The Byron Journals

by Daniel Ducrou

  ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s gonna work out.’

  As soon as she was gone, Andrew wandered downstairs to the common room. Two guys were drinking pots of beer on the couches in front of the cricket, and a couple of backpackers were drinking at the bar. A tall girl speaking in a steady German slur occupied the phone box. Andrew paced and coughed obtrusively, but she pretended not to notice.

  Ten minutes later, she finished talking and left the booth. Andrew slipped past her, lifted the receiver, still warm, stuffed coins into the coin slot and dialled Benny’s mobile number. The phone rang for a long time and Andrew was just about to hang up when Benny answered.

  ‘Hey,’ Andrew said, relieved to hear his old friend’s voice. ‘It’s Andrew.’

  Benny cleared his throat. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to tell you that…Look, I’m sorry about everything, okay?’

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a bit late. I’ve spent the entire summer paying for what you did.’

  ‘I’m coming home, probably just for a visit, but I’ll have the money for you, I promise.’

  He sighed. ‘Why are you calling?’

  ‘I’ve got myself into a bad situation and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Oh, that’s rich. You’re calling because you need my help?’

  Andrew looked around to make sure no one was listening and lowered his voice. ‘I witnessed something— I saw a guy get badly beaten…he almost died.’

  ‘So go to the police.’

  ‘I can’t, I was there…for a drug deal.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I don’t know what to do.’

  Benny paused. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘So call your mum.’

  ‘I left a message saying I never wanted to speak to her again…’

  ‘She’s called me a couple of times to check if I’ve heard from you.’

  ‘She has?’

  ‘What the hell were you doing at a drug deal, anyway? If that’s the cash you’re paying me back with, forget it.’

  ‘Look…Let’s talk about it when I get back.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  They said their goodbyes and Andrew hung up. He scanned the room to make sure Heidi hadn’t returned, then he dialled his mum’s home number. The answering machine played out and beeped, but he hung up without leaving a message. His mum had taken his dad’s name off the recorded message, but not Andrew’s. Her work number was engaged. Her mobile was off. Now that he’d decided to call her, he was desperate to speak to her. She dealt with complicated situations all the time; she’d know what to do.

  Andrew slumped on one of the couches and watched the cricket. Ten minutes later, he returned to the phone and dialled his mum’s mobile again. This time it rang—just as Heidi walked through the front foyer. He heard his mum’s voice and put down the receiver. Heidi stopped beside him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glassy.

  ‘Who were you calling?’ she asked.

  ‘Benny,’ he replied.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘An old friend in Adelaide. I wanted to tell him I’m coming back to visit.’

  ‘You couldn’t get through?’

  ‘It was engaged. How’d you go? Did you find a good place for the deal?’

  She nodded and there was something about her that looked different. ‘Yeah, I’m going to do it at the market— there are lots of people exchanging all sorts of packages for money so it shouldn’t be too hard to blend in.’

  ‘You spoke to the guy?’

  ‘Yep.’ She avoided looking at him. ‘It’s all teed up.’

  She looked as though she wanted to say more but, instead, she turned on her heel and walked towards the stairs. She was lying—he was sure of it.

  thirty-three

  Sunlight spilt through the gap in the curtains. Andrew narrowed his eyes, pretending to be asleep, and watched Heidi get into jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She pulled a dark blue New York Yankees baseball cap low on her forehead, removed the bottle of acid from her suitcase and placed it in her backpack. If this was a charade to cover taking the acid to Adelaide, she was doing a good job. As she closed the door behind her, Andrew lowered himself from the top bunk and dressed quietly.

  Standing at the window downstairs, he watched Heidi slip through the traffic to the other side of the road and slow to a walk. Her head down and her hands in her pockets, she turned into the Victoria Market.

  On instinct, he moved to the nearby phone, picked up the receiver and dialled his mum’s work number. When Paula answered, Andrew almost hung up.

