by Alan Duff
Back up at the Macquarie Street buildings, the Chifley Tower dominated. That was a city right there, just metres separated them. There was Sandy Tulloch’s building, twenty-three storeys. Not so many minutes ago she’d been on the top floor taking in the lovely view of city lights. And there, the Sir Stamford, where her father would be staying the night.
Looking up at the couple on the top-floor balcony— something familiar about them. Then she knew why. It’s my father.
My father with a woman leaning her head on his shoulder — a woman?
The daughter’s fingers found the keys to text him: dad im in truble bad truble plse plse help.
Screaming was out of the question. He might not hear, it would declare her whereabouts to her attackers and anyway, she could hear running feet — or could she feel their vibrations in the ground?
Fingers firing out another message. In botanic gardns rite in front of u men after me plse dnt ring jst cm dwn to park acros frm hotel dnt ring im hidg plse answr dad.
His head turned away. On hearing the text-received signal — had to be. Please, Dad. Please, please, please. Your baby’s in trouble. Rai’s little best girl is going to die. Fired off another text. In trubl in trubl have fone on vibrate but cm down 2 front of hotel.
Habit drew Riley to just take a peek at his Blackberry. ‘Horses sleep at nights same as we do, don’t they?’
Turning back to her with a smile he said, ‘Yes. Though you can look out at a paddock quite late at night and still see their standing forms.’
‘But the humans in the business take a break from it, right?’
‘They do.’ He took her hand. Another damn text signal. And, by the time he led her indoors, yet another. Anna, no doubt. Claire more a caller type; in fact she rarely sent a text.
Astonishingly, yet another signal. What could possibly be so urgent? Could be one of the valuable mares had a major problem with her foaling. Thinking he might just take a look, at least to see who was sending them.
Oh, to hell with it. Claire would phone if problems at Galahrity. Damn phone buzzed once more — Shut up. I’ve got other business to tend to.
In the bedroom, where red rose petals were sprinkled all over the bed, she giggled briefly, then started frowning. ‘It looks like blood in a way, does it to you?’
‘Blood? Nope. Looks like romance.’
‘Overdone romance.’
‘Didn’t think there could be such a thing. Not in the context.’
‘Such a blood-like colour, not sure I like it. Something obvious about it. Is the idea to make love with them beneath our bodies?’
Enough, he thought. ‘Beneath, beside, doubtless stuck to the generated perspiration, in our hair, all over the fucking room I should hope,’ he replied. Drop the bullshit now.
Except that was the word she used. ‘This really is bullshit, Riles.’
The music had run its course on the stereo. Stepping up to the bed, Riley grabbed the cover and yanked it on to the floor, top side down. ‘Making love on a bed cover is not nice anyway,’ he said like an announcement, a reclaiming of the high ground, the man’s territory, close to where the basic, primal action was about to take place.
‘Why sheets were invented,’ he said: ‘to make the cleaning up afterwards easy.’
At least she smiled her approval and now unbuttoned her top. Her eyes never leaving his as her garments fell off.
A bomb could go off now for all he cared. His phone text signal did.
part two
Chapter twenty-eight
Funny, isn’t it: scores of cops on the case, they say, and I’m among the suspects they’re looking for and who should be pumping me?
‘Fair dinkum, Lu honey, you are seriously beautiful. I could even fall for someone like you.’
Yeah, if I wasn’t so ugly once he’s finished, closed the zip curtain on tonight’s play, see you at the next performance, eh, love? If ever I was looking for a prick like this.
Right now doing it with him — a police detective, and more demanding and regular than Rick — a way to keep from being eaten alive by guilt. Don’t want to think about it. Silly bitch that night shouldn’t have fought back. Copped Bron and Jay at the wrong time; me too. We’d been running into defeat at every turn. Why shouldn’t you have a turn, Miss Anna Jane Chadwick?
