by Jane Jago
‘Mr Reiser, this conversation is over. I’m sorry, please leave –’
‘You blame yourself,’ mocked Joel. ‘And yet you invite that poison back into our lives?’
‘I swear to you I don’t know where he lives.’ She turned to Reiser.
A timid knock sounded on the living-room door. ‘Daddy?’
‘I’ll be out in a minute.’ Joel put his hands in his pockets. He looked first at Reiser, then at his mother. ‘You’d better make up your mind, Mum,’ he said flatly, and turned to leave. As he reached the door he looked back at Reiser. ‘And as for you, you’re kidding yourself. You want to profit from this story, no matter how much it costs other people.’
Voices
‘Blessed are the Dead’
Liam, 2008
Alone in the empty bedroom, Liam sat staring at the words on his computer screen: Stay away from us. Papers littered the unmade bed behind him. The dressing-table and lowboy opposite had been stripped of everything but his medications. He looked down at the clutch of papers on his lap: You fucked us all. For what you did God has reserved a special punishment.
The one-line emails had been coming for the past two days. He silently reread them. The initial message, I know who you are and I know what you did, had come on the first Tuesday of the month to his Hotmail account. It had left him reeling. The address, known only to him and his mother, had been infiltrated by someone calling themselves Vengeance-mine. He had written to his mother for an explanation but six and a half hours later he was still waiting for a reply. He repeatedly refreshed the in-box but there was nothing new.
He lit another cigarette, took the child-proof top off a plastic pharmaceutical bottle and tipped two small yellow tablets into his hand. He swallowed them without water and studied the label. He shook the container: the pills inside rattled loudly. He stared again at the screen. The Valium did not stop the stream of paranoid thoughts forming in his mind. It merely acted as a mental lubricant, allowing each thought to slip away before it could coagulate with a thousand others and choke him in a paroxysm of terror.
He refreshed the in-box and there it was, not a reply from his mother’s address but a new mail from vengeance-mine. His gut contracted violently as he read:
Fuck you, Liam. I’ll make sure you never speak to our mother again. You have ruined enough lives. Other people are still serving your time for you, you twisted fuck. I don’t care how old you were then or how pathetic your remorse is now. As far as I am concerned, you are already dead, and if you don’t stay dead, I’ll pass everything I know onto those who will make sure you are dead.
Joel
His mind could barely grasp the reality of what he was reading. His brother’s hatred flamed in every word. He had seen him only once during a family visit since he had been taken into custody. Joel, then fourteen, had been cordial to him, but Liam, entirely preoccupied with his own grief and survival, had barely registered his presence, let alone been aware of Joel’s own trauma.
In recent months Liam’s mother had provided him with updates, via a primitive code, on Joel and his sister Claire’s progress in life.
He knew little of the aftermath of his crime or his notoriety and their crushing impact on the rest of his family. Since the death of Benjamin Allen, his journey through incarceration and rehabilitation had been cloistered and self-absorbed. From the moment he had been bundled into the back of a police van with his head shrouded in a towel and driven through the gates, past a screaming mob, his former life with his family had ceased to exist, buried under an avalanche of thumping hands that had landed like a spray of machine-gun fire against the blacked-out windows.
‘How do you feel now, you little bastards?’
‘Mongrels!’
‘Rot in hell!’
Rigid with terror, he had clung tightly to the hand of the policewoman seated beside him.
The drive to nowhere, the introduction to the facility, stripped of every familiar thing, the sudden absence of his guilt-ridden parents had been felt as a terrible strain. Now dependent upon people he could not control with his fragile moods, emotional outbursts and hysterical fears. Surrounded by experts, themselves governed by a code of conduct. Meals at regular times, schedules, expectations and rules. Tortured by daily therapy sessions and forced to readmit reality after nights of escapist dreaming or draining nightmares, a dreadful remorse had overtaken him.
