Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘I came home one evening, half-tanked as usual. Charlie had locked himself again in his room all day and had missed school. I went upstairs and asked to be let in but he wouldn’t respond, so I went down to the garage, got a jemmy, forced open the door and gave him hell. I can remember how he cowered in the corner, holding his precious cat, a big tabby known as Baby Grand. I called him a coward and told him he was useless, a failure, that he’d grow up to be a no-hoper, I think I used the words “useless little shit!” when all the time it was me who was the failure. I was doing exactly what my own father had done to me, humiliating him. I left him crying, holding the cat, and stormed downstairs into my study where I polished off a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Eventually I must have collapsed in a drunken state on the carpet because my wife woke me the next morning to say that Charlie wasn’t in his room.’

  Billy stopped talking, ashamed that he was losing control when he most needed it. In a voice not much above a whisper, he said, ‘Charlie had ridden his bicycle to Watsons Bay and thrown himself off the Gap.’

  Billy could feel the tears running down his cheeks.

  ‘He left a note:

  Dad,

  Please look after Baby Grand.

  Love,

  Charlie

  ‘That was all. A month later I took Baby Grand to Charlie’s grave and took a picture of him sitting on the marble slab. I wanted Charlie to see he was in good shape, that I was looking after him.’ Billy wiped away the tears with his hand. ‘Stupid really, I suppose. I took the photo and then started to cry. When I looked up, Baby Grand had gone. I searched for him for three hours,’ Billy stopped, sniffing. ‘I even fucked that up,’ he whispered. It was the first time any of them had heard him use an expletive.

  The three men were silent and then Freddo gave a little cough, ‘That’s rough, mate, a real bastard.’

  Billy leaned down and, using the edge of his sheet, wiped his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to burden you with all of this but, you see, it’s the only way I can tell you why I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘Billy, stay, mate. You’ve come this far, don’t pull out now,’ Morgan urged again.

  Billy then told them the story of Ryan. They’d all heard Ryan sing and he’d been the subject of a great deal of conversation among the men. When they’d returned to their shared room the previous evening, Morgan had held up his Bible. ‘Well, fellas, they gave us our Bibles and then the big bloke in the sky sent us a bloody angel to sing the last hymn.’

  ‘I have no choice. This time I’ve got to get it right,’ Billy said finally.

  ‘How will you find him?’ Freddo asked.

  Billy shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I’ll just keep looking, asking.’

  Freddo thought for a while. ‘Billy, you’re in my territory, I done much the same, though I was twelve when me mum threw me out. I know the Cross, the kid’s gunna find a squat if he’s lucky or he’ll go to the Wayside Chapel or one of Father Riley’s people will find him and he’ll turn up, young blokes don’t stray far.’ He paused. ‘That’s the best scenario, mate.’ Freddo shook his head. ‘I got to be honest with you, the chances of that happening are just about zero. If the kid thinks he’s in trouble with the police, he’s going to be frightened and he’ll stay away from charity help or a refuge.’ Freddo spread his hands. ‘I seen him yesterday in chapel, he’s beautiful, I’m tellin’ you, he’s got Buckley’s.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Davo asked.

  ‘The paedophiles will be on to him like a pack o’ hungry mongrels.’

  Billy thought his heart would jump out of his chest. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s got people out on the streets at the Cross and at Central Station looking for kids all the time, they’ll snap him up, no risk.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘The Queenie, from The Sheba.’

  ‘Eh, say again?’

  ‘It’s a sex club, a brothel, fully licensed, legit. It’s on the main drag, The Queen o’ Sheba, but it’s just called The Sheba in the trade. The Queenie is, like, the madam who runs the joint.’

  ‘You mean it’s a brothel for kids, for children?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Nah, it’s a legit brothel but it’s a front for kiddysex. The Queenie is really running a club for paedophiles.’

  ‘Eh? It’s a brothel that’s legit, but it isn’t because there’s kids, what’s that supposed to mean?’ Morgan asked. Freddo had a reputation for taking the longest possible way around to make a point. In a conversational sense, he could turn a visit to the bathroom into a fully blown marathon.

