“So, tell me about this dead footballer.”
It took me a while to get the whole story. He was scared and, even though the cafe was almost deserted, he kept looking around and lowering his voice but eventually it all came out. A ‘family man’ dead and found where he shouldn’t be, a spate of violent bashings and people frightened and intimidated. As he spoke his hands clenched and unclenched and a dull flush mounted in his cheeks. I looked at him closely.
“It happened to you, didn’t it?”
He nodded miserably. “The police said they’d look into it but I didn’t hear from them again. You’re my last hope, Lauri. I don’t want anyone else to be killed.”
“How well did you know Brett McKenna?”
Graeme moved restlessly in his chair. “Everybody ‘knew’ Brett McKenna. When you’re a small-town footy hero, you’re like God ... But there were rumours ... Word gets around among the queers in a place as small as this ...”
I bet it did. I wondered if Brett McKenna had realised just how vulnerable he had been. I drummed my fingers on the table and thought about my commitments back in the Big Smoke. I thought about grief and guilt.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
I took a cheque from him and left some coins on the table. A gust of wind caught at my clothes as I stepped from Cafe Pelican. Across the street, an old derro swigged from a bottle in a brown paper bag. What a great place to be gay, I thought, where Saturday night entertainment probably meant Tabaret and Neil Diamond tribute bands and where men grew up to marry their best friend’s sister. I shuddered and high-tailed it back to the motel where Gina had filled the spa bath, picked a rose from one of the ailing bushes outside the reception office, and floated petals on the water. I sank beneath it with relief. She’d done some research of her own.
“This is the place where the dolphins play.”
“Excuse me?” I nuzzled her neck.
“The dolphins. They come here to mate in the spring.”
I made diving movements with one of my hands. She giggled, took the hand, put it between her legs and moaned just as my mobile—which was sitting on the tiles near the bath—sounded. She groaned—a completely different sound—when I answered it, but there was no one there. Must have been a wrong number, so I went back to playing dolphins.
Next morning I made a call to the local police station and asked for the senior officer. I was told Sergeant Winston had an RDO and could anyone else help?
“What’s Sergeant Winston’s first name?”
“It’s Wally. Hey, hang on ...” but I’d already hung up. ‘Winston, W’ was listed in the phone book at an out-of-town address. I put the keys in the Sharkmobile and drove Gina and her credit cards a couple of blocks to the town centre—she was brought up a Catholic but her real religion was shopping—then consulted a map of the district. As I took the road out of town my mobile rang but again there was no one there when I answered.
Wally Winston was a big man with a beer gut and very pale blue eyes.
When I drove up he was standing in his front yard polishing a big white truck. I could see his face in the gleaming chrome metal. He took my proffered hand reluctantly and frowned when he saw my Pi’s licence.
“You’re a long way from home.”
“I’ve been employed by someone local.” I tried for a pleasant smile.
“Oh, yeah? Well, you know what they say ...” He smiled and the effect wasn’t pleasant at all. “You’re a local only if you’ve been here thirty years.”
There didn’t seem to be any reply to that so I pressed on with my real business. When I mentioned the bashings, he looked non-committal.
“We investigated those. We couldn’t find anything to substantiate the allegations.”
“The allegations? One man was in hospital for three days!”
“We know why they go there.” He lent against the side of his truck. “They’ve only got themselves to blame.”
I thought about Graeme, lonely and closeted in a small conservative community and Brett McKenna, who had died because he lived a lie.
“Everyone has a right to justice .’’The words came out sounding more pompous than I intended.
He looked at me and his eyes were very cold. “They’re just vermin. Disease-carrying vermin.”
As I drove down the driveway I glanced in the rear-view mirror. I’m a fit, very strong woman, but when I saw him standing there, hands on hips, watching me, I got a cold feeling at the base of my spine. My mobile went off again and this time I heard breathing.