But hell, rape not in the plan. Not as if I look at every beautiful young woman and want her to suffer like I did, do I? And if she’d said she would be happy to talk to me I could have and would have stopped things, called the boys off. Fuckin’ idiot I am, I should’ve seen their different excitement, how easily they agreed with my bullshit story we were just going to have fun and grab her bag and likely cop a nice sum of cash.
Like dogs straining on leashes. I started to realise when we were standing by a tree in the Gardens, waiting for her to come out of that building same as we’d done three nights last week to get her pattern. Not as if us being there in the Botanic was in itself suspicious, not with Jay coming up with the bright idea to carry wine bottles around with us like we were drunks, and some do start young. Wore baseball caps turned to two o’clock to reflect our age, mainly to hide under the shadow the brim throws at night.
I should’ve heard the sex in their talk. Maybe a part of me wanted that for the girl — for Anna Chadwick — to get a taste of what others suffer? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
So here we go again, same CD playing, should be called ‘Uh-uh’ or ‘Plant my Stiffy’. This is a cop. The last one was my uncle. Who’s next? One of my brothers? Bron, Deano, Jay? And if I get caught on this one, guess it’s the lezzie brigade waiting for me in prison. Some hand got dealt to you, Lu O’Brien.
So Detective Sergeant Kevin Ahern turned her over in his bed in a suburban house out Newtown way. Family photos on the bedside table, three happy-looking kids from nine to about thirteen, a boy, a girl, a boy. Wife looked a nice sort, quite good looking, a little on the chubby side, like one of her starter junk-food customers soon to be fattened up. Doing the business in the same bed he must do it with her. Does he have an erection problem with wifey too? Has to inflict pain to get it up? Calls himself ‘all man’.
Look who’s talking. Where was your conscience with the Chadwick girl? ‘Sodomised!’ the headline read. To go with ‘Raped and …’ With ‘Viciously assaulted Hunter Valley woman …’ and the details of what she’d been doing, how she ended up where she did — Because you fuckin’ lured her, Lu.
Used false crying, every little trick to bring one Anna Chadwick deeper into the planned garden forest where waited — God, doesn’t bear thinking about.
Hump on, mister police offi cer. Turn me over, do me from behind. Punish this ugly bitch. Then you can shoot me dead when you’ve shot your bolt.
Chapter twenty-nine
Somewhere Claire had read that when a major event happens it is quite unlike your worst imaginings: you don’t collapse into a heap, plummet into inconsolable misery, break out in primal screaming, no.
You find calmness waiting there for you, inner strength you didn’t think you had. Well, so far, not true.
Eight, or was it nine, unspeakably painful weeks had passed like this and the pain did not let up it got worse, as Anna’s mental, emotional state remained unchanged, this girl — young woman but a mother’s baby, always that — returned abruptly from her studies in Sydney as if of no further use as a human. This wreck of a person Claire knew better than anyone — even herself — in the whole world, her most precious treasure, along with Katie, handed back in pieces.
People could not have been more helpful and well-meaning. Just about everyone shed tears for daughter and mother, for the family; no one she considered a friend proved otherwise, quite the opposite: the closest had not only rallied around Claire, they formed up like a trio of bodyguards there for her at all times. Her parents too; got to the point she had to diplomatically ask her mother and father to give her and Anna space. They understood.
As for Straw Mathews
, not just Riley’s right-hand man — you’d think it was his own daughter the way he popped over from work at every opportunity, just to sit there. Often Claire would come into the room to find the man, like Riley’s older brother except he missed out on the good looks, on the chair by Anna talking quietly like some family doctor to a patient who could not or would not hear. Sweet man. Part of the family, and if he was not a bachelor with no one else the family would still have adored him. Straw just had them and his beloved horses, every single one of the three hundred and seventy-two known to him by name.
Straw’s presence she minded less than her well-meaning friends, whom she sometimes found cloying. Claire wanted her own space, just her and her girl — no matter that Anna slept so many hours of the day. Maybe that sleep was the healing process? God, let it be that and not final disconnection from the world.