  Freddo sighed. ‘The Queen o’ Sheba is a real sleazy joint, a sex club and a brothel. It caters mostly for young blokes who come in from the western suburbs, you know, big night out, six or seven mates pissed or high on eckies or whatever’s the latest good thing to swallow, looking for some cheap action after midnight. Bucks’ parties, young blokes celebrating a footy win, gang-initiation nights. You musta all seen ’em, the Lebbo or the big Maori at the door soliciting business, shoutin’ out, picking their mark. “Twenty-five-dollar entrance fee per person. Hey, are you guys in a group? Celebrating, eh? I’m feelin’ generous ternight, fifty bucks and you’re all in, the lot of yiz! Come on in, boys, nude acts, exotic dancers!”’ Freddo paused. ‘It’s the rough end of the trade. All the girls are on heroin, working to support their habits, and they solicit the audience while the show is going on, inviting them upstairs for a quickie, the house takes fifty per cent of what they make.’

  ‘Audience? I thought you said it was a brothel?’ Morgan said.

  ‘Yeah, well, outside it says it’s a strip club. Brothels are not allowed to advertise so that’s where the exotic dancers come in, they’re freelancers and they work five or six places a night like this around the Cross. They’ll do a bit of dance, most are pretty crook sorts that can’t no longer work the better-class strip clubs, but some of them ain’t too bad. They’ll remove some o’ their gear and then offer to screw anyone in the audience in the buff for a hundred bucks. A dancer will make half a grand, more on a good night. If the Yank navy is in town, they can make a couple of grand.’

  Billy thought immediately of Ryan’s mother and it explained how she supported her habit and how she could give him a fifty-dollar note to spend.

  ‘Yes, but what’s this got to do with paedophiles and who’s The Queenie?’ Billy asked anxiously.

  ‘Yeah, well, like I said before, The Queen o’ Sheba is a cover, see. The Queenie is supposed to be the owner of the joint, the madam, only now she’s called the manager, but it ain’t really what she’s on about. She leaves the brothel to one of the Arab Mafia, a Lebanese or Assyrian crim named Mohammed Suleman. There’s four rooms at the back done up perfect, like a suite at the Regent, it’s where the big-time and the overseas paedophiles come. The entrance is in the back lane, just a dirty, unmarked door, paint peelin’, with a speaker to the side.’ Freddo gave a little snort. ‘Above the door it says “Back entrance”. Back stairs is pretty crook but then you come to the first landing and it has marble tiles and walls, with a fuckin’ crystal chandelier.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ Morgan said, exasperated. ‘We didn’t need to know all that shit about the brothel! How do you know all this anyway? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  Freddo shrugged. ‘It’s where I learned to put a value on my arse, it was better than The Wall at Darlinghurst,’ he said simply. ‘The Sheba’s not the only one, there’s others. Costello’s, The Pleasure Chest, they’re both at the Cross, the Orchid Club, it’s American but they’re also here in a big way. The Queenie does a lot of travel business with them. The Children’s Liberation Railway, that’s in Glebe, there’s the Blaze Group, they’ve even got their own kiddyporn magazine, and the Rene Guyon Society, they got this motto, Sex before eight or it’s too late! And the Rat Pack, not a very original name but their motto is: Never rat, never te
ll. They’re mostly the rich and the famous, Australian, but they’s now gone worldwide. The Queenie does big business with them as well.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Morgan exclaimed. ‘Who’d want to bring kids into the world? I read somewhere that one in four under-age girls are sexually abused, though I think that’s mostly at home, and one in seven boys. I mean, it happened to me, to Freddo.’ He looked over at Davo. ‘How about you, Davo?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Why do you think I’m warning Billy about this boy?’ Freddo said. ‘Sydney is big time for overseas paedophiles. The rich ones who don’t want to shit on their own doorstep. The Queenie specialises in them sex tourists from Europe, a lot from Germany, some from the Orchid Club in America, from everywhere. It’s a bloody United Nations of perverts. She also caters for lots of the top local citizens, judges, lawyers, politicians, doctors, big business, they all know each other and she keeps it like a club. You can’t just come off the street, no way, man.’

  ‘Do you know this woman, this, er ...The Queenie?’

