by Tim Buckley
“You guys were out with the Gregsons at the weekend, yeah?” he said.
“Yeah, at the regatta.”
He nodded and smirked again.
“Mate, the Masters hate the Gregsons!”
It turns out that the Masters, who were also part of the sailing fraternity, had accused the Gregsons of cheating to win a race at a regatta a few years before, something about jumping the gun or cutting a corner, I don’t remember. Anyway, that lit the fuse on an almighty feud that had only burned hotter as time went by.
“So,” Nathan said, “either you’re for the Gregsons or you’re for the Masters. Simple as that, can’t be both. And you’re now officially on Team Gregson.”
I shook my head at the universal pettiness of the small town. Or maybe of every town where human beings live.
“I’d better find a new dentist then,” I said. “I have a rule to never make enemies who can legally hurt me.”
So that was our introduction to the darker side of local life. What came next made a middle-class grudge look altogether more petty.
The fat kid who smashed the chair in Bobby’s café was called Walter Gretz. Walter’s grandparents came to town from Germany in the fifties and started a small factory making engineering components – screws or bolts or something like that. I’m not sure exactly what. Anyway, the business thrived and Walter’s father runs it now, making him one of the town’s wealthiest men. I’d run into him a few times and he’d always seemed polite and amiable, in that clipped Teutonic way.
Walter, however, seems not to have inherited any of his father’s politeness. Being relatively well-to-do in a small town has given him a sort of kudos. It’s not borne of anything he’s done, he has no particular talent that I can see – he’s not athletic and he doesn’t seem particularly bright. He’s certainly not an attractive kid, soft and fat with privilege and laziness. No, it’s just that he has access to money and he uses it to garner support from his lackeys and to keep them in line.
It wasn’t the first time he’d caused trouble in the café and, after the incident with the chair, Bobby barred him from The Pantry. That was quite a big deal in a small town with few places for the kids to congregate. But a couple of days later, Walter showed up at the café, brazen and contemptuous.
“I’ll have a cappuccino. And a muffin,” he said to Bobby, curling his lip at her in defiance.
Bobby thought about it but decided to let him in, with a stern warning to keep all four legs of the chair grounded or he was out. That was, of course, only throwing down a gauntlet to Walter and as soon as he sat down with his entourage, he leaned back in the chair and put his feet up on the table, taunting Bobby with a smirk.
“Gretz, get your bloody feet off the table! NOW!” she shouted at him from the counter.
He just shrugged.
“Yeah,” he sneered, “in a minute…”
A snort of sniggering went up from the table.
That was the final straw. Bobby, like I said, keeps herself fit and she’s no weakling, but Walter must be twice her size. Still, she marched down and slapped him over the top of the head, then picked up his bag and took it over to the door. Glaring back at Gretz, she opened up the bag and tipped its contents onto the pavement outside.
“And now, you little pup, you’re definitely barred!” she shouted, throwing his bag onto the street.
“What’re you doing, you crazy bitch?!” Walter screamed, heaving his flabby frame out of the chair and running to gather up his stuff off the street and put it back in the bag.
I don’t know if it was genuine shock or just his child’s sense of fight-or-flight when faced with a threatening adult. Maybe privileged teenagers in small country towns take longer to grow up. Whatever it was, Walter was suddenly just a naughty, fat kid who’d been caught red-handed and he didn’t know what to do. He stood glowering at Bobby and she just stared back at him, daring him to do something about it. In the end, he just shouted a few obscenities, called his troops out and sloped away, still firing abuse back at Bobby. His mates picked up their things and made their way languidly but nervously out the door, muttering under their breath. One of them knocked over a glass that smashed on the floor and they all snickered but moved on a little quicker.
All of which would just have been another day at the office but for what happened that night.
I first heard the news when Karl called Emily to say he couldn’t come in that day, he had to help out his mum. Emily didn’t quiz him, but it sounded a bit odd to me so I went into town to make sure everything was OK. When I got there, everything was far from OK. The front window of the café was smashed and there was glass everywhere. Inside, the tables and chairs had been thrown over and there was cutlery and crockery everywhere. It looked like there’d been an earthquake. Bobby was talking to Sergeant Willis from the town police, so I went over to talk to Karl who was clearing up as best he could with a brush and dustpan.
“Shit, buddy,” I said, “what the hell happened here?”
He didn’t stop brushing, didn’t even look at me, and I could see how angry he was.
“Someone smashed the place up last night,” he said, so quietly I could hardly hear. “The alarm didn’t go off so Mum only found it this morning when she came to open up.”
I patted him on the back.
“Don’t worry, Karl,” I said, “we’ll get the place shipshape again and the cops’ll find whoever did this. It’s a small town, you can’t get away with something like this.”
He stood up straight and looked me in the eye.
“I know who did it,” he said slowly, his face fixed in hate. “It was Gretz. And he’s going to pay for it, I swear to God, he’s going to pay for it.”
I shook my head.
“Take it easy, Karl, eh? Let’s not jump to any conclusions. Let Sergeant Willis and his boys do their stuff, yeah?”
He nodded but said nothing and set back to work.