  ‘I need to speak to Mum,’ he said.

  ‘I know that she wants to speak to you Andrew, but she’s with a client—’

  ‘This is important. I need to speak to her.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘No, everything’s not okay! Can you put me through? Please!’

  ‘Okay…okay, just let me check.’

  A moment later, his mum picked up. Andrew heard her apologise to the client and close a door.

  ‘Where are you?’ She sounded tired, a bit drunk even—her client wouldn’t notice it, but Andrew did.

  ‘Mum, I need your help.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice sharpened. ‘What’s happened?’

  He hesitated. ‘I witnessed something. And I need to know that you’ll help me.’

  ‘Of course I will. Where are you?’

  The phone beeped and he took more coins out of his pocket and fed them into the slot. ‘I have to be quick—’ ‘I can call you back if—’

  ‘No. I just…’ He thought of the newspaper article in Heidi’s journal. ‘I need some information.’

  ‘Related to what you witnessed?’

  ‘No. I need to know about the Cabritzi case you did a few years ago.’

  She paused before answering, ‘What about it?’

  ‘I need to know what happened.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have to give you a reason, Mum!’ His voice was uneven. ‘I need your help—isn’t that reason enough? I’m not after confidential information—just the general details. Please!’

  ‘Okay, Andrew…Jesus…Settle down. That case is closed, so I can give you general details, but first I need you to tell me what this is for. You call me out of the blue asking for details of a case from years ago. I have a right to know what this is about.’

  ‘A friend of mine is in trouble. I can’t help her unless I know what happened.’

  ‘Is your friend connected to the case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus, Andrew. The girl?’

  ‘Tell me, Mum.’ He sensed how close he was. ‘I’m coming home soon. I promise.’

  She stalled, drew a breath, then exhaled. ‘My client was turning right on an orange light. As he came around the corner, the young woman, who was in the heat of an argument, shoved her mother and—’

  The air thickened. He didn’t catch the rest of what she said. ‘What do you mean, shoved?’

  ‘Exactly what I said—the girl shoved her mother into the path of my client’s oncoming car.’

  ‘I need the truth, Mum, not your client’s trumped-up defence.’

  ‘I have no reason to lie, Andrew. Least of all to you. The girl fabricated the story because she couldn’t admit that she was responsible for what had happened, because she needed someone to blame, and the police pressed charges against Mr Cabritzi based on that.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You don’t have to. A witness came forward in the early stages of the trial, and testified—that the girl pushed her mother. My client was acquitted and the case was closed.’

  Andrew slotted the last of his coins into the phone. ‘What about the girl?’

  ‘No charges were laid. Although, we had to take out a restraining order on her later. She was pretty messed up by the whole thin
g.’

  ‘Why? What did she do?’

  ‘She was stalking him, following him to the café he ran in the Central Markets. And that was the final straw for him. The last I heard, he’d sold the café and moved interstate to start over.’

  A wave of nausea rolled through him. ‘Where did he move to?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘Where did he move to? Melbourne? Please tell me it’s not Melbourne?’

  She hesitated. ‘Actually…Yes—’

  The phone credit expired and the dial tone sliced through him.

  thirty-four

  Andrew dropped the receiver and started running. He burst through the front door and collided with a man coming the other way, stumbled, then dashed halfway across the road to the tram tracks. A horn sounded behind him as he picked a gap between the oncoming cars and continued along the footpath. He slowed at the north-western entrance to the Victoria Market, then stopped. The rows of peaked-roof sheds extended as far as he could see and each shed bustled with the early morning trade of shoppers and stall holders. He’d never find Heidi in time. Cursing, he pushed into a crowded fruit and vegetables aisle.

  He slid between a large group of elderly tourists led by a tour guide, ‘Nine thousand people remain buried here,’ the guide said, her voice fading as he squeezed past a woman pushing twins in a pram.

  ‘Watch it, mate!’ a man complained behind him.

