Matthew Flinders' Cat (43 page)

‘Do you know this woman, this, er ...The Queenie?’

‘No. Not this one. She’s new since my time in the kiddy-sex trade. The one who was there before, in my time, is now a prominent socialite in Surfers Paradise.’

‘What she do? Sell the business to this one, The New Queenie?’ Davo asked.

‘Nah, it don’t work like that. Like the old one, The Queenie is probably a partner in a syndicate, a paedophile ring. You see, you’ve got to have protection at the bottom and the top and from the police. You can put money on it, the Arab who runs The Sheba is the muscle, the standover man, then there’s a politician at the top, maybe more than one, to see nobody rocks the boat. They’d be partners with The Queenie, some police would also be involved, though they’re usually just on the take. You need them to leave the joint alone, but if the press or the Church gets a bit upset because they’ve heard a rumour, they’ll raid the street front, find something like drugs, a few amphetamines or a coupla blocks o’ hash on the premises, and the magistrate, who’s in on the whole thing, will fine one of Mohammed’s people, who’ll fess up, two grand and a suspended sentence, so everyone can see it’s a legit raid, then it’s business as usual.

‘The Sheba, they’ve even got their own travel agency where they book the overseas visitors into certain apartments, mostly in Bondi Junction. The sex tourists are picked up by limo at the airport, brought to the agency so their bona-fides can be checked and there they are shown a video of the kids available. The Sheba, the premises behind the brothel, is only used for interstate paedophiles staying in a hotel or for the local bigwigs to use for kiddy-sex.’

Billy shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sure Ryan wouldn’t let that happen to him, he’s street-wise, he’d yell and scream and make a fuss. Surely all the children taken can’t be compliant?’

Freddo looked directly at him. ‘Billy, you may have been an important lawyer but you’re an innocent, mate. Take my own case. I was twelve years old, frightened, hungry, and on the streets with nowhere to go, I’d run away from home so I reckoned the police were looking for me. That’s a joke, by the way. They may be looking for Ryan, but it won’t be because he’s run away from home. Anyway, a bloke comes up to you in the street, “Hey, kid, you look hungry. Are you hungry?” You nod and he takes you to McDonald’s for a hamburger, chips and a thickshake. He tells you he’s a karate black belt and is training a whole heap of kids. “Would you like to learn karate, be able to defend yourself from scumbags?” he asks you. You’re twelve years old, man! A helpless little kid and of course you say you would. “Where do you live?” he asks. You shrug or you mumble something. “Look, we’ve got some kids come to learn from interstate, we’ve got this nice pad, you can crash there if you like.”’

Freddo sighed. ‘After you’ve been raped the first time they’ve got you for keeps. You’re too ashamed to talk, or they threaten to harm you or take you to the cops on a trumped-up charge. Some of them introduce the kids to addictive drugs, or they just brainwash them. Some o’ the kids are under ten, they’ve had miserable lives. That royal commission that’s been going on this year found only one per cent of paedophiles are ever convicted and only eight per cent of sexual abuse is ever reported. Those dirty bastards are safe as houses, man!’

‘Yes, I’ve read something about it,’ Billy said. He didn’t know if he could listen to too much more, he wouldn’t sleep tonight but one thing was certain, he’d find Ryan, or die in the attempt.

‘How do you think I became a heroin addict?’ Freddo continued. ‘I got me first needle at thirteen! I know I’m not much, I’ve been floggin’ me arse for drugs for thirteen years, but I don’t go along with child sex abuse. That there royal commission says there’s three thousand girls and eleven thousand boys flogged for sex every year. Imagine that, there’s three thousand little girls and eleven thousand little Freddos out there, they’re selling their bodies like I done for a place to stay, food to eat, grog, drugs, even for the clobber on their backs!’

‘Freddo, I don’t think I can take much more,’ Billy said. ‘Frankly, I’m terrified about what you’ve told me. But I thank you, at least I’m forewarned. I have to try and find Ryan. I must get to him. If he managed to get to chapel yesterday, surely that means he’s still on the loose, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,’ Freddo conceded, though he didn’t sound too hopeful. ‘Go to the police, tell them you’re a lawyer, threaten them, tell them they’ve
got
to find Ryan and when they do, to let you know. Then you go to the Kings Cross police station and the cops at Surry Hills every day and make a fuss. It’s yer best chance, buddy.’

