(2005) A Certain Malice Read online

  As she slid out of the police Commodore she expected the worst and wondered about the wisdom of, if not the reasons for, her special request to be posted back to her hometown.

  Catcalls and whistles greeted her as she pushed against the heavy hinged door to make her way through the lunchtime crowd to the counter. Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement at the jukebox, heard the tinkle of coins.

  There was a snigger then a snort, then the buzz of the crowd was drowned by Skyhooks’ Women In Uniform, so loud she could hardly hear herself think, let alone shout above it.

  She walked over to the offending machine with her gut squirming. There was a curved rib of vinyl forty-fives, song lists and numbered buttons, but nothing that said Stop. A man in Stubbies and a blue singlet delved into the small pocket next to his straining belly, about to slot another coin and select another track.

  Leanne reached for his wrist and stopped the action, shouting to be heard. “Hold on a sec, sir. Please don’t play any more music. I need to make a public announcement.”

  He feigned a look of surprise and gave her a reluctant nod.

  She continued towards the bar until a rough hand grabbed hers. She looked down to find Ham Martin kneeling at her side. He was lip-synching the song’s chorus and gazing up at her with an expression of mocking love.

  Women in uniform sometimes they look so cold

  Women in uniform but ooh they feel so warm

  She tried to yank her arm away without making a scene but he reached out with his other hand and caught her tight. What should she do now? She might have won the marksmanship trophy at the academy, but she could hardly shoot him for this; it wasn’t even just cause for pepper spray. At the Academy they had been drilled on how to handle almost every situation, but shit if she could remember the correct terminology for this kind of harassment. Her nervousness had made her mind go blank. Even if she’d remembered the by-the-book response, he’d never be able to hear her above the racket of the jukebox.

  She couldn’t think, and all she could feel was the flush of her own humiliation scratching against the collar of her uniform shirt.

  The song finally finished and the laughter died to an acceptable hum.

  “I see you left your brain in the cup by your bed again, Ham,” Leanne said.

  Ham’s grin faded, and he let go of her hand. Several of the patrons chuckled. She tried to ignore the crude remarks as she moved over to the bar, conscious of fifty pairs of eyes boring into her back. She leaned against the bar and slid the picture of Bell across to Kylie the barmaid. But as Kylie opened her mouth to speak she was interrupted by a voice from behind. It was Terry Carmichael, one of her dad’s best mates.

  “Have you heard from Bob recently, Leanne?”

  Jesus Christ, just let me get my job done.

  “This isn’t a social visit, Terry.” She looked into his weathered face seeing only concern in his sun-faded eyes. At least he wasn’t making fun of her.

  “He’s in Broome now,” she amended, feeling the stiffness of her breast pocket where the dog-eared postcard lay next to her heart.

  “Lucky bugger,” he sighed then added in a softer voice. “How’s Mavis taking it? Still bad?”

  She wanted to say, why don’t you go and see for yourself, but held herself in check. Most of the townspeople seemed unnerved by her mother, never knowing how she would be from one day to the next. It was understandable; even Leanne found herself walking on eggshells around her most of the time. If there was something good on the box, blackberry nip in the fridge and plenty of anti-depressants in the bathroom cupboard, she was fine. But if any of these ran low, watch out.

  “Hey, Leanne, I know that guy.” Kylie thumped a finger on to the printout. Leanne was grateful to Kylie for steering everyone back on topic. They’d been to Toorrup High School together and knew each other pretty well, as you’d have to when you sat on a bus together over four hours every day. Leanne considered Kylie to be one of her few good friends.

  “That’s that old sod, Herb Bell. You sometimes drink with him, don’t you, Sid?”

  The barmaid turned to a wizened monkey of a man sitting at the bar, quietly dribbling into his beer.

  “Yup.” Sid belched.

  “Can you remember when you last saw him, Sid?” Leanne asked.

  “Nope.” Sid belched louder. Someone started to laugh.

  Leanne grabbed a teaspoon from the bar and tapped it against a glass. She turned around to face the crowd, drew a deep breath and said, “As you all probably know, a burned body was discovered in the Glenroyd School grounds on Monday. The victim has been identified as Herbert Bell.”

