Inconsolable (6 page)

Hugh's composure went from friend and colleague to leader in two blinks. He sat straighter, he pushed his shoulders back. “What do I need to know?”

“After that first breakfast I haven't been able to find him. I've been back five times, morning, evening, midday. I think he's watching and he makes himself scarce.”

“Are we sure he doesn't have a job? People who live in cars and squats often have jobs. He might not be hiding from you.”

“If he has a job then it's even more of a worry he's living where he is. He's something else, this guy. Articulate, polite, sharp. No obvious mental illness or substance abuse. I don't know what happened to him, but he thinks the cave is exactly where he needs to be.”

“Is he some kind of aesthetic, a top of the line God-botherer?”

“I don't think so. Says he believes in science. I left him the oranges and a cask of spring water yesterday. They were found on our front door this morning with a note written on the flyleaf of a book addressed to me that said, ‘thanks for the oranges but the homeless in Cooper Park have greater need of them'.”

“What book?”

Foley grinned. She knew Hugh would want to know that. Getting the oranges back was unexpected, but this was the best thing, this proved her point about Drum being a different species of homeless person to what they'd encountered before.

“
A Clockwork Orange
. I don't think that was an accident either. He had a stack of books, the only thing other than essentials in the cave.”

Hugh's eyebrow jumped. “So what's the plan?”

Foley leaned forward. This was the real reason for the closed door and she still felt like she should whisper. “No one else is working on this, are they?”

“You're asking because you think someone is.”

“It came up in a team meeting and one of the new event co-ordinators Gabriella hired from her old council asked why we didn't just move him out. Take his junk and toss it so he'd have to go somewhere else.”

“I waited for Gabriella to answer but she deferred to me, so I explained the law and the charter, how anyone can squat on public land so long as they're not unsafe themselves or making it unsafe for anyone else, and that taking their belongings is theft.”

“And?”

“And there was a lot of significant eye contact.”

Hugh said nothing.

“You've heard the rumours. When Gabriella's council had that problem with the squatters in the derelict cricket clubhouse, they called the police, they confiscated possessions, they played hardball. They got rid of their homeless. They all moved here.”

“That's hearsay. We don't know that's what happened. The clubhouse was unsafe.”

Hugh's mouth gave Foley the official line, but his expression wasn't kissing up to his lips. There was a reason Gabriella's old council had been amalgamated and her old mayor was back to doing people's taxes, and it had to do with shifty practices the state government had eventually put its foot down on.

“You're speculating. Give me something solid and I can do something with it,” he said.

Foley nodded. She picked up her cup but the coffee had gone cold. She could trust Hugh. Within the bounds of his job, he'd have her back, but he was right, she needed to do her job, and do it well, so there was no excuse for anyone else to think they needed to act.

“No one else is authorised to do anything about Drum unless they come through you. The issue is yours, Foley and if anyone interferes without your say-so, they'll answer to me.”

She took a sip of room temperature coffee and grimaced. “You're such a control freak.”

Hugh relaxed into his chair back. “You never used to complain about that.”

She stood and stepped away from the chair. “Do you want people to think we're on?”

He laughed. “What are you going to do with all the oranges?”

“Not sure, but I need to find a way to make juice that Drum will drink.” She turned the ugly lump of perspex around so it faced the right way.

“If anyone can do it, you can.”

She opened the door. Said, “Thanks, Oh Superior Being,” overly loudly so it could be heard in the corridor.

“Well, hey, minion, I want an update on the Beeton house before you go.”

She flinched. There was no good news about her other main project, the fight over the heritage-listed Beeton house named Sereno.

She picked up a photo of Hugh and Roger at a ribbon cutting with the prime minister, turned it face down and fled to the tune of Hugh's, “Hey, put that back.”

She smiled all the way to her desk. Orange juice was best served fresh-squeezed and chilled. It was time to put the squeeze on Drum and the chill on her feelings about Gabriella. Meanwhile there was a visit to Cooper Park on her agenda.

She grabbed the oranges, her bag and car keys and headed out. At the park she went to the rotunda where Enid, the resident bag lady, was usually found. Enid and her supermarket trolley were home and delighted with the oranges. She said she'd share them around with the others who slept rough in summer.

Foley got back in her car and drove home. She was going to the cliff and waiting for Drum if it took all night. But first she needed a change of clothes.

She could hear the TV before she got in the front door. Nat was home, standing in front of the screen, the remote in her hand, flicking between one network news program and another.

“Hey.” Nat's attention didn't leave TV.

“Hey yourself.” Foley looked at the screen, looked at Nat. The buttons of her shirt were done up crookedly. It was more than likely she'd looked like that since she got dressed this morning. “Interesting day?”

“Slow news day. Didn't leave the office.”

“Your colleagues hate you, don't they?”

That got Nat's attention. A quick head turn. “Why would you say that?”

Foley grinned. “No reason?” She went to the kitchen and rummaged in the fridge for a snack.

Nat abandoned the TV and followed. “Why would you say that? What've you heard?”

Foley laughed. Nat and instant paranoia were like ice and cold, inseparable. “Nothing. You're the one who hears things, not me.”

Nat leaned against the pantry cupboard. She wore only one hoop earring. “You make it sound like I'm a spirit medium.”

This was the third or fourth day Nat only had the one earring on. Foley wondered how long it would take her to notice or someone else to mention it to her. “You hear things.”

“Are you trying to remind me what I hear from you has to stay off the record?”

Foley picked at leftover Thai beef salad. “No. Do I need to?”

“No. But I got an invitation today.”

She said, “Sculpture on the Coast launch party,” with a mouthful of cold beef.

“Right. Is there anything I should know about that?”

Foley shrugged. “Free wine and cheese.”

