‘I can do that.’
Tom stared at Sanford’s wine glass, watched the faint rivers of red fade and disappear altogether. Sanford Sweet MP had red cheeks. He raised his hand to attract the attention of the waiter. Tapped his wine glass. It was dutifully filled. They would need another bottle. The steak arrived. Rare. Smoky grill lines were scorched into the flesh. He imagined Pritchett’s face yielding like a piece of meat to the hot irons of a barbeque. It was little consolation as he forlornly conceded that his discussion with Sanford was over.
Pritchett would make good on his threats to smear Tom’s name. By linking Tom to Cherie Blossom and the Rainbow Lilies’ dubious activities involving the green weed and suggesting that Tom supported this activity would cause incalculable damage to his reputation. Then there were the threats to the Royal, to him. There were threats of vandalism at Serpentine Heights. People were mad about the Rainbow Lilies selling their drugs in town and they blamed Tom. He was terrified that there would be an act of sabotage on the Horizon building site so tremendous that the construction schedule would be delayed. He remembered how the metal melted in his burning Dodge. The loss of that car would pale in comparison to the Horizon going up in flames. He couldn’t risk it. He had to give in to the glasshole.
CHAPTER TWENTY - ONE
When Nayeema woke, Fawzy had already left the bed, brushed his teeth with exactly thirty strokes, and grunted through his morning constitutional sit-ups. The smell of soap told her that he had finished showering. She groped for her slippers and dressing gown. ‘Fawzy, are you still here?’ she called out as she stumbled to the kitchen.
His cheeks were busy with food and his head was bowed towards the table. He didn’t answer. An enormous breakfast was laid out around him. He had sliced the top off a soft-boiled egg and she could tell from the runniness of the yolk that he had cooked it for precisely two-and-a-half minutes. A plate in front of him was stacked with toasted bread. Assortments of jams were lined up in a straight row beside the toast. There was an unusually large bowl of cereal waiting for his attention, with the usual bran and chopped banana on top.
He had refused dinner last night and retired to bed early. He didn’t want to talk about his encounter with Annabel White. What alarmed Nayeema most was his disinterest in polishing his shoes. Every night, since arriving in Burraboo, Fawzy followed a strict shoe-polishing routine. Straight after dinner, he would lay newspapers down on the floor and apply boot polish to his shoes. Who cared about polished shoes in Burraboo?
‘Fawzy …’ she started. Her voice was just above a whisper.
‘Good morning.’ His feigned cheerfulness arrested her like a fermented onion. She squirmed and readjusted the knot on her dressing gown. There was a loud thump at their front door, followed by purposeful rapping, short and hard like a drum roll. They both looked up in alarm.
‘Who could call on us so early in the morning …’
‘Might be Joan, she is very upset about the butcherbirds. Ya butta, please, for dickens’ sake, you must stop feeding them. Of course, it might be our other neighbour at the door … you know, the one who seems to treat our house like his second home.’
‘We talk about business.’
‘Why does he care so much about your tiny cafe?’
‘You bring this up now?’
The insistent light rapping at the door turned into a hard pounding fist.
‘I’m going to get the door.’ Yo-oh, oh please don’t let it be Tom Grieves, please don’t let it be Tom Grieves, she thought as she made her way to the front door. She opened the door tentatively.
The first thing she saw was a glistening badge sitting on a soft wide chest. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’
‘Is Fred Ikram here?’ was the abrupt response.
‘Yes.’ She opened the door wide to a bulbous-looking man wearing the authoritative blue uniform of the NSW Police. ‘Why you want Fawzy?’
‘I’m Senior Sergeant Barry. We need to speak to your husband.’
‘What? Why for?’
‘We’re making inquiries in relation to the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl.’
‘What? This has nothing to do with Fawzy,’ she scoffed.
‘We beg to differ.’
Nayeema took a dazed step backwards to let the sergeant pass. She stared at the gun sitting in the holster around his sizeable girth. Fawzy bolted into the living room.