  There was a low murmur from those whom the town grapevine had not yet reached.

  “I’m circulating a picture of Herb, hoping to jog some memories. The picture has him with his hair dangling down, but I think he usually had it tied back in a ponytail. I want you all to think about when you last saw him, and come and tell me. We are especially interested in talking to anyone who saw him last Saturday.”

  Kylie helped Leanne distribute the pictures. The last few in the pile were wet from resting on the bar. When Leanne tried to separate them they fell apart in her hands. She screwed them up and shoved them in her pocket and glanced around, hoping no one had noticed. Her gut lurched.

  “A face only a mother could love,” she heard someone say.

  Someone else tacked the picture to the dartboard. Leanne shoved her way through the crowd and managed to pull it down before the first dart could be thrown. She backed the offender against the wall away from his mates, and spoke to him low and mean, like Sarge did when he’d caught Tim Robinson letting down little Ian Knox’s bicycle tyres.

  “You knew Herb well enough to want to throw darts at him, did you?”

  “Err, not really, Leanne. I hardly even spoke to him.”

  The guy was younger than she was and seemed nervous of her. Now, that was a first.

  “I think someone who wants to throw darts at someone else’s picture could hate him enough to want to kill him. What do you reckon, Shorty?”

  Shorty swallowed and took a breath. “I was only joking, honest, Leanne, ask anyone here,” he said nodding to the rabble over her shoulder.

  “He’s right Leanne. He never knows nothing. He’s a dumb little shit.”

  Beery gusts of laughter interrupted Shorty’s character reference. Leanne gave the kid a final glare and returned him to his mates with a push.

  “Oh, there is one thing, I don’t know if it helps,” the kid said just before he scuttled off.

  “I’m listening.”

  The boy turned to his mates for encouragement and was met by blank stares. He took a gulp of beer.“He was always bragging about how rich he was going to be.” He smacked his lips, failing to get rid of the beer froth. He looked like the Milky Bar Kid.

  “He was talking about winning Lotto, you moron,” one of his friends interjected.

  “When was this?” Leanne asked the boy.

  “Last few weeks I guess,” he said, shrugging.“Is that any help?”

  “Probably not, but thanks anyway.”

  Leanne left the pub knowing as little about Herb Bell’s last movements as she did when entering it. Her stomach gave an empty growl. She decided she needed a therapeutic slice of mud cake. She could question Flo at the diner while she ate.

  8

  “I hate him, I hate his guts.”

  Angelo looked at Ruby with astonishment. “That sounds a bit harsh,” he said before taking a bite from a sandwich as big as the lunch-box it had come from. A blob of mayonnaise dripped from the sandwich and collected in the cleft of his chin.

  His hands and nails were filthy, his overalls were covered in grease and his hair was gelled into short spikes. A gold ring pierced the bruising of his swollen left eyebrow. Ruby thought he was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen.

  But his neutrality on the issue of her father annoyed her and made her more determined to
milk her miserable life story for all it was worth.

  “I’ve been asking for a pony all my life and now I’ve finally grown out of the idea, he offers to get me one. It was his way of making me want to come here. Can you imagine that? At my age, he tried to bribe me with a pony.”

  “It would have been a bit hard to keep a pony in Sydney,” Angelo said.

  He spoke as slowly as he chewed, thinking long and hard over every word, savouring them just as he savoured every bite of his lunch. He wasn’t looking at her, but somewhere off into the distance, maybe at Fleur who was sniffing around the swings or maybe at the stagnant pools of the drying river.

  Why was he always so fair and reasonable? She tried to get a hold of the emotions that blew like tangled ribbons through her mind. Sometimes even she didn’t know what she really felt.

  “I think what I hate the most about him is what he did to Mum and Joey.”

  “It’s not like he killed them, Ruby,” Angelo said as he inched closer, his arm snaking her waist. He took another bite of his sandwich. She listened to his chewing, the occasional drawing in of his breath. He smelt of grease, cigarettes and mayonnaise.