I asked, “Who is this?” but there was just the faint, shallow breathing. I threw the phone down and contemplated my next move. Clearly I was not going to get any further with the police. It was time to visit ‘the wife’.
On Tuesday mornin’, me’n Simmo took the dogs to the beach. They love it down there. We put ‘em in Simmo’s old station wagon and drove out of town to this quiet spot where we can run ‘em up and down the sand with no idiots gettin’ in the road. I put their muzzles on because greyhounds are nervous animals and I did’n want ‘em hurtin’ each other. Thimble, the grey one, started actin’ up and I put my hand on her head and said, Steady, girl. The waves were crashin’ quietly and the sun had come up like a big fried egg as I got down one end of the beach and Simmo got down the other and we ran the dogs between us, up and back, up and back. Bullseye flies down the beach like a black arrow and I think how great dogs are because dogs aren’t like people; dogs don’t disappoint ya, dogs never let ya down.
When we finished we put ‘em back in the car then leant against it and had a smoke. Whatta we gunna do? Simmo asks, and I know he’s not talkin’ about the dogs. I take a deep drag of me smoke. No one saw us do nothin’, I say, at last. We should just try not t’think about it, but I know that’s easier said than done.
All through the week I have dreams about blood and slime and on Sunday night the phone rings and it’s Craigie sayin’ some real butch type’s been snoopin’ around, askin’ questions and makin’ a real fucken nuisance of herself. A real bulldyke, but when he starts tellin’ me what she looks like, I say, Yeah, yeah, ‘cause I’ve seen her drivin’ round in her big fucken tank of a car; drivin round with the top down and her girlfriend sittin’ up beside her like king dick—not that she’d have one, ha ha! She wasn’t bad lookin’ in a dark, woggy sort of way; the girlfriend’s got long, wavy dark hair and norks out to here. I never seen any lezzos before except in porn mags; two sheilas goin’ at each other, real ‘flash the gash’ stuff. We could teach her a lesson, Craigie says, and I say, Hey, steady on, ‘cause I know what Craigie’s like; he can be a real mad bastard. His father use t’beat him with chains, and when his mum left home, she did’n take Craigie with her. We gotta keep a low profile, I tell ‘im, and t’change the subject, I ask, How doya reckon lezzos do it? Probably use falsies, he says. Great big fucken rubber ones they buy at sex shops, and we fucken cack ourselves.
Chez McKenna was a large split-level brick veneer with a neat and tidy garden. The windows were shuttered with apricot-coloured Kosta blinds, which no doubt matched the interior. Karin McKenna was a slim, small-featured blonde wearing jeans and a crisp white shirt—everything clean and neat and nice. She was probably about thirty but today she looked older than her years. I’d rung and told her I was a reporter from a footy magazine—Marks and Matches—and wanted to do a profile on Brett that emphasised the community-building aspects of sport. She showed me into a lounge room with apricot-coloured walls and paler carpet. A blonde girl and boy smiled from framed photographs on the coffee table.
“Nice kids,” I said, after I’d given my condolences.
“Sherrine and Jordan,” she said and for a moment her face relaxed. It was a good opening for an ‘interview’ and I took advantage. I learned that she and Brett had been high school sweethearts—her brother Gary was Brett’s best mate—and that they’d married young. She told me—it was one of those weird ironies of life—that Brett had had offers fro
m big city clubs but had decided to stay in the town because he and Karin thought it was a good place to bring up kids. Brett’s job as a sales rep for a large agricultural fertiliser company had flexible hours and allowed plenty of time for training. They’d been happy.
“You didn’t resent the time footy took him away from the family?”
She smiled. “How could I, when it meant so much to him?”
I turned back to the photos. One showed Brett, blokey and handsome, wearing a football jumper. Who would have guessed he’d gone to public toilets to have sex with other men? Karin saw me looking and for a moment her face blazed with anger. Not just anger: it was the look of a woman betrayed. She’d known about his life but she could never tell anyone, not even herself. I thanked her, said I would send her a copy of the finished article and went outside to a day where the sun had finally decided to shine.