‘What’s all this about, Senior Sergeant Barry?’ said Fawzy, extending his arm to shake hands. His cheeks were blanched.
‘If you wouldn’t mind, we need to ask you some questions in relation to the disappearance of Annabel White.’
‘What? What’s happened?’
‘We don’t have all the facts yet. But we do know that you were the last person seen with her yesterday.’
For a moment, Fawzy’s face looked scrambled, and his familiar features were disoriented. When she saw this, Nayeema’s legs turned to ash. She leaned back against the wall.
‘We’d appreciate it if you could help us with this investigation, Fred. The girl’s parents are beside themselves. It would be in your best interests to cooperate,’ said the senior sergeant.
‘Of course I will tell you what I know,’ said Fawzy, guiding Sergeant Barry to take a seat in the living room.
‘Tell me … when was the last time you saw Annabel White?’
‘Yesterday afternoon.’
‘What time?’
‘Around two-thirty … she came into the pharmacy.’
‘Did you talk to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘It’s a delicate matter.’
‘So is the disappearance of a minor.’
‘The girl has been stealing from my pharmacy.’
‘Pat’s pharmacy?’ Sergeant Barry frowned.
‘I caught her stealing yesterday. I suspected for a long time, but yesterday I caught her with two stolen packets of antihistamines … I found them in her bag once she left the pharmacy. She never paid for them. She’s a thief.’
‘So you followed her out of the pharmacy.’
‘Yes. I knew she had stolen something and I was right. When I opened her bag, I found my proof.’
‘Two packets, you say? Why didn’t you report this theft yesterday?’
‘She was scared. I told her she needed to tell her parents so that they could make good on what she had stolen from the pharmacy. I told her that if she didn’t tell her parents, and if they didn’t pay back what she had stolen from the pharmacy, I would go to the police. You see, sergeant, this girl has been creating problems for the pharmacy for a long time. Over several months she has stolen quite a lot.’
‘What evidence do you have to support that opinion about a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl?’
‘She’s a thief. I’ve been watching her. She’s been stealing for a long time.’
‘Does Pat know about this?’
‘No, I haven’t told him.’
Sergeant Barry looked at Fawzy with hard, immobile eyes. ‘How can you prove she has a history of stealing?’
‘I do a stocktake, every day. On the days she comes into the pharmacy, there is always an irreconcilable stock difference. Things disappear off the shelves.’
‘You say this happens only on the days that she comes into the pharmacy?’ Barry said, scribbling into his notebook.
‘Definitely on those days but … stock can go missing on other days as well. There is a gang of them … they work together, these teenagers … I think they must.’
‘Have you caught anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell Pat?’
Fawzy was silent.
‘It doesn’t look good for you, Fred … why on earth wouldn’t you tell your employer or law enforcement authorities about this so-called theft?’
‘I wanted to fix the problem.’
‘That’s not how it works in this country, people don’t go around takin
g the law into their own hands.’
‘I was there, yesterday,’ Nayeema said. ‘I saw the proof with my own eyes. He pulled out two packets from her bag. Lots of people saw him from Kevin’s bakery. You talk to them, they will tell you it’s true. I can tell you who was there and you can ask them.’
‘We’ve spoken to a couple of the witnesses from yesterday’s altercation on the street. They said it was disgraceful. They said Fred was screaming at the girl, shoved her by the shoulder and got right into her face and intimidated her. He got real physical with the kid.’
‘Kid?’ Fawzy huffed. ‘She’s no kid. She’s a thief.’
‘The witnesses said you looked real mad but they couldn’t hear what was being said. So I’d like you to tell me what was said.’
‘I’ve already told you.’
‘Tell me again.’
Nayeema rose to her feet. ‘The girl is scared because she has done the wrong thing and doesn’t want to tell her parents. It isn’t Fawzy’s fault.’
Sergeant Barry stared at her, his eyes goring her skull. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea, if that’s alright, Mrs Ikram.’
