by Alan Duff
Straight across parallel to the harbour bridge, past the Opera House — from every angle and every eye demanding attention, even those of a man in turmoil. Vista of North Sydney spread out ahead — if he had eyes for any of it.
Out on the open deck, a fresh breeze, a sports bag filled with bundles of $50 notes slung over his teeshirted shoulder. His actions instinctive, not thought out as with the normal Riley Chadwick, every detail triple-checked and then some. This was reckless punter stuff, of the kind he ordinarily had no respect for. In past life he would consult with Straw, and between them they would always come up with a solution, an answer to even the biggest problem. But this was not an ordinary time. And Straw seemed far away.
Every imaginable type is attracted to racing by the money, the glamour and excitement. From business tycoons to brilliant low-odds gamblers on a mega scale, to the biggest egotists and narcissists, the shades graded all the way down to darkest, deepest black. He’d gone through the parade of people he knew on that darker side and chosen a couple whom he contacted and asked could they suggest someone ‘to help with a problem that has been well publicised’. Both had said he should stop fucking around and get to the point, of course they knew people, what kind did he want, head hunters, leg breakers, assassins, torturers, ‘they do live in our midst you know’.
Both offered to screw down the price: ‘No one likes this kind of shit,’ one said, ‘not to a beautiful young woman.’ ‘I’d consider it an honour to find the exact person or persons you want,’ said the other, ‘and go to the grave with what I know.’
Outside a café waiting for his Blackberry to ring so he could get the next arrangement, it felt like amateur day at the secret service to a man on fire with wanting revenge. He’d already sat at another café in The Rocks area, to be called by a man giving him the next rendezvous. Urge for a stiff drink — not the strong espresso he had hardly touched. The world going by, seemingly without woes like he had.
I failed her. Her father: supposed to protect her and it happened right there, under my nose, and what was I doing?
The guilt and shame of such magnitude it came down like endless sledgehammer blows. He wanted to throw up. For the ground to open so he could crawl in and die. Ran a hand through his hair, it felt dirty, like he felt all over and especially inside. You failed her.
Thank Christ for the Blackberry ringing; a man could go mad on his thoughts. ‘Are you Riley Chadwick?’
‘Yes,’ he snapped, irritated at the pause.
Even more when the man said, ‘I’m at the next café up, looking right at you.’ Riley tempted to say, That’s so clever, you’re just the type I want to do business with. Furious. Why not just meet at his hotel? Save all this melodrama bullshit.
He ended the call, stood up and a heavily built man, in a white teeshirt with gold medallion shining in the sun, lifted his sunglasses up and back down, nodded at him.
Could be the gold medallion put him off, the silly carry-on, whatever. Riley turned away and headed back to the ferry wharf.
His phone went again. ‘Yes?’
‘The fuck you doing, mate?’
‘I’m walking. You’re sitting. Stay there, finish your coffee, drop dead for all I fucking care. I don’t do melodrama.’ Call ended.
Blackberry went again. ‘What now?’
‘Listen, you fuck, I want something for going to the trouble of coming here. The fuck’s wrong with you?’
‘You’re what’s wrong with me. This is amateur night.’
‘What? Turn around and let’s have this chat. We can help you. If not …’
‘How much you wanting for showing up and playing this dumb game of spies?’
‘A grand. And I should charge two.’
‘Well you listen back, you fuck. I don’t want anything to do with one-grand players. This is a bigger stage. And if you have a threat to follow then I’ll pay ten times that to get you hurt. Understand?’
‘Listen, I want to get —’
Riley stopped on the downhill footpath, turned and faced the man he was talking to, on his feet now and pointing. ‘Know you are dealing with a man in deep pain,’ he said. ‘A man with money. That’s all.’
On the ferry he ordered a double whisky on the rocks. Took the drink outside as the harbour city loomed closer, the lucky city in the lucky country, sun glaring off the cream ceramic tiles of the Opera House, a thing of beauty that had come to define Sydney.