Two young boys stood inspecting the Sharkmobile. One was stroking a tail fin. “Cool car,” he said, by way of greeting.
“Thanks.” As I opened the door I noticed someone up the street, watching me. An old guy, bundled in clothes against the sun, with a shuffling walk and ginger hair.
“Who’s that old bloke?” I asked, pointing.
“That’s just old Lou. Lou Chutney,” said one of the kids.
“Lou Chutney?”
“Yeah,” said the other. “That’s not his real name,” he added.
“I’ve seen him before.”
“He hangs around,” snickered the first. “Usually in the pub or the park.”
“He’s an alchie,” volunteered the second, cupping his hand and raising it to his mouth.
“He used to be a teacher,” said the first one. “But then he started drinking. Big time.” He mimicked his friend’s gesture. Now I remembered. I’d seen the old man outside the cafe the day I’d arrived. So he liked to wander around. I gave a mental shrug.
“Thanks, fellas.”
“Check ya.”The first one raised his hand magisterially as he and his mate moved off. Lou Chutney had disappeared. I stood by the car, dazed by the unexpected warmth and trying to order my thoughts. I had run up against a wall of silence and no one was going to help me. What next? A languid cappuccino with my darling appealed but I needed to clear my head: a solitary walk was required. The beach was on the other side of a caravan park just a few streets away. I would get the car on the way back. This walking was getting to be a bad habit, I thought, as I set off.
The caravan park had the usual kiosk and phone box as well as a few people making the most of the sun. A section of natural vegetation had been left at the rear of the park; you reached the sand and water by means of a track that cut through the scrub. As I started down the track my mobile rang. There was the same rapid, shallow breathing, then a faint voice.
“We have to meet ...”
“Why?”
“I know things ...”
“Where?”
“Just keep walking. I’ll meet you on the beach.” The caller hung up. The sun went behind a cloud and I suddenly realised how quiet it was. A twig snapping made me start and, although I couldn’t see anyone when I looked about, I quickened my pace towards the dull thud of the waves. There was another sound, closer this time and the hair on the back of my neck rose. I’ve learned never to distrust these primeval reactions; I was certain I was being followed. I stopped and turned.
“Who’s there?”There was only silence. Fragments of sunlight reached me through a black lattice of branches as I broke into a jog. Had Wally Winston disliked me enough to want to hurt me? The caller must have rung from the caravan park: perhaps I was being set up by an unknown psychopath. Or a murderer. There was the sound of someone crashing through scrub and I ran. The waves were louder now but so were the footsteps behind me. An arm went round my throat and I saw red before my eyes as I tried to struggle free. A voice shouted something and then the world fell on me.
I woke up in a hospital bed, with a little ginger-haired man sitting next to it.
I get the phone call and it’s the dyke sayin’, Meet me in the aquarium. What the fuck? ... I nearly decide not to show but I want t’see what she knows so I go down to the beach to the big fucken pile of rocks where the aquarium is. It’s underground, real fucken dark and creepy. There’s water in puddles on the floor and a drip, drip, drip that’s the only sound. I check out the fish while I wait, little stripy black and yella ones, big old crays, and an octopus crawlin’ around on the bottom of its tank. I knock on the glass and when it waves an arm at me I wave back. In the biggest tank there’s this shark. It’s only a little shark but you can see its real mean teeth and its real mean eyes, cold as the sea in winter. I stand there watchin’ it swim around and around but I don’t want t’go any closer.
I’m gettin’ bored, gettin’ ready to go, then I feel someone behind me and when I turn around, there she is. Watchin’. G’day, I’m ... Yeah, I know who you are, she says, real snotty like. Bitch. There’s glass at the top of the aquarium to let in the light and it makes weird stripes on the stone floor like the stripes on the fucken fish while she looks at me from behind her dark glasses and doesn’t say nothin’.