  “No, but it’s his fault they’re dead.” She allowed a quaver to escape into her voice. “If he hadn’t been a cop, they wouldn’t have died. The bomb was supposed to be for him. The bikies planted it so he wouldn’t testify against them in court. He’s guilty about it but taking it out on me. He thinks of this...” she almost said dump, then remembered Angelo had always lived here “…place as home. He said he had the happiest days of his life here and he wants me to share in the fuzzy warm glow of his memories.”

  She looked up the sky trying not to let the tears spill. A tangle of tree branches blocked some of the blue, lacing above their heads like a net. Her father had told her how he and his mates would sit in this Moreton Bay fig and pelt innocent passers by with the rotten fruit. They’d steal fruit from the trees in people’s gardens and play chicken on the railway track. If the monks from the Boys’ Home caught them, they were put in the boxing ring with the school champion or else they were caned until they bled. Mum had told her that part; he never spoke about the bad things. He always pretended that everything was just wonderful.

  God, how she hated all this nostalgic crap.

  “He’s changed so much since we got here. He’s over-protective. He smothers me and his jokes are worse than ever.”

  Even his accent is different, she thought. He calls everyone mate, dinner has become tea and a bottom is now a bum. Mum always used to tell him off for that kind of language, but now he used it all the time. Before long he’d be blowing his nose on to the pavement. She looked at the boy beside her. And what would Mum have thought of you, she asked herself?

  She decided to put that thought to the back of her mind.

  Angelo took her hand and gave it a squeeze, looking at her through earnest brown eyes. “Are you glad you’re here now?” he asked. He leaned towards her and brushed her lips with a soft kiss before reaching to cup her breast. She deepened the kiss, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation that tingled from her centre to her toes. Finally she drew back, blinking away the tears.

  “Yes, but I’m not going to tell him that.”

  “Did you manage to get rid of that geek, Cindy?”

  “Yup,” she said, smiling now. “I annoyed her so much she ended up wanting to bash me even more than that bible she was always carrying on about.”

  Angelo laughed. “Do you think he’d ever let you come to Toorrup with me? I have a mate who lives there and a key to his house. He’s hardly ever at home.” Angelo grinned and continued to massage her breast through her thin T-shirt.

  “Not likely, he hardly even lets me out of the house. He’s not going to let me go to Toorrup with someone who’s still on P-plates.”

  In her mind she could hear him. “I’m not letting you out with someone who has spiked hair and a ring through his eyebrow!” The imagined scene made her smile. She wondered if Angelo had any tatts under those overalls. The shock value of tatts would be even better than the eyebrow ring.

  “Hey, Angelo, have you ever tried drugs?”

  His hand dropped from her breast.“Is this truth or dare or something?”

  She shrugged.“I’m just curious. I figure that when people have a relationship, start to go out and everything, they should tell each other stuff like that. I used to smoke cones in Sydney,” she said, hoping to impress him, to seem older than she was. “I was wondering if you knew how to go about getting them over here?”

  He shook his head.“Nah, that’s not how I operate, Rubes. I never buy them. Besides…” He waggled his eyebrows. “There’s better things than drugs, I reckon.”

  “But you’ve had mull, right?”

  “Sure, hasn’t everyone?”

  “And if you were given some, you’d like it, right?”

  “Well yeah, but I wouldn’t waste my money buying it.” He gave her a puzzled look, then smiled and tapped on the side of her head.“What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”

  Ruby smiled.

  Cam left the station when his phone calls home remained unanswered. Ruby wasn’t in the house and the dog was gone. He guessed the park, but why hadn’t she rung? Was it because she was meeting that boy?

  She could still have rung. Something must have happened to her.

  From his house he jogged down the rough path to the park and by the time he got there he’d roused himself into a panic; paperwork and Vince were forgotten, the Bell case might never have existed. He came to a halt alongside the wobbly Lion’s Club sign that dedicated the park to the citizens of Glenroyd. As he leaned against its wooden post to catch his breath he gasped in the muddy river smells that wafted up the embankment.