  ‘Mangoes!’ a stall holder called. ‘Get your mangoes here!’

  He glimpsed a woman wearing a dark blue baseball cap. Heidi, he thought, and raced towards her. But she turned and called out in Vietnamese to an old man and laughed as she chopped excess leaves off a cauliflower. When he reached the end of the shed, Andrew saw that the markets extended into another building where there was a food court and a seafood hall. She could be anywhere. He ran past a workman loading crushed boxes into a garbage truck, and continued along the outside edge of the food court. At the intersection on the corner of the market, he came to an abrupt stop. There she was.

  She sat hunched on a bench with her backpack on her lap and her gaze fixed on a row of cafés fifty metres away. Behind her, three buildings cut a jagged skyline and pedestrians moving in opposite directions merged and separated on the crossing. Heidi still hadn’t moved. Andrew followed her stare and immediately recognised Cabritzi, waiting a table outside one of the cafes.

  Heidi flinched when he touched her shoulder and sat beside her. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said.

  She looked away but not before Andrew saw that she’d been crying. She lowered her head, closed her eyes and mouthed something to herself.

  ‘Heidi?’ he said.

  She looked up. ‘This has nothing to do with you. I want you to go. Now.’

  ‘It’s not going to change anything.’

  ‘Yes, it will,’ she snapped. ‘He hasn’t been punished for what happened.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ He laughed, but it sounded forced. ‘Just walk into the café, hand him the bottle and tell him to drink it?’

  ‘I watched him yesterday,’ she said. ‘I know where he leaves his drink. It’ll be easy to spike it.’

  ‘It’s not going to fix anything, Heidi.’

  ‘Yes it will,’ she said. ‘He’s suffered from mental illness in the past, so it shouldn’t take much to tip him over the edge. I have to do this to level the score.’

  Andrew remembered the lawyer from Sydney who’d gone mad from overdosing on hallucinogens—the guy she’d pointed out on the first day they’d met.

  ‘The police will know you did it. They’ll look it all up and trace it back to you. It’ll be obvious, Heidi.’

  ‘No, they won’t. They’ll never know.’

  ‘They’ll see the restraining order.’

  She inhaled sharply, turned to him. ‘How the hell do you know about that?’

  ‘C’mon,’ he said, standing and taking her arm. ‘You’re not going through with this. Let’s go.’

  ‘No.’ She tore her arm free. ‘Tell me how you know about the restraining order. I never told you about that.

  No one knows about that. Not even Jade or Tim.’

  ‘Look Heidi, I know because…’ This was it, he had to tell her. ‘I spoke to my mum.’

  Heidi threw her hands in the air, exasperated. ‘And what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Heidi…Look…This is fucked and you’re going to kill me for not telling you sooner…Mum’s a barrister. She’s the one who defended Cabritzi. I spoke to her—’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re lying! It’s impossible. You’ve got different surnames.’

  ‘Mum kept her name when she married Dad. I took Dad’s surname.’

  ‘No.’ Heidi gave a swift, dismissive shake of her head and blinked heavily. ‘You would have said something, you would have told me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to ruin things, Heidi—I was falling in love with you.’

  She stood, her body rigid. ‘Holding a secret like that from me—that’s not love! That’s not love! How long have you known?’

  ‘Since New Year’s, when you showed me the article in your journal.’

  She started crying now and he reached for her hand.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, her voice brittle. ‘I don’t know who you are.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You know me, you know who I am.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She cried more now, her fingers pressing into her forehead. ‘And if you knew me, if you under-stood what I’ve been through, and what my family has been through, you’d understand that I have to do this.’ ‘Heidi—you’ll get caught and charged. I can’t let that happen to you.’

  She took the bottle of acid from her backpack and covered it with her jacket. ‘No, I won’t. I’ll just hire some big-shot lawyer to get me off. Maybe your mum could do it. I’m sure she’d know exactly how to twist the truth.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry!’

