by Alan Duff
No way Kylie and the kids agreed to this move, they loved living in Sydney, he’d have to commute — how? By plane, one of those tiny jobs hopping its way across the desert, one crashed every week, according to the media. Maybe the family would meet him in Alice every fortnight? How had this happened?
And now he was here, with Constable McLean, looking at something he could not have imagined. At human beings, black as night, sprawled out like reptiles basking in the sun. Beds outside? Sure were, with broken men, women and children lain and playing all over them. And these were his daily charges? His fellow countrymen? Their mangy dogs snuffling around like pigs in shit. Hell, more like it.
Kev thinking: a suicide a month? Might be the suicide list would have one demoted white policeman on it.
Chapter fifty-nine
Trouble with toughs, and you didn’t even have to have much experience of them they were so fuckin’ obvious: thought they ruled the planet. Big, limited oafs who lived by the fist, the gun, whatever physical force. But he’d met the real men of the wide world, men whose achievements spanned international boundaries, big thinkers who employed thousands and juggled a hundred different enterprises. The real toughs who in the old days would have been the warlords and kings and warriors supreme and these oversize galoots would be their slaves, bodyguards at best.
Two pug-nosed thugs eyed him up and down and were waiting, he knew, for his eyes to lower in deference or just fear.
He just looked back unblinking, unflappable. Thinking: Pair of goannas, dollar a ten-pack. Known month-old foals scarier than you.
‘I’m the client,’ he said, knowing it was unnecessary. ‘You will have been told, I’m sure.’ Told no doubt by the two toughs who’d driven him here, on their boss’s orders.
Working with animals such as thoroughbreds could train you for a host of other things in life you wouldn’t normally get to put to the test. It inured you to certain things, to first-time impressions. Anything could happen, and since that was the norm then the unexpected became your norm. Try a kick from an animal who had just been responding docilely to your gentle stroking. Try six, seven hundred kilos of bred muscle exploding in sudden fury trying to crush you against a wall. Jump into a tiny enclosure with such a living force and see if it didn’t make something better of you after years and years of being tested daily. A gun could have been shoved in his face and he’d not have shown surprise. I wouldn’t even blink. Not in front of this type.
Still, never mind the hired apes at this house way out in the country — bush they’d call it in his parts — he wasn’t yet ready for the sight that greeted him. These were humans, after all. In, effectively, a cage. Except they weren’t wild, pacing restlessly and ready to pounce. No.
Two defeated men behind one-way glass sat slumped against the same wall. On a bare concrete floor, a basic bathroom of toilet bowl, basin and open shower booth. Not beaten as he might have expected in this rough company, as in black and blue. What they deserved for beating, raping — and that not being enough to satisfy them — sodomising her. Yet just lads, really. Boys right out of their depth, suffering consequences they never gave a thought to. Can’t have. Or there would be some spark, small though it might be, in either or both men’s eyes. Or denial. Not this abject sight of men in defeat.
He could almost feel sorry for them. Though he didn’t. Just somewhat taken aback. Man was not meant to be kept in captivity, even deserving man. Against his nature. You understood these things better when you’d spent your entire working life with animals. A horse was the same before it was broken in: didn’t feel right to tame it.
This lock-up cell seemed to be the territory of the two heavies inside the house, an innocuous farm property more lifestyle size, a few hectares judging by the fences. Way out past Berowra, forty kays north of Sydney. Horse country, actually: he knew the odd breeder out this way, not big players, just decent, hard-working lovers of horse flesh trying to make a bob. You’d never find this place. He wondered if there weren’t a few bodies buried here too. Funny, the option his as to the pair living or dying. That’s how much feeling there was over the Anna Chadwick incident: even strangers felt for her.
Looking through the glass separating them he was fighting with his hatred now, what his imagination was showing like a film reel of what they did to his girl. One of his three girls.
Losing awareness for too many moments of the guards; one lolled in a cane armchair usually for use outside. The other sat on a bunk in a room without a door right off this converted cage. And the two escorts outside whose laughter he could hear. Goons all. The air they inhabited was violated, tainted, even in the act of laughing.