Beauty, the word stuck in his head. My baby, my child, my girl — all of hers now lost. Slumping into his arms for no comfort waiting.
Not tears, exhortation, constant presence, quietly spoken words, not loving stroking hands, none of it worked. None of it. So Claire had to make a decision. Or go down with her daughter.
In the two weeks Riley had been in Sydney he’d made irregular contact and even then was terse, evading her questions as to what exactly he was doing while Rome burned, and her reminders that Anna was going to perish in the flames if he didn’t return home.
‘Please, Riley. You have to get your life — our lives — back under control.’ She meant not just the family but the business as well. For all the crucial decisions were Riley’s. There was the knowledge he carried in his head, the meticulous breeding records and pedigree files he knew intimately. The hundreds of people he dealt with too. And their existing clients.
Plunging herself into work Riley should be doing after another of his one-minute calls from his atypically cheap hotel in Chinatown — on the internet it was $70 a night, cheaper for longer-term stays — Claire came across Anna’s mobile phone, battery completely flat, and left it charging. She did various farm duties and caught up with Straw to prioritise the tasks Riley normally did. Good old Straw said, ‘Leave the rest to me.’ She knew he was working incredibly long hours to make up for Riley’s absence.
Returning tired but at least feeling she was managing, she found Anna’s phone with red light glowing to say there were messages. Emptied the full message box: most of the calls from Anna’s university buddies, a couple from her cello teacher quoting Raymond Carver and of course wishing her speedy recovery, love, and that he would visit her soon.
Over a pot of green tea, Claire checked the messages sent and discovered the phone had a deletion default for messages older than a month, wiping all those frantic texts she and Riley had read in horror after Anna was found. Not that Claire wished to relive them. And doubtless she could retrieve them through a technician if ever required for a future court case, should they catch those animals.
That morning receiving Riley’s frantic call. Chartering a small plane to go to Sydney. The taxi from the airport to the private hospital where Riley had moved Anna, to the appalling sight of her poor baby, her battered face — being informed by the doctor what she had suffered. All day with her, never mind that her physical injuries were not dire, and the psychological damage was impossible to assess: Anna had the strangest look, which her mother now knew to foreshadow how she was now. Severely traumatised, a state she would emerge from, eventually, so the medical people promised.
Claire and Riley stayed overnight at the hospital, a paid room for family members of patients, though Riley’s presence aggravated Anna, for reasons neither he nor Claire understood, so he kept himself out of her room.
The police had not mentioned Anna’s cell phone. And their interview with her at the hospital bedside proved near fruitless, other than her saying there was a girl, about twenty. Three men. No, she did not know them. Then she clammed up. Had barely spoken since.
The detective in charge of the case — case, for God’s sake. My daughter’s life is now reduced to being another police case — told Claire it happened occasionally that the victim of a sex crime was so traumatised she was catatonic.
Claire now flicked through a few familiar photos on her daughter’s mobile, such as several shots of Raimona caught in his magnificence, one of him in the act of mating, God forbid. Shots of Katie, several of their father, just one of Cla
ire herself, one of the filly, Anna-Katie, yet to race but developing well. Shots of Madison, whom Claire had met on one of her rare trips to Sydney — the time Riley wanted papers signed for the new family trust with its fifteen million deposit. Maddy, as she insisted Claire call her, telephoned daily for a report on Anna. They’d just moved into the new apartment Riley had purchased; were looking for a third flatmate when this all blew up.
Claire didn’t say so to Madison, but she had more and more thoughts that the Anna of old might never return. And maybe her father too, as something in Riley’s mind seemed to have snapped. A juggernaut had hit the Chadwick family head-on.
Chapter thirty-two
Blah blah blah, if Lu’s dad wasn’t such a horrible shit he’d sound like one of those telly preachers. Except Brett O’Brien was about hate and his bitterness against the world, like whoever set the price of beer — the brewery, the several fuckin’ middle-men clipping his ticket, the publican, and before that happened there was the government alcohol tax, oh, and GST. Drew breath to take a big swig.