Why d’ya pick this place? I say at last. To look at the fish, and she gives me this weird fucken little smile and starts ravin’ on about her car; how it’s a shark, it’s her Sharkmobile, and she likes cruisin’ in it. I think about that good-lookin’ chick of hers and say somethin’ about the back seat havin’ a lotta room, and she laughs and says, Yeah, it does. We talk about cars and I tell her about goin’ to the speedway and watchin’ the drag racin’; how it’s a real fucken buzz and she says, Yeah, it would be.
We talk a bit more and I’m startin’ to think she’s alright for a lezzo, then right outta the fucken blue she asks me about Brett McKenna. Did I know ‘im? Did I know anythin’ about the murder, and where was I that night? I play it real dumb and say, I was at the pub with everyone else til closin’ time, then I went home. That’s not what I’ve heard, she says, and I give her this big shit-eating grin and say she musta heard wrong. She just looks at me from behind the shades doesn’t say nothin’, while the shark swims around and around, bumpin’ its nose against the glass. She looks at it real thoughtful and mutters something about Predators and victims.
Can I go now, miss? I ask, cheeky as though I’m talkin’ to Miss Johnson, the old bag who use t’give me the cuts in primary school, and she just gives me this vacant sorta nod, not lookin’ at me, as though she’s got somethin’ on her mind. Hey, Troy! she calls after me as I head towards the steps. A man always kills the thing he loves and she gives this weird fucken funny little laugh, and I get outta there. Fast.
“How did you get my mobile number?” I asked and he smiled slyly and said I wasn’t the only detective. He was probably younger than he looked; years of alcohol and living rough had taken their toll. He was well spoken, with the refined English-type accent that I’d associate with old-style ABC newsreaders. I wondered what had brought him this low. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands shook but he seemed sober as he told me what he’d seen the night Brett McKenna died. The moon had come out briefly. He’d got a good look at one face.
“Would you testify?”
“Yes. People shouldn’t suffer like that.” His face opened for a moment and I caught a glimpse of some old unhealed wound. My mouth framed a question, then I decided against it.
“Thanks for rescuing me.”
“Think nothing of it. His face twisted with a brief smile. He’d followed me from Karin McKenna’s and, when he’d seen I was heading for the beach, made a call from the phone box and followed me into the bush. If it hadn’t been for his presence I’d have ended up with far more than a bump on the head and bruising. He hadn’t been close enough to identify my attacker but when he’d shouted at him, the man had fled. After Lou Chutney left I sat in bed thinking about the choices we make and how people can live their lives in silence until it destroys them.
Gina collected me t
he next day. It wasn’t hard to track down Troy Harris and, as soon as I saw him, I knew all about the poor sad little sonofabitch. Born in a backwater of genetically impoverished stock, his dad had pissed off early, leaving mum to do it all alone. This, combined with impatient teachers, inadequate education and declining job prospects in rural areas had all made Troy a bored, stupid young man with poor self-esteem. Lou Chutney had seen three men attack Brett McKenna because Troy wouldn’t have done it alone. Troy was like one of Hitler’s innumerable henchmen who were ‘just following orders’. No, there’d have been a leader, someone born cruel or made cruel by the world.
I had to let Troy go at the aquarium, but after he’d gone I stood there leaning against the shark’s tank, listening to the relentless drip, drip, drip of the water and looking at the table covered in tacky little dolphin souvenirs—dolphin pencil sharpeners, dolphin fridge magnets, dolphins that doubled as both ...I had doubts about Lou Chutney making a statement. Even if he didn’t change his mind, the word of a semi-itinerant alcoholic was unlikely to carry much weight with unsympathetic cops. I climbed up the stairs and trudged back to the Sharkmobile. The sun was going down, throwing harsh gold light onto the waves as it sank beneath them. I put the top down on the Sharkmobile and drove back to the motel with the breeze in my hair, thinking that there was only one thing for it. It would have to be the boy, and I’d have to break him.
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