by Marele Day
Carol was shaking her head. ‘It’s just the business you’re in. We’re in,’ she said. ‘No-one ever dies “accidentally”, they’re always murdered. No-one crosses the road because they want to get to the other side, they’re going over there to do a drug deal.’ She finished off the wine in her glass. ‘You don’t know any of that. And besides,’ she said darkly, ‘if on the remote chance any of it were true, how are you going to prove it?’
‘Cases can always be reopened. At any time,’ I reminded her. ‘Yes,’ she sighed, ‘technically they can. But it’s a long time ago. Memories and bloodstains fade. He was cremated, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t even got a body to exhume.’
The bottle of wine was empty and Carol didn’t want another. She was going home to do boring things like iron some shirts for the office. I signalled Luis to bring the bill. Carol said to give her a ring, if I wanted to talk. About anything. She meant about Steve, I could tell. I’m sure she thought I was pursuing this matter with my father to take my mind off other things. She was wrong. When I want to take my mind off my personal problems I drink.
I walked her to the door, waved her goodbye and watched her drive off in her smart red car. Then I went to the bar and ordered a bottle of Scotch from Jack. The one I keep under my bed for special occasions was almost empty.
Back in my room I got out a red marker pen and drew a horizontal line about a third of the way down the new bottle. Enough to let my mind deviate from its usual pathways but still able to think productively.
There’s nothing so pleasing as breaking the seal of a new bottle, seeing the glow of honey-coloured liquid. The first shot I had neat so I could feel the fire. In my mouth, down my throat, all the way down to the intestines. Then I poured a modest amount in a glass and topped it up with soda and a slice of lime. I opened the French doors to let in some air and lay there on the floor, propped up on my elbows. Laughter wafted up from downstairs, crickets pulsed out the sound of summer.
I had the door open but no messages were coming through. I took out the postmortem report and leafed through it. I’d read it so many times I almost knew the thing off by heart. It was a pity there were no photos. When a body comes into the morgue now it is videoed, so you have three-dimensional shots of it. But they weren’t doing that back in 1985.
Cremated, nothing left. A box of ashes at Rookwood and some specimens in the morgue. I couldn’t really stick that on the mantelpiece. This was morbid. I put the drink aside and went out onto the balcony. Maybe a pet would take my mind off things. A low-maintenance pet such as a bird or a fish. I didn’t like being cooped up, what made me think a fish would enjoy swimming round and round in circles? That’s what Carol thought I was doing—swimming round and round in circles, not even recognising my own reflection in the glass.
I could hear a car horn honking. It was Mrs Fields from across the road. Someone was parked outside her house, in the place she considered her parking spot. It happened at fairly regular intervals, not surprising seeing she lived opposite a pub. She slammed the car door and marched into the bar. I couldn’t see it or hear it but I knew what was happening. She’d give Jack the rego number and make him get the owner to move the car. ‘And next time I’ll call the police!’ she’d announce with a menacing twirl of her umbrella. From somewhere or other she’d managed to obtain a No Parking sign which usually stood outside her house, but someone must have moved it. One of these days she was going to get really fed up and smash a window with that umbrella, do some real damage.
Damage. Maybe the damage had repaired itself … the liver is one of the few organs in the body that can regenerate itself. I sifted back through my conversations with everyone involved. With Lucy, with Kirby, with Brian, Hindley and Carol.
Mrs Fields marched down the street. There was her No Parking sign, in front of someone else’s house, doing what it was supposed to do. The whole street was parked out except for this space. She picked up the sign and moved it back outside her house. As far as anyone else was concerned, if the sign said No Parking then it was no parking. But the sign had been moved, and though it had been short-lived, a different place had become the No Parking zone.
I sifted through all the conversations to come back to the thing that had caught my attention in the first place. The state of the body. Too healthy for the life my father was supposed to have led. I had gone from that anomaly to thinking there were suspicious circumstances. Then it struck me. As I watched Mrs Fields moving the parking sign it all fell into place.
