.’

  I let them go at it. Probably, I was thinking, ‘How many times have I had to listen to a conversation like this? “They’re not my kids, they’re your kids.” “You don’t discipline ’em. You gotta smack ’em.” “You smack them and I’ll smack you and see how you like it … ” How many times have I been to a house on the Barrett Estate to find, for example, a man with a bloody nose, head-butted by the woman in some dispute over her kids gone wild?’ So I let them keep at it, and after a while, I said, ‘Where’s Jacob’s bedroom?’