Parental visits were a painful reminder of a life that continued outside while he struggled to survive the ever-present catatonic dread and the terror of violent flashbacks, afraid of ghosts and shadowy figures that walked the hallways at night. He had dreamed repeatedly of being drowned in the canal by a mass of hands that pushed him down and held him under the water. His high-pitched crying night after night affected all who heard it.
‘The boy’s mum, please tell her I’m sorry.’
All the intensive counselling and rehabilitation by experts, compassionate carers and a few steady representatives of a forgiving God had not moved the giant stone that weighed down on his sad, lonely heart. He had never been able to disassociate himself from the horror movies in his head. He’d wished then to forget everything, trying in vain to rebuild himself for a ‘normal life’.
Every other week the unit received calls threatening his life. Tabloid headlines described him as ‘born evil’. As the years passed, sites dedicated to hunting him down and killing him proliferated on the internet. While such hurtful knowledge was vigilantly kept from his unbalanced young mind, his brother Joel had run the gauntlet in the world outside. Now Liam reread the hate-filled missive: You are dead. The enmity rocked him. He had known he was hated, but not by his family.
Alex Reiser, 2008
He blew the froth off the top of his flat-white coffee and sipped as he gazed across the paved foyer of the district courthouse to where a group of lawyers stood, pivoting from heel to toe on their Italian wingtip shoes. A murder of crows. If he was a parasite, Reiser’s reverie continued, then what were they? Certainly the only benefactors of this whole sorry mess and countless other untold miseries.
Despite his well-honed cynicism, Joel Harris’s comments about him had got under his skin. He was well used to justifying the value of the work he did but that remark had pricked his conscience: his ego was invested in every story he took on; he was ambitious; and there was no way to come up completely clean, not when the work involved using people’s real lives as fodder for his word count. He was a good journalist, driven by the need to understand. It was part of the job description to dig into people’s lives and extract meaning from their pain, to dissect the human story and confront the shadows. Sometimes there was a cost, a price often paid by those who could least afford it; a sacrifice for the greater good.
A lean, bespectacled dandy gave a wry smile as he approached his colleagues at the top of the landing; behind him, hovering nervously beside the reinforced-steel public seating, was a clean-shaven youth, wearing what appeared to be his Sunday best. A court attendant came out onto the landing and called a name. The lawyer turned and motioned for his client to follow.
The remaining lawyers nodded, closed the circle, and continued their smug repartee. These shiny black insects clubbed together, drank together, cut deals over lunch and in the back of cabs. They shook hands over their clients’ heads and carved up the spoils. No matter what the human outcome, they were still handsomely paid.
Reiser gouged a glazed cherry from his muffin and ordered another coffee from the young waitress. He looked irritably at his stainless-steel Seiko. Mathew Allen had agreed to meet him here at two thirty – fifteen minutes ago.
A grey-haired suit at the next table was in deep conversation with a severely dressed woman. She glanced in Reiser’s direction, recognized him and gave him a polite wave. He smiled back. Melody Davenport was a family-law solicitor with a fearsome reputation, a prematurely dowdy spinster with a fetish for high heels. Known in court circles as the tit-bull terrier, once she had hold of a
client she didn’t let go until every available cent had been extracted from the opposite party. Even spouses who went to her with a fair settlement in mind soon ended up convinced they deserved the lion’s share of everything. She was a university chum of his wife, Ruth, and Reiser regarded her with respect and awe, and had often thought that his only recourse, if his marriage were to disintegrate, would be to engage the tit-bull before Ruth did.
Several more lawyers entered the coffee shop and ordered at the counter.
Melody Davenport’s table companion, a senior partner of a prominent local law firm, looked past Reiser towards the rear terrace, then away again, shifting in his seat with some discomfort. As he turned to follow the line of the man’s gaze, a dishevelled Mathew Allen pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Never mind.’
‘I was in the bookstore using the internet. I don’t usually come here,’ he added.
‘No?’
‘I make people feel uncomfortable.’ He looked around the room at the clientele.
‘We can go somewhere else, if you like.’