  ‘Oh, you’re sorry! That’s fucking wonderful, that is.’ Andrew could feel people watching them now.

  ‘I still want to go back to Adelaide,’ he said. ‘I want to help you when you visit your mum—anything you—’ ‘What a fantastic idea! Maybe we could take your mum along for a visit too. We could sit around and drink tea and eat fucking scones. Perfect!’

  ‘Mum told me about the witness, Heidi.’

  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘The witness lied, Andy.’

  ‘Mum told me you pushed her. That you were having an argument and you pushed her.’

  She sobbed, her face flushed. ‘It was an accident, Andy! Okay? Mum was trying to look through my handbag and I pushed her away because I had some pills that I didn’t want her to see. But I didn’t push her. She slipped, okay? She fucking slipped and fell. It wasn’t my fault. Don’t blame me like everyone else. I couldn’t stand it if you blamed me too.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, Heidi.’

  ‘Yes, you do! I can see it. You think I haven’t paid for what happened.’

  ‘Heidi—’

  In a flash, she unscrewed the bottle of acid and raised it to her mouth.

  He wrenched it from her hand and his vision blurred as a spurt of liquid shot into his face. The bottle smashed. Liquid dribbled into the cracks between the paving stones.

  He wiped his eyes with his T-shirt, but he could feel the acid soaking in. ‘Shit, Heidi, shit! Why did you do that?’ His vision cleared a little and he saw her backing away from him, her mouth and chin wet with liquid.

  ‘I’ve got to go…’ she said.

  He fumbled and grabbed hold of her arm. ‘No, you’re coming with me! Now!’

  People stared as he dragged her into the men’s toilet near the entrance to the food court. The air was sharp with the smell of bleach. An exhaust fan hummed above them and a man sneezed behind a closed cubicle door.

  Andrew stared at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Stick your fingers down your throat! Now!’ he said, his voice harsh
against the tiled floor and walls. He turned the tap on full and splashed handfuls of water over his face and eyes. When he looked up, he saw Heidi crying and shaking her head. He grabbed her and pulled her towards the sink. ‘Do it now!’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I deserve this.’

  ‘Do it!’ he shouted. ‘All this talk about suffering, deserving to suffer—it’s bullshit! Stick you fingers down your throat. Now!’

  She leaned over the sink, stuck two fingers into her mouth and gagged. A small amount of fluid came up, then some bile. But Andrew knew it was too late—no matter how much she vomited, no matter how much he washed out his eyes, the acid would already have been absorbed. He remembered what Heidi’s dad had said about Hendrix taking acid through his eyes.

  A bald man dressed in a business suit edged out of a cubicle, and hurried past them with his hands raised. ‘I’m just leaving,’ he said. ‘Please…I don’t want to get involved.’

  Heidi rinsed her mouth and Andrew washed his eyes one last time.

  ‘We’re going to the hospital,’ he said.

  The first person they asked outside, a woman pushing a pram and flanked by two young boys, pointed up the road. ‘St Vincent’s Hospital, about ten minutes away.’

  ‘On this road?’Andrew asked.

  She nodded. ‘What’s the matter? Is everything okay?’ Andrew didn’t reply. There was a metallic taste in his mouth and down the back of his throat; he could feel the acid sliding into his bloodstream. He remembered what Heidi had said about her first acid trip: the spiders, the blood, the voices…Two days of it.

  A single drop was enough. But they had ingested much larger doses.

  The pedestrian crossing turned green and clicked in staccato. The waiting crowd surged into the street and Andrew and Heidi raced around them. He looked up at the taut pattern of tram cables suspended above the intersection, slicing the buildings, trees and sky into geometric patterns, and he dreaded what such things might look like when the acid took effect.

  ‘What happens if we go mad? If we get stuck like this?’ he said.

  ‘We won’t. I promise, Andy. I promise.’