Sergeant Willis was finishing up with Bobby, and he nodded to me as he left. Bobby came over.
“Fancy a coffee?” she said, with a wry smile. “It’ll have to be a paper cup…!”
“Go on then!” I said. “But this place is really going downhill!”
Bobby, too, was pretty sure Gretz had something to do with it.
“He was pretty mad when I threw his ass out yesterday, and I actually think he might have a screw loose… there’s something demonic about him. But still, I never thought he’d do anything like this… He’s just – well, they’re all just – spoilt rich kids, aren’t they? Maybe it wasn’t him?”
“I don’t know, Bobby,” I said. “It’s not like this kind of thing happens round here, is it? And it does seem like a bit of a coincidence…”
She nodded.
“That’s what Willis said. He’s going to talk to Walter, but nobody saw anything and there’s no way of proving it was him. Cops round here aren’t exactly CSI! But he’s going to have a sniff round, too, and see if anything else turns up.”
So we drank the coffees, turned on the radio and got on with putting the place back together.
Like I’ve said before, Karl’s a good lad. He’s dependable and keen to learn, and I don’t know what Emily would have done if we hadn’t found him. For all of Bobby’s industry and pragmatic ambition, however, he has, inevitably, inherited some of his father’s genes too. Not that Mitch is a bad guy, don’t get me wrong. He’s probably been a victim of some pretty bad luck. But even with a fair wind and a calm sea, Mitch’s voyage through life wouldn’t have been without its own problems. A short temper and a tendency to see the worst in people don’t make for a great combination, especially when mixed with an intransigence that makes it difficult to see any other point of view other than the one at which you have already arrived. That set of ingredients formed the recipe that got Mitch kicked out of football clubs and part-time j
obs all over the country, and it festered somewhere deep in Karl, waiting to be unleashed by the wrong set of circumstances.
It was later that night, just gone ten, and I was reading a book on the stoop, a glass of wine at my hand and Emily flicking through a magazine beside me. We were basking in a silence broken only by the chirruping of the cicadas when the phone rang.
“Wilde, it’s me.” Bobby’s voice was agitated, almost panicked. “Listen, Karl’s not home yet and I’m afraid he might do something stupid. Can you help me look for him? Please?”
I jumped in the jeep and raced into town. Bobby was already out in her car trawling the streets and I flagged her down near the café.
“What happened?” I said.
She shook her head.
“We were just talking at dinner, you know, about what happened and how it would take a while to get everything sorted out with the insurance people. He seemed fine to begin with, but I could see he was getting angry so I tried to change the subject. But he just lost it, started shouting about how they shouldn’t get away with it and how it wasn’t fair. He got up and ran out. I tried to call him back but he just jumped on his bike and made off. I got in the car and came after him but he was gone. And I don’t know where.”
“Where have you looked?”
“Everywhere, Wilde,” she said and shook her head. “I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Look, he’s not stupid, he won’t do anything daft.” I wasn’t sure I believed that and neither was Bobby, but it seemed like the right platitude. “You take the far end of town, I’ll go back up to the other end of Main Street.”
Bobby just nodded and drove away.
It was dark and streetlights didn’t offer a lot so I crawled along Main Street, squinting into the side streets and the alleyways. I thought about calling Sergeant Willis, but I was afraid of what Karl might have done before we finally got to him. Then I remembered what he’d said that morning as he swept up the debris from the café floor – that it was Gretz, it had to have been Gretz and he would have to pay for what he did.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself and swung the jeep around on the empty street to head back out towards the factory and the Gretz house.
The streetlamps out there offer even less light than they do in town so I pulled the jeep over, took a torch out of the glove pocket and climbed out. It took a few minutes for my eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness, and even then it was impossible to see much by the faint light of the flash-lamp. There are only a few houses on that road, all of them on big, dark plots and if he was there, I wasn’t going to find him if he didn’t want to be found. I was about to go back to the jeep when something glinted as the flash-lamp’s beam passed over it. It took a few more passes to see it, but finally, hidden in some shrubbery across from Walter’s house, I saw the reflective decals of a bike. Karl’s bike.
“Karl! Karl!” I whispered as loudly as I dared. “I know you’re here, mate! Come on, let’s go home!”
There was no reply from the dark, so I fixed the torch between my teeth and climbed over the fence into the Gretzes’ garden, trying to figure out as I did what I’d say to old man Gretz or to Sergeant Willis when the garden’s sensor lights came on and caught me in the act of trespass.
Afraid that the light from the torch would be seen from the house, I fumbled in the dark along the line of trees that bounded the plot. Ahead, I could see the dark outline of the big house – the Gretz family obviously turned in early. Between the house and the tree line, the water in the swimming pool glistened and beside it there was a smaller building, I guessed it was a garage or a big shed. As I got closer, I could see that the door was open and I could hear faint rustling from inside. Pretty sure that old man Gretz was unlikely to be shuffling round his pool house in the dark, I crept forward and looked in the side window. There, among neatly stacked garden tools and machinery, was Karl, busily prising the lids off what looked like cans of paint.
I was about to grab him and get the hell out of there when a sensor light clicked on under the eave of the house, bathing the pool in bright light. I pinned myself to the wall of the machinery shed and held my breath. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably less than thirty seconds, the light went out and darkness again consumed the garden. There was no stir from the house and the garden was silent. I crept round to the front of the shed where the door was open and as I reached it, Karl came out with two cans of blue paint which he set down by the edge of the pool. He was about to tip them into the water when I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back from the pool, my hand clamped over his mouth lest he cry out.
“What the fuck are you doing??!!” I wheezed, grappling with him as he struggled to get free.
“Let me go,” he growled, and caught me with an elbow into the ribs.
But he’s not a strong lad and it wasn’t hard for me to pin him to the ground, probably also because he was reluctant to really have a go at me.
“Let me go!!” he hissed again, but this time I grabbed a handful of his hoody and shook him, then punched him in the shoulder.
“Cut it out, Karl, you hear me?” I whispered. “Just cut it the fuck out!” He stopped wriggling and I let him go, but kept my knee on his chest in case he tried to run.
“Now listen, I don’t know what the fuck you’re playing at, but this is what’s going to happen. We’re going to put those cans back into the shed, we’re going to close it up and we’re getting the fuck out of here! Got it?”
He paused then decided it was over and nodded with a furious scowl. We put the cans back, closed the shed up and scampered back along the trees to where my jeep was parked.
“Jesus Christ, Karl!” I shouted once we were safely in the jeep and heading back into town. I dialled Bobby’s number. “Yeah, Bobby, I got him. I’ll see you back at the house.”
I shoved the phone back into my pocket. Now I was angry, now that the danger was past but with the adrenaline still coursing through me, now I was just plain mad.
“What the fuck were you thinking? Do you know what kind of damage that could do? To all the filters and the pumps? Do you have any idea what kind of money we’re talking about? You bloody little idiot…”
Indignation took over from fear and he sat up straight in the seat.
“He deserved it, he smashed up Mum’s café. The fat bastard deserved…”
“No, Karl!” By now, I’d had enough of this. “You don’t get to make that call. You don’t even know if it was him. And it certainly wasn’t his father. Do you think Walter gives a shit if his dad has to buy new pool machinery?” I stabbed him in the shoulder with a finger. “You had better not pull a stunt like this again, mate. Not ever. Your mum has enough to deal with without your stupid bullshit.”
He said nothing, just stared straight ahead, glowering through the windshield at the injustice in the night.
Karl stormed off to his room without a word once we got back to the house, which was just as well as Bobby didn’t seem much in the mood for talking. She’d guessed he was up to no good and I guess it was clear from our demeanour that we’d been having it out.
“Do I want to know?” she said, when he was out of earshot.
I shrugged.
“That he was looking out for you?” I said. “Yes. That he was about to do something really stupid? Probably not.”
“At the Gretz house?”
I nodded.
She sighed and shook her head, then sank down into an armchair.
“I’ll kill him,” she said. “He should know better.”
“I’m no expert in this stuff,” I said, “but maybe you should sleep on it. For sure, he needs to know never to do anything like this again. But you know he’s a decent lad and it all comes from a good place.”
“But he’s not a kid anymore, Wilde. That kind of thing used to just get him a clip round the ear but now it ge
ts him in trouble with the cops, maybe gets him a record… He has to learn to keep it under wraps, this bloody temper of his.”
“I know, Bob, I know. You want me to have a chat to him tomorrow? When he’s calmed down a bit? Not that he’ll much want to listen to what I have to say, but you never know.”
“Yeah, it’s worth a try,” she sighed. “Thanks, mate.”
I looked at my watch.
“And now I’d better be off. Maybe get the bikes out tomorrow and go over Chapman’s Bluff, blow off a bit of steam?”
“Yeah, sounds good. And Wilde – thanks again. I dread to think…”
“Get some sleep, Bobby. And try not to kill him in the night!”
12
A steep, narrow path led down from the lighthouse to the strand below. The beach ran for a couple of kilometres west, away from the headland and banked by tall, grass-covered dunes. In summer, holidaymakers and locals flocked to the beach but the sheer expanse of sand meant it never got so busy that it lost its sense of coastal wilderness. In winter, you might be the only person for miles, like a distant stick figure in a beachscape. I was, at the time, still trying to make up my mind about the lighthouse and that day, I think it was in May, I’d all but decided that it was an indulgent waste of money and that it was an idea best put to bed. Still, like every day when I visited the lighthouse, I braved the broken path and picked my steps to get down to the sand.
It was a fresh, clear day with a breeze blowing stiff from the north. The fine, windblown sand rat-tatted against my sunglasses and the waves rolled in a couple of metres high. I squinted out to sea and I could just pick out the shape of a tanker, heading up to Perth probably. I watched as it inched its way along the horizon and when I turned to continue walking along the strand, an old woman dressed all in black was standing in front of me, staring at me. She was so close I jumped.
“Hello there,” I called out above the sound of the ocean, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“My dear boy,” she said, with a flourish of her arm, “don’t worry! Beautiful, isn’t it?”