Allen shrugged his indifference. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
The waitress deposited a mug of coffee next to him. He put the Manila folder he had been carrying onto the table. His hands were flecked with powder-blue house paint.
‘Did you want anything to eat?’ said Reiser, hoping to insert a few niceties into the conversation before he answered the question.
‘No.’
‘I really just wanted to tell you face to face that I’m writing a book . . . about a case similar to Benjamin’s . . .’
Allen listened impassively, holding his gaze.
‘It’s a novel and I’ll be writing under a pseudonym. I just didn’t want you to read it one day and be blindsided.’
‘I won’t need to read it.’
‘No, of course you won’t.’ Reiser hid his embarrassment.
‘Just don’t go making excuses for those bastards.’
‘I’ll try not to fall into that trap.’
Allen swallowed a mouthful of coffee and opened a folder full of documents.
‘What is all that?’ asked Reiser, happy to change the subject
‘Papers I need to lodge at the courthouse. I’m defending myself.’
‘Against what?’
He held up a letter. ‘My most recent lawyer is now refusing to act for me in regard to an Apprehended Violence Order . . .’
‘An AVO?’ Reiser took the letter and began reading.
‘Yeah, a barrister who acted for the Harris family, during the parole hearing, took out an AVO against me. And this . . .’ he handed Reiser a second sheet of paper ‘. . . is a bill from my original lawyer in the contempt case.’
Reiser scanned the page. The letter suggested none too subtly that Mathew Allen find new representation and hinted at legal action if the outstanding amount of three thousand dollars was not paid. ‘I’m confused,’ said Reiser. He was beginning to feel oppressed by the weight of Allen’s multiplied woes. ‘The parole hearing was years ago. Why did the barrister . . .’ He looked again at the page in front of him. ‘Why did Tony Cross take out an AVO against you?’
‘I went to see him, we argued and he threw me out of his office.’
‘You must have given him some cause.’
‘Yeah, well.’
Reiser sighed and leaned forward. This was the third lawyer Allen had engaged in as many months. To finance his legal battles he had so far lost his house, spent an inheritance from his mother and had begged and borrowed at least eighty thousand dollars. ‘So now you’re representing yourself?’
‘Yeah. It’s claimed that I breached the AVO.’
‘Did you?’
‘I took some pictures from the opposite side of the street.’
Reiser smoothed his hand over the dome of his head. He resented the guilt and discomfort Mathew Allen’s presence made him feel, that the man’s tragedy somehow exempted him from listening to reason. ‘Why would you even go near him?’
‘I wanted some information, that’s all’
‘Tony Cross is a barrister, for Christ’s sake. He’s hardly going to aid and abet vigilantes. What were you expecting?’
Allen waved a dismissive hand.
‘I guess I’d probably do some stupid things if I were in your position,’ said Reiser, hating himself for the lie. Look, man, give it up, for fuck’s sake, he wanted to say. Your son has been gone for fifteen years. Stop this shit! Bury your dead, cut your losses. Decamp, rebuild. Find God. Do something other than walk around as a half-dead living reminder of your own tragedy.
Mathew Allen stirred three sugars into his coffee. ‘Today is Benjamin’s birthday. He would have been eighteen.’
Reiser looked away, ashamed of his thoughts. Suddenly he felt himself on the verge of tears. What right did he have to judge a man who had endured all that Allen had lived through?
‘It must be very hard, Mathew. I can only imagine what it’s like to walk around in your shoes.’
‘I have nothing else to live for,’ Allen said.
Reiser nodded soberly. Despite his compassion, he felt trapped and wondered how soon he could politely take his leave. Allen riffled through his paperwork and withdrew a handwritten list of names. ‘Do you recognize any of these?’
Reiser picked at his teeth with a matchstick. ‘What are they?’
‘Names people send me.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Come on, what are you going to do if you find them?’ He pulled the list towards him and gave it a cursory glance.
‘Don’t I have just as much right to look for them as you?’
‘I’m a journalist, Mathew, armed with a pen.’ Reiser’s eyes stopped halfway down the list as one of the names jumped out at him.