Moved herself into the girls’ living room the first few weeks to stay close, even though Anna acted as if her mother did not exist. She functioned as if back to child basics, except a child didn’t menstruate and have the mother clean up — a relief though that she was at least not pregnant to the rapists. Something which would have sorely tested Claire for she did not believe in abortion, while Riley would not have considered for one moment his daughter having a child in such circumstances. They would have argued over that, and Claire would have felt guilty and high-minded defending a principle and yet would have acted according to her conscience, which did not agree with abortion.
Anna Chadwick with the bright, limitless future: in one fell swoop the black crow had snatched away a mother’s child.
Claire had a memory of years ago that time could never bury: a friend, Laura Cunningham — a young mother of just twenty-three — had lost her husband and two little children in a boating tragedy. Well, she proved the wisdom that adversity brings out the best in people for she was all steel. So much so that a twenty-two-year-old Claire Jennings noticed that often it was Laura who gave others comfort, gave of her greater strength. A young woman whose world had been completely shattered and yet she had something left to give of herself.
Claire, being courted then by Riley, nonetheless spent a lot of time with Laura; they talked about the different qualities the deceased children had, pored over family photographs, Claire doing the weeping it seemed on her stoic friend’s behalf. Laura even got Claire talking of the excitement of her budding relationship with Riley, their wedding plans, building a new house — a new life. Of having children, and Claire mindful of the reminder in having a chuckle about the mundane lifestyle in the ’burbs and the two-point-two children syndrome.
Then Laura said, ‘I would have settled for the point-two. Now I would.’ And gave a most chilling laugh. She took her own life five years later.
When Anna was brought home in Sandy Tulloch’s helicopter after nine days in a private hospital, her father had naturally gone to put his arms round his daughter — only to be rejected in an outburst of blood-chilling screaming. In her bedroom when he tried again, she threw a glass that just missed him and shattered on the wall. It was as if it were he who had committed the gross act against her.
Eventually Claire started noticing Riley’s absences in Sydney were getting longer, and he came home each time even more changed; he grew more distant, took no interest in his appearance or the business. Just sat in his office and brooded, rejecting Claire when she wanted to talk, share the pain since it was equally theirs. Seemed this had broken him.
A transformed house, Anna evidently catatonic, a husband how he was, and Katie? Well, she had always been a problem, and communicating with her parents in the last couple of years had not been her strong suit. What happened to Anna had made it worse. It was like a nightmare, watching her family receding further and further into the distance and nothing she could do to stop it.
A line from the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins coming to her: ‘Why do sinners’ ways prosper? … Oh, the sots and thralls of lust do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, sir, life upon thy cause.’
The world had come to an end.
Chapter thirty
Deano thinking seriously about jumping — off a fuckin’ bridge, a tall building, from a tree with a rope attached — life not worth living. I hate myself for what happened. Had no intention of it turning into rape, just wanted to cop a feel, let the others get her on the ground, helped hold her down, but when they set into her I didn’t hang around. I’m no rapist, I didn’t do it. Didn’t save her either. Hate myself, hate them.
Stinking hot day. Flies in a feeding frenzy on everyone’s sweat — probably smelled impending death on him too.
‘Well, if it isn’t young Deano,’ the voice said from behind him. ‘AKA Pat.’ Had to be him, cunning old bastard with his impeccable timing.
Deano turned and said, ‘Owen. Be past your drink start-time, old man. You’ll be shaking all over any minute.’
‘Thought it’d be you doing the shaking, kid. My only fear is lacking the price of a drink. More’n I can say for you.’
‘Oh? Is that right? What would I have to fear other than a stupid old prick who stuck his nose in my business and I made the mistake of buying him beers for two weeks solid?’
But a cold chill swept through him on even this stinker of a day.