  ‘No. Not this one. She’s new since my time in the kiddy-sex trade. The one who was there before, in my time, is now a prominent socialite in Surfers Paradise.’

  ‘What she do? Sell the business to this one, The New Queenie?’ Davo asked.

  ‘Nah, it don’t work like that. Like the old one, The Queenie is probably a partner in a syndicate, a paedophile ring. You see, you’ve got to have protection at the bottom and the top and from the police. You can put money on it, the Arab who runs The Sheba is the muscle, the standover man, then there’s a politician at the top, maybe more than one, to see nobody rocks the boat. They’d be partners with The Queenie, some police would also be involved, though they’re usually just on the take. You need them to leave the joint alone, but if the press or the Church gets a bit upset because they’ve heard a rumour, they’ll raid the street front, find something like drugs, a few amphetamines or a coupla blocks o’ hash on the premises, and the magistrate, who’s in on the whole thing, will fine one of Mohammed’s people, who’ll fess up, two grand and a suspended sentence, so everyone can see it’s a legit raid, then it’s business as usual.

  ‘The Sheba, they’ve even got their own travel agency where they book the overseas visitors into certain apartments, mostly in Bondi Junction. The sex tourists are picked up by limo at the airport, brought to the agency so their bona-fides can be checked and there they are shown a video of the kids available. The Sheba, the premises behind the brothel, is only used for interstate paedophiles staying in a hotel or for the local bigwigs to use for kiddy-sex.’

  Billy shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sure Ryan wouldn’t let that happen to him, he’s street-wise, he’d yell and scream and make a fuss. Surely all the children taken can’t be compliant?’

  Freddo looked directly at him. ‘Billy, you may have been an important lawyer but you’re an innocent, mate. Take my own case. I was twelve years old, frightened, hungry, and on the streets with nowhere to go, I’d run away from home so I reckoned the police were looking for me. That’s a joke, by the way. They may be looking for Ryan, but it won’t be because he’s run away from home. Anyway, a bloke comes up to you in the street, “Hey, kid, you look hungry. Are you hungry?” You nod and he takes you to McDonald’s for a hamburger, chips and a thickshake. He tells you he’s a karate black belt and is training a whole heap of kids. “Would you like to learn karate, be able to defend yourself from scumbags?” he asks you. You’re twelve years old, man! A helpless little kid and of course you say you would. “Where do you live?” he asks. You shrug or you mumble something. “Look, we’ve got some kids come to learn from interstate, we’ve got this nice pad, you can crash there if you like.”’

  Freddo sighed. ‘After you’ve been raped the first time they’ve got you for keeps. You’re too ashamed to talk, or they threaten to harm you or take you to the cops on a trumped-up charge. Some of them introduce the kids to addictive drugs, or they just brainwash them. Some o’ the kids are under ten, they’ve had miserable lives. That royal commission that’s been going on this year found only one per cent of paedophiles are ever convicted and only eight per cent of sexual abuse is ever reported. Those dirty bastards are safe as houses, man!’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read something about it,’ Billy said. He didn’t know if he could listen to too much more, he wouldn’t sleep tonight but one thing was certain, he’d find Ryan, or die in the attempt.

  ‘How do you think I became a heroin addict?’ Freddo continued. ‘I got me first needle at thirteen! I know I’m not much, I’ve been floggin’ me arse for drugs for thirteen years, but I don’t go along with child sex abuse. That there royal commission says there’s three thousand girls and eleven thousand boys flogged for sex every year. Imagine that, there’s three thousand little girls and eleven thousand little Freddos out there, they’re selling their bodies like I done for a place to stay, food to eat, grog, drugs, even for the clobber on their backs!’

  ‘Freddo, I don’t think I can take much more,’ Billy said. ‘Frankly, I’m terrified about what you’ve told me. But I thank you, at least I’m forewarned. I have to try and find Ryan. I must get to him. If he managed to get to chapel yesterday, surely that means he’s still on the loose, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,’ Freddo conceded, though he didn’t sound too hopeful. ‘Go to the police, tell them you’re a lawyer, threaten them, tell them they’ve got to find Ryan and when they do, to let you know. Then you go to the Kings Cross police station and the cops at Surry Hills every day and make a fuss. It’s yer best chance, buddy.’