‘I’m only asking you to take a look.’
Reiser pulled his own list out of his wallet.
‘What’s that?’
‘Kendall’s daughter gave it to me at the funeral.’ He put Allen’s list beside his and compared them.
‘Let me see,’ said Allen, leaning in for a closer look at the unfamiliar names.
‘Nothing stands out,’ said Reiser.
‘I just thought you might recognize something.’
‘Listen, Mathew, I write stories about awful things that happen to decent people like you. That’s my job.’ He handed Allen’s list back to him. ‘You’re a father, you did your best. Maybe it’s time to let this go and move on.’
The frail man with the weary eyes gave the list one last look before crumpling it slowly in his fist.
Mathew, 2008
Fluorescent lamplight gave a blue cast to Mathew Allen’s pale face as he pored over a list of entries in a large journal; he damped his thumb on his bottom lip before he turned each page. Every now and then he referred to a notepad on the desk beside him. Roughly printed on the pad were the names he had memorized from Alex Reiser’s list that he had seen at the café. A circle of dark blue ink outlined one: Geoffrey Roland Wickham.
He flipped backwards through the journal until he came to the page headed 2001. Here, in a list of names, was almost an exact match; ‘Geoffrey Wickham. Mayfield. RTA.’ He considered the entry thoughtfully, but he had long since forgotten the significance of the name. He got up from his desk and began to pace quietly around the room. A row of cartons was stacked against the wall beneath the window and he lifted several onto the floor. The first was full of Manila sleeves marked with the year of their collection. He leafed through until he located one labelled ‘2001’. He lifted the flap and tipped a small pile of mail onto the floor. He examined the postmarks and looked closely at a blue-and-red-trimmed airmail envelope. He could just make out the letters ‘LD’ on the tail end of the faded postmark.
He pulled out the thin blue sheet within and scanned the typed letter until his eyes locked on ‘Geoffrey Wickham’. The author, like several dozen others, claimed to have uncovered Danny Simps
on’s new identity: a colleague had recently issued a driver’s licence to an eighteen-year-old youth who, according to the correspondent’s source, was attended by a ‘minder’ and ‘appeared petrified’ after passing his driving test. The boy was ‘a dead ringer’ for Simpson. The authority of this identification was based on the fact that the author’s colleague had owned a shop in Battery Cove at the time of the murder and had had the ‘misfortune’ to know all of the Simpson children.
He examined the enclosed photocopy, a copy of a copy of a laminated licence. He could just make out the shape of a pudgy face buried among the ink shadows.
Several lines identifying the location of the RTA and the licence number had been struck out. The address line ‘29 Innes Street, Mayfield’ was clear. The birthdate of the licence-holder was 18 January 1982. On seeing this he remembered why he had been sceptical about this ‘sighting’. Danny Simpson had been born a year earlier, on 21 April. The letter itself was unsigned, as most such missives were – yet here was the same name on a list compiled by Phillip Kendall.
The white Nissan Bluebird station-wagon was parked at the edge of a freeway rest stop. A human toe traced a line in the condensation as it slid down the inside of the front passenger-side window. A grey wallaby emerged from the surrounding scrub to nibble at scraps of food littered around a bank of Sulo bins. A male voice sounded from inside the car and the animal froze, then jumped away.
Mathew Allen gave a muffled scream followed by a deep groan. He opened his eyes and stared ahead in terror, looking wildly around the darkened interior of the car. He wrenched the glovebox open and closed his hand around the heel of the Kimber .38 pistol, safely stowed where he had placed it after pulling over to sleep the night before. He began to breathe normally again, replaced the gun and shut the glovebox.
His feet were cold. He pulled them up under the open sleeping bag that was wrapped around him and attempted to go back to sleep, shifting his weight repeatedly to avoid the hump of the gear shift. Eventually he gave up, pulled on his coat and struggled into a second pair of track pants. The back of the station-wagon was loaded with paint cans, several buckets and boxes. He groped among the items, found a pair of runners and put them on.