‘You’ve been at it again, son. Told you I should’ve been a detective. Just couldn’t have kept the hours cops work, not with my born need for a drink.’
‘Not born with it, mate. You made the choice.’ Mistake, Deano, he knew the instant it left his mouth.
‘We all make those. Don’t we, son?’ Owen said, but hadn’t rushed in with the retort. Took his time in adding, ‘This is the second biggie you’ve made.’
Went through the denial process a bit longer — a ping-pong game, between the sixty-plus drinker with the pock-marked nose and sunken lips like stone steps worn down, and the troubled young man of twenty-two.
‘They’re looking for three young men,’ Owen said. ‘And a woman accomplice same age, early twenties.’
‘For what — the next Olympics?’
‘Life’s turned on you, hasn’t it, son?’
‘Has it?’
‘Like it does to our breed, our class. Why you did what you did, I figure —’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Because it felt like the life you were running away from had grabbed you back.’
‘Drunks sure talk a load of shit.’
‘Castrated a man. Raped and beat a young woman. According to the papers, did the anal on her too. Disgusting. Surprised you’d be a part of that.’
‘I wasn’t. Let me smell if you’re drunk already.’
‘Had a wee hair of the dog. But not drunk, young man. Far from it.’
‘So go tell your theory to the cops, see if they listen to an old soak.’
Owen just stared, the look of the man who felt he had the upper hand. ‘I might. You never know.’
‘If you get there.’
‘Not in you, Deano.’
‘Try me.’
‘I can just up and leave and you’ll never know if I went to the cops or not.’
‘They wouldn’t arrest me first up. Just swoop, bang me around, read me my rights, ask questions, then release me. Lay charges second time round. Time to find you, old man. You hear?’
‘No. You be hearing me now. You have a problem. So have I. We can meet in the middle and solve both. Hear me out.’
Not as if Deano was off walking away.
‘I worked for the pub bookie for years, till they died out like the other Aussie dinosaurs. Like our cops, once among the most corrupt in the Western world. Our own home-grown gangsters, now consigned to history. Like my earning capacity, despite my huge capacity for the demon drink. You getting me?’
‘Nah. Don’t think so, mate.’
‘I think you are. In return for holding my tongue on your crimes —’
‘I took no part in the actual.’
‘And I believe y
ou.’ Though he looked long and hard at Deano. ‘In return, I’ll show you how to make a decent sum of money the easy way, not the criminal mug’s way. Care to walk with me? My thirst is coming on something terrible.’
‘Nope. Got other stuff to do,’ said Deano.
‘Well you might. But I don’t think you have a choice. You see, I wrote down all the details of what you called my theory, so if I give the nod my lawyer, a very capable bloke despite the same drinking problem, he has the sealed envelope. Right out of a spy plot, yes?’
The old fellow chuckling and so far Deano still following him.
‘I’ll show you a world where pain, shame and defeat reside. But in among that pain and haunting are spare dollars, multiplied by thousands every week.’
He stopped. He did smell of booze, so it was more a leg of the dog he’d had.
‘Give me enough to feed my addiction and the rest is yours, young man.’ Pushed the odour of his boozer’s breath closer as people and traffic went by in a constant throb, like the sun beating down. ‘Your life will change.’ He stepped closer, oblivious to a city going by. ‘I can give you back your life.’
The one I’ve been seriously thinking about ending? Deano could easily have said to him. Aloud he said, ‘You’re full of shit, you know that?’ Knowing he’d be in this man’s company for some while.
Chapter thirty-one
Riley took a ferry from Circular Quay to Milsons Point, still numb but of mind enough to think of his wife reacting to the apostrophe needed in Milsons. But not of the woman herself, his wife.
Had shut down every feeling to do with matrimony, marriage vows, what he owed the relationship and had let down. In a way it felt like a horse race: his blinkers were on, he couldn’t see anything but the track in front of him. Only difference was, this was a race to the death, that was how darkly significant it felt.