She jumped as she heard a thump at the front door followed by the heavy footsteps of two more policemen.
Sergeant Barry nodded to the men. ‘You’ve got it?’
‘Yup. We have the warrant, we can search the house.’
‘Search the house for what?’ said Nayeema.
‘A weapon, a clue, anything,’ said Fawzy, in a hollow, distant voice that sounded like he was speaking from the chamber of a nautilus shell. He sat very still.
‘They have no idea,’ he said to Nayeema. ‘You have no idea,’ he suddenly shouted. ‘You are wasting your time,’ he yelled in the direction of the police officers.
‘But why? Why are you doing this?’ Nayeema asked Sergeant Barry.
‘Your husband is a person of interest in this case.’
‘Will you arrest Fawzy?’
‘Depends on what we find.’
‘You’ll find nothing, he did nothing wrong. The girl has run away.’ How can you be such a simpleton, Nayeema wanted to scream at the sergeant.
‘You left work early yesterday,’ said Sergeant Barry.
‘Yes,’ said Fawzy.
‘Where did you go?’
Nayeema tried to stifle her surprise. Why hadn’t Fawzy told her that he’d left work early?
‘I wasn’t feeling well, I had a migraine … so I came home.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Around three-thirty pm.’
‘Can you confirm, Mrs Ikram, that your husband was home at that time?’
‘I wasn’t home until five-thirty or six …’
‘Can anyone verify your whereabouts in the period after leaving work and your wife arriving home at five-thirty or six pm?’ said Sergeant Barry to Fawzy.
‘I came home, I tell you. I saw no one until my wife came home.’
‘So. The same day Annabel White disappears you happened to leave work early? Bev tells me you are always the first in and the last to leave the pharmacy, so yesterday’s early departure was … uncharacteristic. It’s intriguing. It seems to me that you have quite a problem on your hands … you see, we take the disappearance of a minor very seriously. And your whereabouts can’t be verified between three-thirty and five-thirty pm. Not a single soul can verify your whereabouts.’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Fawzy, his voice thinning like an echo.
‘I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the police station for a formal statement. Your cooperation is advised.’
Nayeema’s heart was splayed like a butchered lamb on the ground. She should have been home at three-thirty; that’s what Fawzy would have expected when he left work yesterday. That’s what she’d always told him and he had no reason to disbelieve her. Oh, Professeur. Her eyes swelled as she held back a wail. She sat mute as the weight of her lies and deceit slapped the air out of her.
Fawzy rummaged through the briefcase by his side and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Fawzy smoked? In all the years she had known him, since she was eight years old, she had never seen a cigarette pass his lips. In Alexandria, he had disparaged smoking the sheesha water-pipes, and was critical of any man who lit up if he was happy or sad or bored or just because he could. Without looking at Nayeema, he struck a match. His mouth made a popping sound as he inhaled deeply.
Through the front window, she stared above the line of houses and telegraph poles to where brown sludge soiled the horizon. Her fingers shook. As the sun slid into a grazed pocket of cloud, the sky dimmed to a glassy grey.
* * *
In the rapidly ebbing sunshine of the afternoon, Fawzy sat between the laundry shed and the washing line and smoked the Camel slowly. He looked up at Nayeema on the verandah with a foggy smile. He waved to her with a flourish of his hand as though the cigarette was a paintbrush and he was adding strokes to an invisible canvas.
‘Fawzy? What’s wrong with you? Why are you home so early?’ In a flash Nayeema descended the stairs and was in the garden with him, her gaze flitting between the ashtray and the burning cigarette he held delicately between his thumb and forefinger. She was tense and alert and afraid and felt as frail as a sparrow.
‘Nothing is wrong. Pat gave me the afternoon off … I’m relaxing and testing my peripheral vision.’ He used his cigarette to sweep a line from one end of the yard to the other.
He took one final drag of his cigarette. Nayeema watched him with wide eyes. ‘If I had known you were home I would have come earlier. Goldie and I were talking for a while after we finished cleaning up. About music, you know, she gave me a cassette.’ Her speech was faster than usual, as though her mouth was chasing her roaring heart.