The only ID was a Social Security form in the name of Guy Francis Valentine. There was nothing else—no wallet, no personal items, nothing. All the time I’d taken it for granted. Like the No Parking sign. Because a piece of paper found on the body had Guy Francis Valentine printed on it, I assumed that the body was Guy Francis Valentine. But what if it wasn’t? Like the No Parking sign, that piece of paper could be moved. Perhaps for some reason my father couldn’t return the form that day and a friend was doing it for him. Perhaps my father had lent the deceased his coat and the form happened to be in it.
Mistaken identity. If only the morgue had kept photographic records back in 1985 the problem could be solved instantly. But they had kept something. They had kept something. I went to the report and flipped through the pages.
Specimens retained: Tissue for histology. Blood retained for storage.
They’d kept blood. And some of that blood ran through my veins.
I dialled Dr Kirby’s number so quickly the first time that I misdialled and had to do it again. I told him what I wanted to try. He said he was sure it could be done but perhaps I should speak to his wife. He called her to the phone. I asked her how long specimens were retained.
‘Indefinitely.’
‘Even ones taken in 1985?’
‘Yes,’ she said. I told her what I wanted to do. She said there was no problem with that. All I needed to do was to bring a sample of my blood. She offered to take the sample for me if I wanted. Could I come to the morgue tomorrow morning? The earlier the better, the more the day wore on the busier she got. I said yes, that would be fine. I would be there when the doors opened.
I stopped drinking, put the bottle of Scotch away for the night. Tomorrow my blood was going to be scrutinised and I wanted it to look as good as possible.
FOURTEEN
Vince Reynolds was someone I’d met through Steve. Once we were all happy couples—Vince and Judy, Claudia and Steve. We’d go out for dinner, play pool, maybe go to the movies. I’d seen Vince once or twice since he and Judy split up but not recently. Steve and Vince had known each other for years, they used to go abseiling and caving with the university Speleological Society. But I hadn’t called him up to discuss outdoor pursuits. At the time I met him he worked at the Youth Crisis Centre at Kings Cross. He knew as much about runaway children as anybody. We were meeting near the El Alamein Fountain in the heart of the Cross. There were places we could sit and talk and it was about five minutes walk from the Crisis Centre itself.
I got there first. I was up early anyway. I’d been to see Sofia Theodourou at the morgue and now had a small Bandaid over the place near the crook of my elbow where she’d taken blood. I didn’t mind the short wait, in Kings Cross there was always plenty to look at. In the daytime all kinds of people hung out at the Cross, from film makers to street people. But they didn’t hang out together. Unless one was using the other as their subject. Each group seemed to have their own map of the area. One group’s main thoroughfares were the other group’s back alleys.
I saw Vince walking towards me. White T-shirt with big sleeves, blue jeans, shiny, shoulder-length hair. He looked so clean he almost glowed. He broke into a broad grin when he saw me. ‘How’re you doing?’ he greeted me.
‘Great. Couldn’t be better,’ I lied. ‘See that guy over there, the one all the others are listening to? It’s Bruce Malone, isn’t it?’
Vince turned to see where I was loo
king. ‘Yeah. I’ve seen him round here before.’
Bruce Malone was one of the high fliers of the eighties, one that managed to avoid going to jail. Old developers never die, they just go quiet for a while then turn up somewhere else. Not that Malone was old. In fact, he looked in pretty good shape. He was surrounded by a bevy of male beauties. Too casually but carefully dressed to be real estate agents, no suits so they weren’t businessmen, a little too healthy to be drug dealers.
‘How’s life in the education system?’ Vince had done his time at the Youth Crisis Centre in the Cross and was now working three days a week as a school counsellor.
‘Calmer. Flatter,’ he said after a while. ‘More successes but less rewarding, if you know what I mean.’
‘Who do you reckon those blokes are?’ I said. One of the male beauties was now standing out in the middle of the street holding a mobile phone up to his ear as if it were a comforter. The thumb of the other hand was casually hooked into the pocket of his pleated trousers. Must get better reception that way. Not that I have anything against mobile phones, I have one myself. But at least I turn mine off when I’m out in company.
‘They don’t look like social workers,’ commented Vince. ‘Film Industry?’
‘Not enough beards. Well, not for feature films. Maybe it’s Advertising.’
A big pink Thunderbird convertible came shimmering down the street. The driver had long blond hair, a headband and wrap-around sunglasses. He stopped in front of the group and let off a guy in a billowing white shirt, slim black trousers and with a video camera. In the end we were both right. They were in Advertising and they were making a video.
Further down the street was a tall brown-skinned girl who couldn’t have been much more than fifteen, the same age as Madalena. Her face was still plump and smooth. A recent arrival.
I told Vince that I had a case involving a runaway girl and that I wanted to pick his brain.
‘What exactly do you want to know?’ he asked.
‘Nothing exactly. Everything in general. Give me an idea of the terrain.’
‘First of all, is it a runaway or a throwaway?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Runaways are the kids whose parents—one or both—want them back. Throwaways, the parents don’t want them. Mum and Dad split up, Mum gets a new boyfriend. She’s spending time with the new man, she doesn’t want the kid hanging round. Or the new man doesn’t want the kid around. Kid feels insecure, gets a bit difficult, things get rough and it just snowballs.’
A man was standing in front of the girl now. A man wearing jeans and a windcheater. He asked her something, she answered. But she didn’t look at him.
Vince continued, ‘I had a client at the Centre, a guy fifteen or sixteen. He had a few problems but not radical. He comes home from school one day and all the locks are changed. He can’t get into his own house. So that night he sleeps in the park. The next day he rings his mother at work and tells her about the locks. The mother says, “So?” The kid says, “I’m going to commit suicide if you don’t let me come home.” “Do it,” says the mother, and hangs up. So he came to the Crisis Centre.’
The girl got up and walked down the street with the man.
‘He did. They don’t all do that straightaway. The Crisis Centre is just that. We deal with crises, not the long term. It’s temporary accommodation only. Three nights maximum while we try to find them somewhere else—long or medium term refuges in the suburbs. Some kids come to us as the last resort, they can’t take life on the streets anymore, they want to come back in.’
Vince was talking in the present tense, as if he was still there. ‘You never really left, did you?’ I said softly.
He’d been doing it without realising it. ‘You see stuff there you never forget,’ he explained. ‘There are kids that I …’ his voice trailed off. ‘Your whole value system changes, the way you measure success. You might think that you have succeeded when the child is restored to her family and they’re all living happily ever after. No. Up here success is when you get them to practise safe sex, to use the needle exchange.’
She was back, the girl on the street. Licking an Icy Pole, getting the bad taste out of her mouth.
Vince was launched now, talking animatedly. ‘Think of it as a holiday camp. Friendships are formed but they’re transient. The kids get close to each other quickly because for many of them, they only have each other. They’ve been abused by parents, uncles, figures of authority. They don’t trust adults. We’d get guys coming in there, middle-aged men. Well dressed, respectable. They’d say they’d seen a kid on the street, that they could provide a good home. Their motives are far from philanthropic. But sometimes the kid chooses that option. Shacks up with the older man for three or four months. Sex for shelter. At least it’s with the devil you know. Then the kid loses his fresh-faced look, his innocence, and the man chucks him out and looks for sweeter meat.
‘The kids make friends with each other because in one way or another they share the same predicament. Then the person you thought was your best buddy vanishes into thin air. They get busted, they go missing. Even from the streets.’
The girl on the street could have been Madalena. She could have been my own daughter. ‘It couldn’t happen to any kid, could it?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if the kid is resourceful, strong; it couldn’t happen.’