Billy nodded, though in his day the Kings Cross and Surry Hills stations mostly featured the likes of Sergeant Orr at Parliament House, the about-to-besuperannuated blokes who knew of him and his fall from grace. He doubted if they’d take the slightest notice of his request. They’d be more likely to escort him to the door via a stiff boot up the backside or threaten to charge him. Billy didn’t tell Freddo that his influence, in terms of the law, no longer existed.

‘If the police find him before I do, I don’t suppose they’ll give me custody,’ Billy said.

‘No way, you’re not a relative and you’re, er . . .’

‘An alcoholic,’ Billy completed the sentence for him.

‘Yeah. They’ll turn him over to DOCS, who’ll then hand him over to the Salvos, who’ve got an early-intervention home for little kids at Hurstville. He’ll stay there three months and then they’ll try to find him a foster home,’ said Freddo.

‘No good,’ Davo cried emphatically. ‘I ran away from six o’ them. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get a good home, but mostly them that take you just want the money from the government. They don’t want no twelve-year-old kid with behaviour problems. In one of them I was raped on the first night and I ran away the next day. Police charged me with being an intractable child and a disturbed adolescent, the magistrate at the Children’s Court sent me to Osmond Hall.’

Billy was hating the process of asking. With each question or explanation his heart sank further and his anxiety increased, but he realised that Freddo and Davo could give him valuable insider information he might not otherwise be able to get. Information that might help him with Ryan. ‘What if the child is in trouble with the police?’ he asked.

‘Children’s Court,’ Davo said, ‘same as they done me. If you’re dead unlucky, you get Osmond Hall.’

‘I thought you said you could hack it there?’ Morgan said.

‘Yeah, as a big kid, no probs. It’s the Wild West, man! Yer can do what you like, management don’t care, kids run the joint, staff can’t do nothin’. Management, the people from DOCS, don’t even come near the joint. Little kid’s got no bloody hope, most of them take to sniffin’ petrol and aerosol cans soon after they come in. You can get alcohol and dope, all yer want. Paedophiles were waiting outside, they was called “tow-truck drivers”, I dunno why, I suppose the tow-truck drivers were the first to get onto it. They’d have sex with the girls after they got them to leave Osmond Hall. That’s where I learned to drink. Sometimes I’d wake up outside in the yard in the mornin’ lying on the bricks after I’d gone walkabout the night before to get grog and I’d be lying in me own vomit. I were fourteen years old, man! The staff, they done nothin’. Kids from thirteen were having sex with each other. I got me first dose from a fourteen-year-old girl when I was the same age as her. By the time a kid who come in at twelve gets to sixteen, some o’ them have iced their brain from petrol sniffin’.’

‘Surely it can’t be that bad?’ Morgan asked doubtfully.

‘You better believe it, buddy. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles,’ Davo said, reaching for the Bible he’d been given at chapel.

‘So all that about sewing on buttons, that was bullshit?’ Morgan asked again.

‘Nah, that was before they changed it. When I first come in I was twelve, it were a secure unit then, like a kids’ gaol. You had like cells and dormitories, you was locked in at night, bars on the windas and the place were bloody strict and you did yer time, it was bloody hard yakka. Then two years later they changed all that and they had this open-door policy and they’s called it “a therapeutic environment”. That was when it become the Wild West. That place is real sicko, mate, they should burn it down.’

Billy hardly slept that night, his nose was hurting and his left eye had closed completely and all he could think of was Ryan out there on his own, trying to survive with nowhere to go. At one stage he cheered himself up a bit by thinking that Ryan might go to Mr Cesco. After all, the coffee-bar owner was a relation. Then he thought he might contact Dr Goldstein at St Vincent’s. But then again, he told himself, if Ryan thought he was wanted by the police he might not go to either for help. Billy simply couldn’t imagine what Ryan might have done for the police to be involved. It was probably something quite innocent and the boy had panicked, although the letter from his principal said he had been absent from school and had left before the ambulance arrived.