Nat gave her the look. The look that said, even though I appear to be a person who is so absent-minded I can barely dress myself, I have a steel trap mind. It was an effective look for someone who once wore two entirely different shoes, a heel and a flattie, to work and didn't notice until someone asked why she was limping.

Foley shook her head. She ate more of the beef and a spicy, soggy tomato.

Nat prodded. “Off the record.”

“Off the record, I have nothing to tell you except that I'm going to catch Drum at home tonight if I have to stay in that damn cave till the sun comes up. He delivered the bag of oranges back to the office this morning.”

She stopped herself mentioning the note on the flyleaf of the Anthony Burgess novel. The less colour she gave Nat the easier it was to keep her interest at arms-length. But she'd been best mates with Nat since high school, it was impossible not to share. And as with Hugh, they knew where the lines needed to be drawn to keep their personal and professional lives separate. Not that those lines were always shiny bright clear because council always featured in local news stories. The one good thing about not being in Gabriella's role was that Foley didn't manage media relations so she didn't have to brief Nat or keep information from her in any strictly official capacity.

Nat tucked a wayward piece of hair behind her earring-free ear. How could she not know? “I knew I liked him. He'd be a great interview. You said he was articulate. It'd be a terrific profile.” She made quote mark fingers. “‘The homeless man with the best views in Sydney'.”

Foley stabbed her fork towards Nat, then threw it in the sink. “No.”

“But I could've easily found out about him from another source.”

“But you didn't. He's been there for over a year and you didn't know about him till I told you, so you can't use him unless another source does show up.” And she'd make sure that didn't happen by getting Drum to move out of the cave and ensuring Geraldo had no complaints to make.

But it didn't hurt to hedge her bets. “Anyway, it's hardly ethical. He might be fragile; he has to be damaged in some way. The kind of attention you could bring might be bad for him.”

Nat took the near empty container of Thai beef out of her hands and fished in the drawer for another fork. “He's so damaged you're going to go wait for him on the side of a cliff in the middle of the night. You do know how stupid that sounds?”

“I don't think he's dangerous, I think he's clever and he's been dodging me all week. If I want to catch him I have to play him at his own game. I'm taking my phone and my pepper spray and I'll text you if I think I'm in any trouble.”

“That'll be easy to do when he's chucking you into the sea. And what if I don't hear from you? I'm supposed to do what?”

“Go to bed.”

Nat dumped the empty container in the kitchen bin and her fork in the sink. “Does Hugh know you're doing this?”

“He knows I'm handling it.”

“Which means he doesn't know you're going to sit in the dark on a cliff top waiting for a homeless man who might be any kind of unstable. Foley, there's dumb and there's you making a decision worse than your tattoo.”

Foley grunted in annoyance. She couldn't argue the tattoo. “He's not going to hurt me.”

“Because he helped some people who got stung and that makes him some kind of street person vigilante saint?”

“You're the only one who'd call him that. He's not dangerous.”

“And you'd know this exactly how?”

There was no exactly about it and Nat was right to be pointing out that this probably wasn't the safest approach, but Foley felt it to her core that Drum wasn't volatile and wouldn't do her any harm.

“At least I can dress myself properly.”

Nat squinted at her through glasses that had finger smudge marks all over them. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Foley moved passed her to go get changed into her rock climbing and waiting around clothes and heard Nat's annoyed, “Oh far out. I've been walking around all day with my zipper undone.”

6: Deal

Drum stepped across the rock ledge and a bright light hit him fair in the face. He blinked and turned his head to avoid it and braced for trouble. The beam lowered and he heard feet moving, but only one pair.

“Drum, it's Foley.”

It was after 2am according to the clock on the amenities block wall, but it often ran slow, what the hell was she doing here? He could see her now, standing on the wide flat part of the ledge where his outdoor setting normally was. It was in pieces. He went through to the cave and even without decent light he could see it'd been trashed, his folding bed broken in half, his sleeping bag torn to ribbons. Seems expense accounts ran to ransacking these days.

He turned back towards Foley. She had her phone in her hand, a torch app on it held down towards their feet. If she was about to call reinforcements, he'd do what he could to outrun them.

“I was so worried about you,” she said.

He crossed his arms and shifted his weight onto one leg. Because she was mostly in shadow it was easier to look at her. She wasn't so shiny clean, especially since she'd brought lies with her.

“I didn't know if you'd been hurt, if there'd been a fight. What happened?”

She shuffled about anxiously, not making any move to use the phone. And she clearly didn't do this, so that meant sometime today when he'd been out, Jonesy came for payback. Either that or it was unconnected, coincidental.

“How long have you been here?” he said.

“I came around nine. This … this … You didn't know.”

Five hours
. She'd waited five hours for him. “You can't be here.” It wasn't safe for her. Drum had no idea if this was the end of one bad thing, or the beginning of another. But he needed her gone, now and forever.

“I came to talk to you about the oranges and about … but this is awful. I'm so sorry.”

“I don't want you here. You need to go.”

“I can—”

He raised his voice. “Nothing. You can nothing. Go. Now.”

“Drum, no, you think council did this? No, no, no. It was like this when I got here.”

She could think what she wanted so long as she left. He turned away from her to assess the damage.

“Please, you have to understand this wasn't us.”

There was something about her voice that made him turn back to her. She didn't sound so sure. “What do you know about this?”

“Nothing. Like I said, it was like this when I got here. I didn't know if you'd ever come back.”

“I live here,” he said flatly.

“But you've been staying away and when I saw this I thought maybe you—”

He sighed, exasperated. “Just go. You don't belong here.”

“Okay. I'm really sorry. If there's—”

“There's not.”

“How will you manage?”