  Billy nodded, though in his day the Kings Cross and Surry Hills stations mostly featured the likes of Sergeant Orr at Parliament House, the about-to-besuperannuated blokes who knew of him and his fall from grace. He doubted if they’d take the slightest notice of his request. They’d be more likely to escort him to the door via a stiff boot up the backside or threaten to charge him. Billy didn’t tell Freddo that his influence, in terms of the law, no longer existed.

  ‘If the police find him before I do, I don’t suppose they’ll give me custody,’ Billy said.

  ‘No way, you’re not a relative and you’re, er . . .’

  ‘An alcoholic,’ Billy completed the sentence for him.

  ‘Yeah. They’ll turn him over to DOCS, who’ll then hand him over to the Salvos, who’ve got an early-intervention home for little kids at Hurstville. He’ll stay there three months and then they’ll try to find him a foster home,’ said Freddo.

  ‘No good,’ Davo cried emphatically. ‘I ran away from six o’ them. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get a good home, but mostly them that take you just want the money from the government. They don’t want no twelve-year-old kid with behaviour problems. In one of them I was raped on the first night and I ran away the next day. Police charged me with being an intractable child and a disturbed adolescent, the magistrate at the Children’s Court sent me to Osmond Hall.’

  Billy was hating the process of asking. With each question or explanation his heart sank further and his anxiety increased, but he realised that Freddo and Davo could give him valuable insider information he might not otherwise be able to get. Information that might help him with Ryan. ‘What if the child is in trouble with the police?’ he asked.

  ‘Children’s Court,’ Davo said, ‘same as they done me. If you’re dead unlucky, you get Osmond Hall.’

  ‘I thought you said you could hack it there?’ Morgan said.

  ‘Yeah, as a big kid, no probs. It’s the Wild West, man! Yer can do what you like, management don’t care, kids run the joint, staff can’t do nothin’. Management, the people from DOCS, don’t even come near the joint. Little kid’s got no bloody hope, most of them take to sniffin’ petrol and aerosol cans soon after they come in. You can get alcohol and dope, all yer want. Paedophiles were waiting outside, they was called “tow-truck drivers”, I dunno why, I sup
pose the tow-truck drivers were the first to get onto it. They’d have sex with the girls after they got them to leave Osmond Hall. That’s where I learned to drink. Sometimes I’d wake up outside in the yard in the mornin’ lying on the bricks after I’d gone walkabout the night before to get grog and I’d be lying in me own vomit. I were fourteen years old, man! The staff, they done nothin’. Kids from thirteen were having sex with each other. I got me first dose from a fourteen-year-old girl when I was the same age as her. By the time a kid who come in at twelve gets to sixteen, some o’ them have iced their brain from petrol sniffin’.’

  ‘Surely it can’t be that bad?’ Morgan asked doubtfully.

  ‘You better believe it, buddy. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles,’ Davo said, reaching for the Bible he’d been given at chapel.

  ‘So all that about sewing on buttons, that was bullshit?’ Morgan asked again.

  ‘Nah, that was before they changed it. When I first come in I was twelve, it were a secure unit then, like a kids’ gaol. You had like cells and dormitories, you was locked in at night, bars on the windas and the place were bloody strict and you did yer time, it was bloody hard yakka. Then two years later they changed all that and they had this open-door policy and they’s called it “a therapeutic environment”. That was when it become the Wild West. That place is real sicko, mate, they should burn it down.’

  Billy hardly slept that night, his nose was hurting and his left eye had closed completely and all he could think of was Ryan out there on his own, trying to survive with nowhere to go. At one stage he cheered himself up a bit by thinking that Ryan might go to Mr Cesco. After all, the coffee-bar owner was a relation. Then he thought he might contact Dr Goldstein at St Vincent’s. But then again, he told himself, if Ryan thought he was wanted by the police he might not go to either for help. Billy simply couldn’t imagine what Ryan might have done for the police to be involved. It was probably something quite innocent and the boy had panicked, although the letter from his principal said he had been absent from school and had left before the ambulance arrived.