  The park sloped down to the drying riverbed, connected to the stunted scrubland on the other side by a metal bridge he always used to think looked like a dinosaur’s backbone. Now it was just an ugly metal bridge. Knotted ropes and swings with tyre seats hung like limp spaghetti in the afternoon air, and squiggles of heat slithered up from the tarmac wicket, making the ground quiver. He squinted through the heat haze. The park was deserted. Except for Ruby and a boy sitting on a bench overlooking the river.

  Fleur raced over to jump at his legs. He picked her up and headed towards the bench. Ruby’s hair shone in the sun like corn silk, but the head of her male companion was no more than a spiky silhouette.

  Cam clutched the poodle tightly to his chest as he got closer. He stopped a few feet away and cleared his throat. The sound was drowned by Ruby’s raised voice.

  “Gramma always said he put his job before us. She said things might be different now, but she’s wrong, his job still comes first. He doesn’t give a shit about me.”

  Cam willed himself to take a step forward. “Ruby?” No response; surely she’d heard him?

  He stood and watched the kid reach into his pocket for a greasy rag to wipe her cheek. When she moved her head her eyes met Cam’s and with a look of calculated defiance, she turned back to the boy and planted a firm kiss on his lips.

  Cam pushed himself into taking another step.

  “Hey, Ruby,” he said, “I found Fleur on the road. You’d better keep her on the lead next time.”

  The kid jumped to his feet and turned around. His hair was gelled into short dark spikes with bleached tips. It looked like he had a wet echidna on his head.

  “Um, Dad, this is Angelo,” Ruby said.

  Angelo thrust out a dirty hand. The wrist that disappeared into the overall sleeve was skinny as a girl’s.

  “Good to meet you, er, Mr…”

  “Sergeant. Sergeant Fraser,” Cam said, tapping at his nametag.

  After shaking hands, Angelo wiped his nose on the sleeve of his overalls. Cam could only imagine what those long sleeves might be hiding.

  “Watch you don’t hook yourself on that eyebrow ring, son,” he said.

  Angelo’s mouth opened like a fish’s.


  Ruby clenched her face. “Dad, don’t be so rude!”

  “It looks like he’s hooked himself up on it once already.” Cam leaned forward to have a good look at the boy’s eye. It was eggplant purple and swollen to a slit, the holes on each side of the ring a livid pink. “You should have taken that thing out.”

  Angelo spoke to Cam’s shoes.“I guess I’d better be getting back to work now.” His gaze travelled up Cam’s leg to the holstered Smith and Wesson. He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple almost bounced into his mouth.

  “Yeah, guess you’d better,” said Cam. But he changed his mind when the boy turned to leave, realising that this would be a good opportunity to find out what kind of a kid his daughter was hanging about with. “Say, I may as well come back to the workshop with you, I’ve been meaning on having a chat with your boss.”

  “Wait for me then, I just need to put my shoes on,” Ruby said, scrabbling with her sandals.

  “This is police business, love. I’ll see you back at the house.”

  Ruby folded her arms and turned down her mouth, but Cam knew he was safe; she wouldn’t risk scaring off a new boyfriend with a temper tantrum now.

  They separated at the edge of the park; Ruby headed for home, Cam and Angelo on to the mechanic’s near the centre of town. While they walked Cam attempted to make conversation with the kid. The grunts of response became so irritating he gave up trying.

  The double front doors of the mechanic’s were locked. A grimy piece of paper that read BACK IN THIRTY MINUTES had been taped above the handle.

  “Cliff’s still at lunch.” Angelo stated the obvious. “You’ll have to drop by again later.”

  “Oh, that’s OK. You’ll do just as well.” Cam gave him a pleasant smile. “Where’s the other entrance then? Round the side?”

  Before Angelo could offer up any form of protest, Cam disappeared down the side alley towards the back of the workshop. He opened the gate and found himself in a high-walled yard that looked to be the final resting-place of anything in Glenroyd ever loosely termed mechanical. Part of an old-fashioned push-mower, a large copper kettle and a set of sheep shears shared space with piles of tyres and mounds of rusting car and truck parts. The four-wheel drive fire unit and a tow truck were parked within easy access of some locked double gates at the end of the yard.