At breakfast on the day of his departure, Billy was feeling bleary-eyed and miserable when Morgan came to sit beside him. ‘We were pretty rough on you last night, Billy. I’m sorry.’

‘Good morning, Morgan. No, I needed to know all that stuff. I’ve been a street drunk for four, four and half years, but that’s not my world. It will help me with Ryan, help me find him.’

‘I hope so, mate, I really do.’

They were both silent for a few moments then Morgan said, ‘I haven’t told you a lot about myself, Billy.’

‘No, you haven’t, but that’s up to you, I guess.’

‘I hope we’ll meet again, Billy.’

‘Yes, of course, that would be nice.’ Billy sensed Morgan wanted to say something so he waited.

‘When you get out, I mean if you have a bit of time, could you go and see my girlfriend, Billy?’

‘I don’t see why not. Yes, of course.’

‘You see, I’m an actor. Well, that was my profession until I discovered heroin.’

Billy now understood why Morgan’s reading at yesterday’s chapel had sounded so professional. ‘So your addiction wasn’t something from your teens, like Freddo and Davo?’

‘No, I came from a pretty rough family and I
was
abused, but I have no excuses. I was fostered out at eight into a pretty good home, my foster parents were very kind to me and treated me like one of the family. I did pretty well at school and then went on to NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, where I was nominated in my diploma year as outstanding student. My career, as they say, blossomed. I got married early to an actress of the bums-and-tits variety which my ego at the time demanded. From the very start it was a disaster, and I admit mostly my fault. I was drinking heavily, we quarrelled constantly and we divorced three years later. I was still doing well in television and there was talk of a prime-time show of my own. It didn’t eventuate but I won a Mike Walsh Fellowship and went to Britain for a year to study documentary drama at the BBC.’

‘Kids?’

‘Thank God, no! My wife wasn’t exactly Mensa material but she was bright enough to stay on the pill. Then I returned from England and met the love of my life, a blues singer, part-Aborigine. I wouldn’t say that normally but you’d never tell from looking at her. She’s a beautiful woman.’

Billy looked at him. He still wasn’t sure about Morgan and this last remark didn’t help.

Morgan continued, ‘I was crazy about her, still am. What I didn’t know at the time was that she was a heroin addict, though I don’t suppose it would have mattered, I worshipped her anyway. Well, no need to go into the whole sordid mess, but pretty soon I was also winding a tourniquet around my arm and sharing a needle with her. That was two years ago. Now I’m in here and she’s out there, still using. I know she wants to kick the habit, to get clean, but she doesn’t have the courage yet. She said if I could do it, she would.’ He stopped for a minute. ‘Mate, I love her with every breath in my body, she’s my Higher Power. If you could see her, tell her it
can
be done, that I’m surviving and you’re pretty sure I’m going to make it, she might just have the courage to take the plunge and go into rehab.’

Billy turned to face him. ‘Morgan, of course I’ll see her, but you know as well as I do, she’s got to have a reason to give up. Your reason is her, is hers the same, you?’

‘I think so, I hope so.’

‘You don’t sound too sure?’

‘No, no, I am, we’re devoted. They say heroin destroys love but that hasn’t happened. Please, Billy, can you just talk to her? I know she loves me and wants to get back into singing.’

‘Where can I find her?’ Billy asked.

‘She’s moved into one of the casino apartments at Darling Harbour with two other girls.’ Morgan hesitated. ‘She’s working as a high-class whore at the casino, it’s how she supports her habit.’

‘Let me have her address, I’ll try. What’s her name, by the way? What if she won’t see me?’

‘I’ve written to her, telling her about you. She’ll see you, I promise.’ Morgan handed Billy a scrap of paper. ‘Thanks, mate, we’re going to miss you heaps. She calls herself Kartanya. She’s from the Kaura people from the Adelaide plains, though her mother is a white woman.’ He patted Billy on the arm and left abruptly. Billy wasn’t a man who judged others but he sometimes wondered about Morgan’s sincerity.

Billy was waiting outside Vince Payne’s office for the program director to arrive. On the way he’d stopped at reception and handed them a note to give to Ryan on the off-chance that he might return. Billy was conscious that the police might come around and make inquiries, that Ryan’s principal might have told them of his connection with the boy, so the note simply read: