by Stephen Orr
‘And fried chicken.’ The boy took a deep breath. As his eyes slid away, Moy thought he saw relief there.
26
THEY DROVE WITH the races. Belmont. All ready, lights, they’re off, Precious Gem out quickly, followed by Beltane Lass, two lengths… in a drone that perfectly matched the weather, the landscape, monotone, with the occasional bump and depression. Moy could see Patrick looking into his lap, fiddling with the trauma, fingers locked together, pushing and pulling on the meaty bits of hand.
‘What were you buying?’ Moy asked.
Patrick looked up at him but decided it was a trick.
‘Milk? Bread? Or was she taking you for fish and chips?’
No reply.
Moy wondered whether he should back off. He was risking four days’ work. Back where he started, or worse. But the clock was ticking. He thought he knew where the mother was. But what about the other boy?
‘Did you often walk into town?’
Patrick looked up. ‘I’ve never seen that man.’
‘But he’s seen you.’
‘It must’ve been someone else.’
‘He seemed pretty sure.’
‘He was wrong.’
‘So you’ve never lived around here?’
The conversation slowed over a cattle grate. Stopped. They drove on.
Moy knew this changed everything. No longer the runaway. No longer misplaced, or unwanted. ‘Was that your brother?’
Nothing.
‘Bit taller? Look a bit like you?’
Patrick waited.
‘Quite a walk, into town? Specially if you had to carry groceries.’
He dropped his head.
‘Now I’m looking for two, am I?’
‘No.’
‘Well?’
Beltane Lass finished four lengths ahead of the field. Moy switched off the radio.
‘So, here’s a scenario. It might have nothing to do with you. Brothers. One’s taken. The other knows that if he…says anything… but he mightn’t understand that the police can get to anyone.’
Patrick looked up. This seemed to concern him. The police can get to anyone…
‘At this point, time is of the essence. Know what that means? Every minute matters.’ He watched for his reaction. ‘It’s time, Patrick.’
‘It’s just me.’ But he didn’t look up.
‘Who was the woman, and boy?’
He glared at him. ‘Me!’
‘No.’
They were giving correct weight. Only a dollar fifty for the win.
‘You gotta give me something, Patrick.’
Patrick clicked his seatbelt, reached for the door and opened it. Moy braked hard but the boy half-tumbled to the ground, got up and walked back along Creek Street. Moy pulled over, got out and called. ‘Patrick.’
Patrick kept walking. Moy ran, then slowed, then walked beside him. ‘Stop.’
He continued.
‘Okay, my mistake. He was old. Must be a hundred kids live along here, eh?’
Patrick’s withering look said he knew it was another trick.
‘They’ve all got a mum. I’m sorry. When he said it, I just thought…’
Patrick stopped and looked at him. ‘I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should believe.’ He turned and headed back for the car.
Moy left a good ten metres, and followed. When he got back in they were loading the next twelve horses. As they drove, he said, ‘That old fella needs some help.’
‘Leave him be.’
‘I could tell Deidre.’
‘He probably just wants to be left alone.’
Silence. They’re off. Clean start.
‘He might need glasses.’
But Patrick just closed his eyes.
THEY DROVE TO the IGA on Humbolt Street and spent twenty minutes flattening boxes. Patrick took them out to the car and stacked them in the boot. Eventually they were jammed in tight—thirty, forty, maybe more. They drove home, unloaded the boxes into the hallway, stacked up against the wall under a Heysen gum-scape. The afternoon sun, coming in the bubble glass beside the front door, had bleached the trees and hills calcium white.
Moy assembled the first box and fastened it with tape. He carried it into his bedroom and stood staring at the mess. Clothes all over the floor. He wondered whether he should try and fold them, stack them in the box, and cover them with the shirts and undies in his drawers.
No, he concluded, clothes should come last. So he turned to the improvised bookcase he’d made beside his bed: a series of four planks supported on either side by bricks. Finnegans Wake, the first seven or eight pages read and reread a dozen times. He threw the book into the box and returned to the shelf. Sons and Lovers. Judging by the scuffed pages he’d read three chapters before asking himself if he really cared.
Patrick walked slowly into the room balancing a cup of coffee he’d filled to the rim.
‘That for me?’ Moy asked.
Patrick was biting his lip. ‘I made it strong.’
‘Good.’
He placed the coffee on a table beside the bed and Moy leaned over to sip it. Patrick sat down, looked at him and asked, ‘What will they do with the old man?’
‘There’s nothing you can do. It’s how he wants to live.’
Patrick couldn’t understand. ‘Why?’
‘It’s what he’s used to.’
‘But he could get used to a nice place, if someone found it for him.’
Moy sipped more coffee. ‘Did you sugar it?’
‘One. Three spoons of sugar isn’t healthy.’
‘You’re my mother?’
‘You’ll get diabetes.’
‘Who says?’
‘Mum…’ He stopped.
‘What else does she say?’ Moy asked.
The boy bowed his head.
‘Patrick?’
Nothing.
‘You still don’t want to tell me who the other boy was?’
‘He would’ve been covered in fleas,’ Patrick said.
‘Who?’
‘The old man.’
‘Patrick…’ He waited. ‘What else did your mum tell you about?’
‘You could at least take him to the station, and let him use the shower there.’
‘I could.’
‘And then you could get a pest control person…’
Moy tried to think of a way in, but couldn’t. Instead, he took a small photo album from the bookshelf and turned to a random page, halfway in.
‘Ha,’ he said, looking at a photo of himself, aged seven or eight, bare-chested and broad-shouldered, standing in front of a silo his father was bolting onto a concrete slab. ‘Look at me there. I’m not fat.’
‘Is that George?’ Patrick asked, studying the bent-over figure in shorts and singlet.
‘Yes. We bought that for the cattle feed, but I don’t know that we ever used it.’
And there, in the background, a woman, standing with her arms crossed.
‘Who’s she?’ Patrick said.
‘My mum.’
‘Does she live here?’
‘She’s dead.’
Patrick didn’t seem surprised.
‘When I was twelve,’ Moy said, waiting for some sort of response.
But Patrick wasn’t interested. ‘George was bigger there.’
‘Yes, people shrink as they get older.’
He looked at the photo of Moy, and then at the older version. ‘You’re not shrinking.’
‘No, I mean…after about sixty.’
‘Was he grumpy back then?’
‘I suppose…although not so much. You’ve got more to be grumpy about as you get older.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like…things not going the way you planned.’
Patrick didn’t understand. ‘But doesn’t that mean that kids should be the grumpiest?’
‘Well, perhaps, but they haven’t had time to make plans.’
/>
‘Yes, they have.’
‘Like who?’
Patrick stopped short again, refusing to be drawn. He returned to the photo. ‘He had muscles then.’
‘He did. And what about me? No pot belly.’ He patted his stomach. ‘This, my boy, is what you have to look forward to.’
‘Not if I don’t eat chips all day.’
‘You will.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Maybe you were taught well?’
‘Yes.’
‘She sounds like a smart woman, your mum…?’ Moy let it hang but Patrick took the album and continued looking. There was another photo of Moy, twelve or thirteen, dressed as a sort of budget Prince Charming, wearing felt slippers, beige tights, a short tunic and a cap decorated with feathers. ‘That can’t be you?’ he asked.
‘It is. What do you think?’
‘What were you doing?’
‘It was a school production. The Little Mermaid.’
‘You’re wearing makeup.’
‘Yes, including lipstick, if I’m not mistaken.’ He squinted to see.
Patrick looked at him strangely.
‘What?’
‘Couldn’t you have been a fish or something?’
‘I didn’t want to be a fish. I wanted to be Prince Charming.’
‘Yuck.’
‘I was expressing myself…I was experimenting.’ He lifted the lukewarm coffee and sipped. ‘You’re not from a theatrical family I take it?’
‘No, I’ve never seen a show.’
‘Just the telly?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what about your brother?’
Patrick glared at him. ‘I’m not one of your criminals.’
Moy was taken back. ‘I didn’t say you were.’
He continued searching the photos. ‘You just keep asking.’
‘I want to help.’
‘You just want to…solve it, so you can get on with something else.’
Moy sat forward. ‘That’s not true. I want to help. Maybe that means solving it.’
Patrick looked at him, closed his lips and studied another photo. ‘Who’s he?’
‘That’s Charlie.’
Charlie was four, fresh-faced and blue-eyed, sitting on a rug painting a picture of a train.
‘Your son?’
‘Yes.’
They both examined the photo.
‘That was bad luck,’ Patrick said.
‘Yes.’
And he glanced up, although his head was still down. ‘Do you miss him?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a nice train.’
‘It is. I still have it somewhere…’ He took another album from the bookcase, opened it, found a poster in the back and flattened it out on the floor. It was the same train, hurtling through a landscape of box houses with cotton smoke coming from their chimneys. Patrick compared the half-finished version in the photo with the finished painting. ‘He did a good job. Except…’
‘What?’
‘There are no people.’
‘Maybe he never finished it.’
‘Or maybe he didn’t want people. They’re hard to paint.’
They both sat, studying the smudged paint.
Moy was standing in his driveway, holding his son, trying to open the back door of his car. It opened and he laid Charlie across the back seat, secured him with a seatbelt, closed the door and got in the driver’s side.
The engine was still running. He selected reverse, shot back up the driveway (crushing the soccer ball) onto the road, changed gear and took off with a puff of tyre smoke. He became airborne over a rise, crashed down to the road and continued. ‘Charlie, can you hear me?’ But he knew it was best to keep going, towards the road that led to the highway that took him to the hospital.
There was a roundabout, but he didn’t look right. Instead of slowing, he pushed his foot to the floor and the car roared. ‘One minute, Charlie, one minute…hold on.’
He slowed for the highway but didn’t give way. As he turned a pack of oncoming cars had to brake to avoid him. Then he planted his foot again. ‘Hold on, Charlie.’
When he looked at the photo Charlie was still painting the train.
‘What happened?’ Patrick asked.
Moy tried to smile at him. ‘It was an accident.’ He studied the blue clouds and yellow birds.
‘But what happened?’
Moy looked at the boy and understood, at last, why he wouldn’t talk about his brother.
27
THE NEXT MORNING, already warm, as Moy paced up and down his driveway. ‘This other boy might be his brother, or a friend,’ he said, into his phone. He moved it away from his mouth, cleared his throat and returned to Superintendent Graves. ‘I’ve got no way of telling.’
‘Every home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Schools, motels…pubs?’
I’m not completely fucking stupid.
‘Footy club, scouts—’
‘Listen, Superintendent—’
‘It seems you’ve got a different crime now. If there was a brother. Patrick might have been threatened.’
Moy took a deep breath. Nothing annoyed him more than remote-control policing. ‘Things are progressing,’ he said. ‘I’m happy with the way Patrick’s opening up.’
Patrick. Sitting at the kitchen table, looking out at him, raising a few fingers as a token wave, grasping his texta and returning to his portrait.
‘You don’t actually know who the boy is?’ Graves asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Patrick? That’s what you know? Assuming he’s even telling you the truth.’
‘The way I see it,’ Moy said, watching a crow on the fence, ‘is there aren’t many options. He’s just a very scared boy. I don’t think formal questioning would achieve much.’
‘I’m not suggesting that,’ Graves shot back. ‘I’m not completely insensitive.’
‘I didn’t say—’
‘I just don’t want to be in this situation in a month’s time.’
Moy took a moment to consider his response. ‘I think he’s starting to trust me. I think there’s something he wants to tell me.’
‘Well?’
Moy studied Patrick’s face, the way he bit his lip as he worked, stopped, turned his head to assess his progress, then continued.
‘Here’s how I see it,’ the superintendent said. ‘If you could just tell him everything’s okay, but we need his help. Say this isn’t something that can go on and on.’
‘I can’t pressure the kid.’
‘If you want me to arrange for him to go to town, see a shrink, find a foster family? Maybe that’d give him some sense of normality. Maybe the problem’s that he’s still where it happened.’
‘I don’t think…’
‘The threat is too close.’
Moy knew he had a point, but wouldn’t say so.
‘I think that would be a disaster. I don’t think those sort of changes would be good for him.’
‘Well, get me something.’
Moy stopped himself from barking back down the phone. Get you what? He’s a kid, for God-fucking-sake.
‘I just need a bit longer,’ he said, as he crushed broken concrete under foot.
‘You’re not a social worker, Bart, you’re a detective. This goes against the grain.’
‘A bit longer.’
There was a short pause, and then the superintendent said, ‘Righto, keep me informed.’
There was no goodbye, no conditions, no threats—just the implication that the boy, who was now looking up at him, would be taken away, fed into some machine and processed for information.
Moy stared back at the crow. It flew away. He went back inside the house, turning over his options. There were books full of procedures that helped you solve crimes. He remembered studying them for his first detectives exam. Cross-matching stories. Phone number analysis. But it was all a distant haze. He guessed he must’ve been go
od at it. Promotions. Commendations. But that was all before he backed up his driveway. Now there was just the occasional complaint; the raised eyebrow. Why didn’t you enter his name on the database? I did…didn’t I? We could’ve saved twelve months’ work if we’d known. Right, I…
Can’t seem to put things together, he thought. Pedal faster and go slower. But I’m dealing with it…Every day in every way…
Later, as they sat eating lunch, Moy looked across the table at Patrick. He hoped he didn’t have far to go. If the boy told him everything (the crime, who was at home, who did the bashing and burning) then all this time would have been well spent. He knew what he should do next. ‘I’m quite stumped, with this fire,’ he said.
Patrick looked at him. ‘What fire?’
‘The house, on Creek Street…not far from where that old fella said he saw you and your…friend.’
Patrick looked down, studying the cuts he was making in his pie. ‘Don’t you know what happened?’
‘I thought you might know something, seeing how you lived around there.’ He waited. ‘You did live somewhere…close?’
Patrick stood up, scraped the rest of his pie into the bin and went into the next room to watch television.
Moy fetched another box, took it to the lounge room, taped it together and started packing DVDs. As he worked he said, ‘Do you want to help?’
Patrick just stared at the screen, trying to make sense of other crimes, other people’s problems.
After ten minutes of packing Moy stretched and said, ‘I’m getting a bit sick of this.’
No reply.
‘Maybe we should go for a drive. There may be ice-cream involved.’
‘I can help you pack.’
‘Later.’
Moy picked a random route through town: Civic Park, Ayr Street, King Edward Terrace back to the showgrounds. The boarded-up sideshows were being cleaned, painted and stocked for the annual show. A few men were welding sheep-yard panels. Some of the rides and the steel superstructure of the ferris wheel had already arrived. ‘Ever been to a country show?’ he asked.
Patrick shrugged.
‘It’s a lot of fun. Preserves and tractors and monster pigs…big as cows, I kid you not.’
‘Pigs?’
‘Yes. Genetically engineered. Enough bacon for a whole city. And cows like elephants. Not natural. Still, that’s what it’s all about. Increased productivity. Even the pigs have to fall in line.’
‘What makes them fall?’