Ranted on at the Housing Commission having the nerve to charge rent for such a shithole in an area that could be dangerous with these young hoodlums running loose, taking drugs like ice. Never carried knives in our day, we fought fair and square. See if any of them bureaucrat bastards would come and live here, walk home of a night. Went on about the price of everything under the sun, in the shade, sitting out in the rain, long as it had a price tag he could latch his anger on to. Crushed another beer can in a weak man’s hand making out he was strong, a tough guy with aluminium a kid could crush, those eyes darting around for something to pick on: an object, say the telly programme, how someone looked, what they said, a person — his wife on a mental trip to space somewhere, prattling to herself about past days; pick on drugged-out Monica who hardly ever fired back because she was too out of it to know, just sat around shivering and smoking cigarettes like each one was her last, or maybe she did hear him but didn’t care, couldn’t care.
Then he started on Lu, when she didn’t need this shit. Not on and on for ever.
‘Think you coming home with a few bags of groceries is doing your bit for this household?’ That was how he started this morning.
So she came back at him. ‘You, mate. Never went for one kid’s walk with us, s’posed to be our old man. Not one fuckin’ swim at the beach, not one visit to Luna Park or the zoo just across the fuckin’ harbour for a few cents a ferry ride back then.’
‘Not into that, am I? And what’s so shit hot about a bloody beach? You kids would’ve only got sunburnt and bawled your bloody eyes out for days.’
‘You just weren’t into taking care of your own kids. Your whole selfish life spent looking after the big kid — you.’
‘You are looking at copping something in a minute.’
‘Whoo, am I scared, after what I’ve been through in this life? Nah. And you know what?’
You know what, you know what, you know what? It echoed in her mind.
‘I never called you Dad, not once in my life.’ Saw it hit him like a belly punch, even him. ‘And I never will. Not at your graveside, because I won’t be at your fuckin’ funeral. I’ll be out celebrating.’
Now a sudden dawning on his face. Not of guilt, it definitely didn’t look like that.
He said, ‘What d’you mean, after what I’ve been through?’
‘As if I’d tell you.’
But he was finally cottoning on. ‘Something bad happened to you …?’
‘If it did, where were you when I might’ve needed your fists to protect me?’
He was looking at her questioningly, like he was fast figuring it out. Not his part in it — missing part — but the story his daughter had never told.
‘I’m smoke,’ she said. Meaning gone like a wisp.
Chapter thirty-three
He took her quite roughly. No kissing, no foreplay, near tore her clothes off, and she was hardly ready. Still, in the circumstances, she went along with it and even tried to give back in the same crude manner. But Riley smelled of old sweat and the more pungent smell of stress. Not nice. Strong as an ox. Had to be, handling horses. Didn’t have to smell like one.
Then suddenly he stopped, moved off her and started dressing without so much as a glance — thank God, or he’d see her burning humiliation. So she got up and went through the further indignity of trying to find where he’d thrown her clothes. Damn him, he wasn’t getting in first on the verbal.
‘I suppose you’re going to blame it on what happened to your daughter?’ He just kept buttoning his short-sleeve shirt, not his usual fashionable type either. No eyes her way. ‘If so, I understand.’
He looked around for something else to occupy his hands.
‘Your “mailbox full” message can get kind of frustrating after a hundred attempts at contacting you. What are friends for?’ She didn’t expect an answer, so she went on: ‘If she’s a woman she’s there in case you want sexual relief, or inner comfort. And when you fail she’s there to make a fool of and soon blame.’
Silence.
‘Go on then, blame me,’ Bella said. ‘Blame the night, what we were doing. I can read between the lines of the newspaper reports. Got my own share of guilt.’
That got to Riley. ‘I’m sorry for just now. I really am. You can go now.’
She’d spotted him in the street during her lunch break. Followed on foot for quite some distance down lower George Street, a couple of side streets into Chinatown, stopped him as he was about to go into a very modest hotel entrance, not a foyer as such, and found him in such a dismal state he showed virtually no surprise at seeing her.
Are you staying here, at this hotel? Yes. Can we talk? Guess we can. Her idea they talk in his room. Quite a different space to the Sir Stamford. Two star, worn out, stinking of smoke. Like his breath, though he’d previously claimed strong dislike of the nicotine habit: he called it filthy and a sign of character weakness. The same man now displaying not just character weakness but a collapse of the Riley Chadwick she knew. Funny thing, this version did not completely surprise her.
‘Well, I guess I can go back to work and not feel completely used, if you know what I mean.’
And he did know. The man’s eyes lowered; they all felt less than meaningful when impotency hit them. Silly males. Never mind he was going through a personal crisis, his potency still mattered.
‘Riley Chadwick, the whole country knows your daughter has been to hell and probably still resides there. Her parents with her. The public understands. But I don’t happen to be just one of the public. So what I see I don’t understand. It’s as if you were the one attacked and brutalised that night we were —’
‘I know where we were. Can’t help this reaction. It just — it just —’ He couldn’t finish.
This required tough love, she thought. ‘Whatever you do, don’t cry. Okay? Men don’t cry. Especially not in front of a woman. Just let it bottle up inside you — looks like you’ve taken to the bottle at any rate. That’s tough. So brave. Bet your wife admires you being there for her up in the valley?’
‘Why don’t you fuck off?’
‘Because friends don’t do that when one is in need.’
‘You don’t have what I need.’
‘No. But you could try telling me, and maybe as a friend and your occasional lover I could help.’
Took some moments before he said, ‘I’m a broken man, Bell.’
‘Can see that. Why? Did someone rape you? They sodomised her, the media says. You too? Beat you up?’
‘They may as well have.’
‘Look at me, for God’s sake. Don’t talk to the fucking wall. I’ve been hurting every moment for your girl and you and, yes, your wife too.’
‘I’m trying to make up … for what happened … but I’m right out of my depth. Nowhere to turn. Too ashamed to go home.’ His voice so drained.
‘Come back here to me, Riles. Start again.’ She started removing her cloth
es. ‘Make love with me, don’t fuck me. Please, Riley. Let’s share the hurt in a dignified manner. Okay, I’m not your wife. But I am your friend — a good friend. Let’s share the hurt.’
And so they did. Except she didn’t feel it had achieved anything. This man had changed.
Her daughter shoved the mobile away.
‘But it’s your friend. Maddy. Come on, darling.’
Anna just shook her head adamantly. No.
So Claire went through the painful process of receiving Anna’s good friend from music school, saying she wasn’t ready for visitors. ‘You are welcome to stay the night. Perhaps she might be up to seeing you tomorrow?’ Thankfully, a young woman mature enough to understand and she soon left, asking that her love be passed on. In tears, poor thing. Nothing Claire could do.
Angry she didn’t have a husband to confide in, his shoulder to howl on, Claire called his hotel. An Asian receptionist with limited English finally got Riley’s name and rang through to his room. To her surprise he answered.
‘You’d better come home,’ she cut to the chase. Afraid her emotional dam would burst at just speaking to him.
‘I will,’ Riley said. ‘Soon.’
‘Doesn’t feel like you will. I don’t know where your head has gone. And is any of this making things better for our daughter? What on earth are you doing down there: surely not trying to catch these people yourself?’ The thought took root when he did not respond.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ He hung up.
In the kitchen, where sun streamed in from the verandah side, she poured herself a stiff gin. Stood at the granite bench staring at the countless horses in paddocks all with heavy railing stained dark brown, movement of three-wheelers, tractors, utes, and staff tending horses from frisky foals to family-loved old mares and stallions on their last. One horse created this, himself effectively created by one small child bonding to him. My Anna. Now with the near destruction of the girl, the business was under threat, Straw was telling her.