‘At the Crisis Centre we’d get kids from all different backgrounds, from the North Shore, from Blacktown, different ethnic backgrounds. There’d usually be some disruption in the family, abuse of some kind. The kids have low self-esteem, the people who should love them the most abuse them, the people who should be their strength are unreliable. They’re like baby birds pushed out of the nest before they can fly. So they flounder around on the streets. They have no skills, the girls go into prostitution to get the money to survive and it’s so unbearable, they take drugs to dull the pain-marijuana, pills. Heroin eventually. Then they’re caught in the vicious circle. They need the money from prostitution to buy the drugs to make the prostitution bearable. Sometimes the payment for sex is in drugs.’
The girl on the street had disappeared again. In my mind I was making up a life for her. She wouldn’t get caught in that vicious cycle, despite the faraway look in her eyes. She was dreaming of the country from where she came, of Lismore, Moree. She was only down here temporarily. She was writing home every week telling her folks she’d be home soon. She had a really good job. And she’d be home soon.
I looked further down the street, to a girl sitting with her head bent, eyelashes black in her stark white face. She was wearing shorts, socks and Doc Martens, bruises on the legs. Everything on the outside of her shouted, I’m here for the taking. Everything on the inside of her shouted desperation. But the shouts coming from the insides of a person are rarely heard.
‘The street kids are easy prey. Low self-esteem, abuse. They become victims, if they’re not victims already. It’s not just sexual abuse. When kids go missing, sometimes they’re found alive, sometimes they’re found dead. And sometimes they’re never found.’
There were young girls, and boys, on the street who were prostitutes—drug users, many of them with only a few years left to live. There were old men lying in the park too drunk to brush away the flies settling on their weeping sores. There were ex-property developers producing corporate videos. There were people meeting each other for coffee in the trendy cafes, going shopping, doing deals. Sunny Sydney, most beautiful harbour in the world.
Nothing that Rosa had told me led me to believe that Madalena was an abused child. There’d been a fight with her father and she’d left. She wasn’t on the streets, she was living in shared accommodation. Kerry told me she was smart enough not to hitch. If she was anything like Kerry she’d walk confidently around these streets.
But even a streetwise kid like Kerry had been attacked. And Madalena had disappeared. It was one thing that she was missing as far as her parents were concerned. It was another matt
er entirely that now even her friends didn’t know where she was. One day she simply didn’t come home. If a runaway child suspects someone’s on her trail she runs even further. But it was different now. ‘I think it’s time we visited the Crisis Centre,’ I said to Vince.
We walked. There was a dero sitting on a milk crate at the corner of the street, the best place in the world to watch the comings and goings of the street. He had a can of beer in one hand and an empty on the ground in front of him.
‘G’day, mate. ‘Ow’re ya gain’?’ he said to Vince. ‘’Aven’t seen you around for a while.’
‘How are you, Marius?’ Vince took the hand that Marius offered.
‘Can’t complain, mate, can’t complain.’ They talked on. The words weren’t always comprehensible, but you didn’t need to hear every word to have a conversation.
‘This is my mate Claudia,’ Vince introduced me.
As he had with Vince, Marius offered me his hand. I took it. The hand was sticky, hopefully only from the beer he was drinking.
‘You pretty much know what goes on around here, don’t you, Marius?’ Marius nodded wisely. ‘You see the kids come and go, you hear the whispers.’ Vince was giving me the opportunity to ask Marius about Madalena. ‘Claudia here, she’s looking for someone.’ He could trust me, I was a mate of Vince’s. I thought of giving him money. I often pay for information in my job, but I had a feeling Marius would be insulted if I offered him money.
I brought out the photo of Madalena and showed it to him. He studied it for a while then shook his head. He hadn’t seen a girl like that. ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Vince.
‘You been here long?’ I asked Marius.
‘Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here all my bloody life,’ he joked. ‘Four, maybe five years. I been lots of places. I like it here. I got mates. Good people.’