Fawzy pressed the cigarette into the ashtray.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling okay?’
‘Yes.’
She scrutinised his face with her forehead slightly furrowed and her pleading eyes. He refused to meet her gaze. He wasn’t ready to forgive her just yet. Her body trembled with guilt as his grief filled the yard.
‘It would seem that the pharmacy’s customers already have an opinion about me. Apparently, I am guilty of an act of perversion. Customers who used to treat me with the highest respect are now refusing to be assisted by me at all.’ His voice was detached and flat.
He lit another cigarette.
‘Who are they? I want to know.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You must be feeling terrible.’ She squatted next to him and rested her head against his.
‘My feelings have nothing to do with anything. My feelings won’t stop people from staring at me when I walk down Main Street. Feelings won’t stop the pharmacy from losing more business. People have made up their minds about me. My feelings don’t count. My words don’t even count. As long as that little tart Annabel remains “missing”, I am a condemned man.’
How could anyone think that serious and upright Fawzy was capable of an unknowable, unexplainable act of brutality? It didn’t matter how many times she and Fawzy protested that Annabel had simply run away, no one heard them. The police had scoffed at his suggestion of a drugs racket. Sergeant Barry regarded him with a mixture of pathos and thinly concealed disgust.
Pat Morris had put in a good word for Fawzy to the police, attesting to his good character, agreeing that his own stock keeping had become, well … sloppy. This did not seem to make much of a dent in the police department’s poor impression of Fawzy. Nayeema rubbed his shoulder, but he barely noticed. She walked meekly to the washing line and tugged the pegs off.
Fawzy fiddled with his cigarette packet before taking one out. He tapped it twice and cleared his throat. ‘Until Annabel White, everything was so perfect for us here. We could have had anything … before. But now, it’s ruined. I’m ruined.’ His voice was as curt as a schoolteacher’s, his tone as impassive as a television newsreader’s.
‘You believed
it was perfect because you wanted to believe. Things can be good again. Nothing is so broken that it can’t be fixed through hard work.’
‘Ah, so you have been listening to me.’ He smiled and inhaled sharply. He expelled the smoke into a hard, straight funnel. ‘The thing is—I don’t think hard work can repair the damage done here in Burraboo. But I have been thinking that maybe somewhere else, a good life is possible.’
Nayeema threw the last item of washing into the basket without folding it. ‘Back to Sydney?’ she stared at him, her mouth agape.
‘Maybe.’
‘Don’t think about anything now, Fawzy, this is not the time. You just need to relax, like Pat Morris said. No thinking.’ She wagged a finger at him. She felt guilt flare in her cheeks like fireworks in the dark of night.
‘Oh, I can still think, ya butta, I may have lost my good reputation but I haven’t lost my mind.’ He tapped his temple with the filter end of his cigarette and watched her bend down to collect the container of pegs.
‘If you haven’t lost your mind then why are you smoking?’
He nodded slowly as though giving her question great thought. ‘You know the first time I spoke to the Annabel White girl, when she was hiding behind the cottage? She was smoking a cigarette. Both of us were. We were hiding behind the cottage and smoking cigarettes.’ He shrugged. ‘You will be happy to know that it helps me to relax … isn’t that what everyone wants of me?’
On an overhead branch of the eucalyptus, the squawk of a bird shifted their attention to the tree. She saw the bird instantly; its neck jutted forward in defence, or perhaps inquisition, as it looked down on them: the oversized featherless beast seated on a deckchair in the yard and a second beast carrying a nest in her guilty hands.
‘Is that one of your butcherbirds?’
‘Yes.’
Fawzy closed his eyes. His entire body was so still that his chest did not appear to move when he breathed. It made Nayeema’s insides crawl. Even when he was awake, only a fragment of Fawzy was here. He was disappearing a little more every day. She couldn’t bear to see another minute of this contracted version of Fawzy. She had to act.
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