‘I want to go in there,’ he said.
‘Not sure about that, mate.’ The one on the bunk who stood up and a big unit he was too.
‘I’ve discussed it. Call your boss if you like.’ Gave both guards a look, daring them to call his bluff.
‘They’re two young blokes in their prime,’ said the other.
‘Really?’
‘They’re desperate.’
‘And I’m not?’ he put. Pointed at himself, his chest. ‘I’m the client, remember?’
Sighing, the bunk man unlocked the heavy door with its smaller viewing window. He could see the pair look up.
‘Your call, bud,’ the bunk heavy said. ‘If they —’
‘I can handle it.’
He stepped in. Hit immediately by the smell of human waste — and stress. Stress gave off this stench.
‘Well.’ At these two pieces of shit suddenly displaying a form of remorse, of wanting him to know they’d be anywhere rather than here and please, please, get us out.
They had got to their feet by the time the door closed behind him. Not locked, he was alert enough to hear, just snibbed.
He walked up to the first, since he looked the tougher of a weak pair. Right up to him. Let him smell my breath and I’ll tolerate his.
‘Are you …?’
Am I who? The man who arranged the kidnapping? A new, older thug on the scene? Who am I — bud?
‘You’re the father …?’ the brown-skinned one asked. Fuckin’ lips trembling.
‘What if I am?’
‘We’re sorry.’ Shot a glance at his mate, who in fact did have a spark left, he saw it switch on then rapidly fade, like a torch he was hiding for a way out of here when the lights went off — if in fact they ever did.
‘What many a sinning man has said, wouldn’t you agree? Even if you knew no history, if you couldn’t even read? You’d know that many have said sorry after they’ve done the damage. Irreparable damage, invariably.’
Out of nowhere, just as the man was about to respond, the punch drove into the first and bent him there at the waist, and he toppled over, clutching his stomach, groaning.
In the other’s face in a flash. ‘And you? You want to say a bullshit sorry too?’
That spark flared up in the kid, it was more than an ember. This one had fight, he was just laying low, acting a part.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Not gonna crawl on my belly to you. You’re not —’
Got him. Not the stomach punch he was braced for, saw it in his face, but a driving head butt, assisted by hands that grabbed the man’s shirt and pulled him forward to meet his forehead — crack. Across the bridge of the nose.
Control yourself. Fuck control. He was losing it. Let the punishment start. No. Don’t lower to their standards. Or let these hirelings do it. No. Not their business. Look, you’ve broken his nose the way it’s pouring blood. So what? Not a fraction of what he — they — did to Anna. Their turn now.
Chapter sixty
Rick Duncan walked into the city central police station and asked for Detective Sergeant Ahern. Got told, Sorry, he’s been posted elsewhere. Where is elsewhere? he wanted to know. Can’t say, said the desk officer. Can I help?
No, he couldn’t. Rick wanted to ’fess up to Ahern in person, and while at it put it to the big cop he had it from the hor
se’s — the mare’s, gotta laugh — mouth he was plugging her. His niece. Not that she said he was, Rick just knew from instinct honed on knowing her the way he did over the years. The same as he’d come to own up about and take down with his ship. Except if Ahern was doing Lu, maybe he and Rick could concoct something between them that still nailed Lu and her associates, but let both him and the cop off the hook. Now that would be tidy. And something he could laugh about for some time, even if nothing could make up what she had done to him. He didn’t pin his hopes on working a story with Ahern, not with a cop. To hell with it, whatever happened Rick Duncan was prepared to go to jail, die, if necessary. Since nothing left to live for. Nothing. All Lu’s doing. Except he wasn’t prepared for ’fessing up to someone else.
‘I have important information on the Duncan case.’
‘You being the man himself?’ Cop surprised him. ‘Recognise you.’
‘I really need to talk to him.’
‘Where he’s been posted to, pal, that’ll be difficult.’
Posted? That meant demoted, didn’t it, if contact was ‘difficult’.
‘New man in charge of your case.’
His photo in the papers, on the television news. Famous, in a funny way. Except tragically famous. In a cold fury at why. Rick Duncan let out a sigh and said, ‘I’d like to be interviewed. I have something to …’ Confess. Looked away from the officer staring at him like he knew.
The desk officer said, ‘You mean about why it happened …?’
He’d read the journalist’s carefully worded piece, suggesting what he suffered was such an unusual injury to be inflicted, ‘too specific’ it said, perhaps there was something deeper behind it. Fuckin’ snooping media dingoes, feed off anyone.
Rick feeling suddenly exposed. And elderly too, if a month shy of sixty. He just turned away from the copper’s staring gaze.
Lu, fighting back from crying.
It was everything it shouldn’t be. As if her body — no, the real me — was incapable of accepting the act out of love, even close friendship she thought would be enough.
But no, it was just another man humping her, going up and down on a girl soon turning twenty-one — though a whole lot more gentle than any other man. He kept pausing to ask if she was okay. And she lied and said oh yes. When I wasn’t okay.
Okay? Nah, Rock, about the complete fuckin’ opposite of okay. You were right: I’m not well. I’m sick. Like to the core of me sick. Who cares it’s not my fault.
Was Anna Chadwick getting on with life because what happened to her was not her fault? Not what her mother said. Lu and the guys had taken away her life. Or so it must feel, when Lu could tell Anna Chadwick one swallow didn’t make a summer. Nah, that didn’t quite cut it. You did that to her, sick bitch: took her life.
A wondering back of her mind why Mrs C hadn’t been back in touch: she did say she would write, if Lu wrote first since Mrs C quite rightly assumed another address would be given. And Lu had dropped her a line just to say Thanks for meeting with me, thanks for listening to my side and doesn’t matter if you feel I’m still in the wrong, I’m coming to terms with that now at any rate.
‘Was it all right for you?’ As if she need ask. Embarrassing that he still lay on top of her but taking most his own weight on those muscled arms of his, smiling down at her.
‘I’m a bloke,’ Rocky said. Say no more, just grinning. As if it was obvious. But what is obvious? What am I not getting here?
‘Good,’ she said.
‘I’ve had better.’
‘Well thanks.’ Tried to push him off her but way too strong.
‘Our first time, what did you expect?’ He had the gall to be grinning.
She shrugged, couldn’t say it. Shrugged again to take eyes away from his gaze in the same movement.
His look when he told her, ‘I want love with my sex.’
‘That’s what you got.’ Yet she didn’t believe she’d conveyed it well, not at all. Love? What was that?
He just smiled some more and said, ‘We got the morning off.’ What, to try again? Please, surely you don’t want more of that?
‘It’s Sunday. Why just the morning?’
‘Six-and-a-half-day week I promised myself.’
‘Oh? On my behalf too? We worked all day last Sunday.’
‘You’re a thirty per cent partner,’ he said.
Oh? ‘No, it’s twenty per cent. And are you deducting from my wages to pay for this, like, shareholding?’
‘Accountant is. Whole thing’s hunky-dory.’
‘Where’d you get that saying from? Does it mean good or bad?’
‘Means you got another ten per cent, so you’re even more tied to me.’
‘Oh yeah? After that performance? Surprised you didn’t take back ten per cent.’ But pleased. In fact gob-smacked. At the increased shareholding not the sex — couldn’t call it love-making.
‘I think you’re beautiful. Remember, from when I first saw you?’
‘You never said that. Said I was so pretty. Think I would forget that? Kev fuckin’ Eveready battery used to tell me I was beautiful, all the time.’ Then thought to add, ‘And then was good old Uncle Rick who never stopped telling me I was ugly.’ As in: so who do you believe?
Rocky’s eyes stayed warm. ‘Yeah. So where is Kev now?’ Her lit-up eyes said she knew where. In fact they had got his location on Google Earth. And talk about remote. ‘De-mote to the re-mote,’ she quipped to Rock. Ha-fuckin’-ha. Justice. Though she had thought the same about Rick when only a matter of time —
Didn’t get to finish the thought.
‘My cop contact?’ Rocky was saying. Yes …? ‘Who told us about the photos we took and sent to Kev’s boss?’ Yes … ‘Says Rick came in to make a confession.’
‘He did?’ Didn’t seem possible. ‘Tell me he didn’t.’
‘Can’t if he did.’
‘So he takes me down with him?’
Rocky didn’t look at all concerned. Lu not sure if he was playing with her head. He rolled off her. Great body, those six-pack abs. Pity about things her end. We coulda been a great item, she said wryly in her mind.
Rocky beside her now, in her hair actually, the same his hand was gently stroking, soft as butter. She’d once said to him, ‘You’re as soft as steel.’ Had to wait a moment for him to get it and then he laughed.
‘Tell you what happened …’
Chapter sixty-one
Not in his plan there’d be two of them, cops, to make the sort of confession he was going to. Made such a difference two in a room against him. Well, not against, since he hadn’t begun and likely wouldn’t if it was going to feel this uncomfortable.
But once he’d got off to a shaky start the words did start to sort of flow. If with chunks of the tale left out. And one cop, Lyall was his name, kept taking him back to restart, give more detail which pissed Rick off because they were just supposed to be listening, taking down notes and recording this. Why he kept glossing the story over, being his sly, cunning old self that had managed to get away with this for so many years. Till the little bitch did that. Her turn now.
‘Hold it, hold it.’ Lyall again. Interrupting, interrupting all the damn time. ‘Take us back …’
Rick didn’t know any detectives, no reason to. DS Kevin Ahern was the first one he ever met, and now he had two more examples in front of him in this interview room, wondered if they were all so big and intimidating, even if Blair the other one seemed quite pleasant, hardly said boo.
‘It starts,’ Lyall prompted —
‘No. She starts. Get this right. She comes on to me — what age did I say?’
‘I forget. Remind us, Ricky.’
Made him feel warm inside being called Ricky. A simple y added and what a difference.
‘Ten, going on eleven.’
‘You told us eight.’
‘No, I told you she was eight when I started to realise the little — she was coming on to me.’
‘At eig
ht?’
‘When you see her, you’ll know what I mean. Like, she wasn’t your normal eight-year-old kid, believe me. Little ti— breasts, even then.’
‘At eight?’
‘Did I say eight? Thought I said going on eleven?’
‘You said eight.’
‘All right, but I never said penetration took place did I?’
‘No,’ Lyall said, sighing. ‘You did not. Can you verify that, Blair?’
‘Verified, Sarge.’ Blair wrote in his note pad, spoke it out: ‘Pen-e-tray-shun, said Mr Duncan, did not take place when …’
Fuck him.
‘Please, continue, Mr Duncan.’
‘Mr Duncan’, now? ‘She used to dance in front of me. I mention that?’
‘Nooo …’
‘Like a belly dancer.’
‘What age are we talking about here — nine, ten? Going on eleven?’
‘Oh, let’s see now … I’d say nine. Like, she was cottoning on fast to what she was doing to me and —’
‘And what were you doing to her at this stage, Ricky?’
Good. Back to friendly. ‘Let’s call her ten, for argument’s sake.’
On Rick went for a bit, conjuring from his imagination young precocious Lu the not-so-innocent driving a man — ‘Any of us men, right?’ — not that the cops concurred with that — ‘wild with, well, desire. Who wouldn’t be?’
‘Um …’ Good. Now Lyall is listening, confronted by the truth. ‘Can you tell us what, uh, sexual activity — if any — took place after she finished doing this belly dance in front of you?’
‘Didn’t say it was an actual belly dance. Just like it. What I said —’ Whoa, no you don’t. Not rushing in that fast. Rick’s mind going a hundred miles an hour now.
Couldn’t say it. Only by gesture, universal sign for masturbation. Relieved when both cops gestured back, like, it was what every male knew and did, had done to him if he was lucky. By a female, of course. A bloke’s not a queer.