Minions (13 page)

“Thanks for seeing me again, Devlin.  I just wanted to say
‘Thank-you’.”  She dabbed her eyes with a tissue before continuing.  “My
brother, Tim, and I were close, and I’ve been a bit of a wreck lately without
him.  Only after I read Tim’s letter did I realise that you were doing me, and
Tim, a service.  And for the record, it’s a service for which I’m inordinately
appreciative.”

Devlin sat quietly while Tania shared everything that
she’d managed to glean from the letter.  Most of what she described was just
recapping on what he himself had read, but Tania also managed to extract
subtleties that he had overlooked.  He felt the joy that he’d help deliver until
he waved to Ikel when he saw his car pull up.  He said his farewells to Tania,
and set off.

*          *          * 

Malcolm Venn was not a coffee drinker, not now anyway.  A
long time ago he was a habitual espresso man, but as his consumption gradually
increased, so did his periods of being what his mother described innocently as
being ‘unwell’.  His appearance of psychological stability was every bit as
important as it was with other sufferers of mental illness.  Caffeine in the
volumes that he once consumed had influenced his behaviour, only marginally,
but more than enough to alter other people’s perceptions of him from being a
‘happy eccentric’ to ‘erratically unstable’.  Had his medical history not been
a factor, of course, the caffeine would just as easily have seen him be described
as ‘
particularly
eccentric’, but once mental illness is a consideration,
it has a nasty habit of forever tainting perceptions.

His serious coffee drinking days were behind him, but
Malcolm still enjoyed caffeine in moderation, typically by way of a daily can
of Coke.  He also appreciated the look of satisfaction on the face of a coffee
drinker when they partook of their regular hit, particularly their first for
the day.  This time, however, there was no militant reaction to bad coffee in
the park-side café.  This was no surprise to Malcolm as he’d seen others, even
that very same morning, refuse to pay for their cups.  The way that they’d
screwed up their faces in revulsion spoke volumes of the inadequacy of the bean
blend, the hygiene of the machine, or the incompetency of the coffee maker
herself.  It all just added to the entertainment as he sat watching Tania’s
home, waiting for when she’d finally make an appearance after hiding herself
away.  He couldn’t believe his luck when not only did he see her, but she even
sat at the table right beside him, close enough for him to hear everything she
said as she spoke to someone, clearly one of Glen’s new monkeys. 

It was nice for Tim to lift Tania’s spirits temporarily. 
She was going to need it.

                                                                                                                                                        
Chapter - 26.
               
 

Devlin was contentedly silent in the car on the way back
to the office.  His expectations of ‘
making a difference
’ had been far
more grandiose, but oddly there was something amazing about how Glen’s
prediction had played out.  He felt he had indeed made a difference, but in
fact he’d done almost nothing.  He was just the messenger, but he felt
accomplishment just the same.

“Too bad.  Maybe with your next one!” Ikel commented.  “I
can tell a freshly fucked glow when I see one, and I can see that you didn’t
get any!”

Devlin smiled.  “I still feel good though.  Are they all
like this?”

“What?  Pretty?  No, most of the people we hand deliver to
are old or ugly, or both.  Old people crack me up.  They join LastGasp’ knowing
full well that their wife or husband couldn’t even turn on a computer, let
alone access email, so how is it that they are supposed to get a message?  Lori
could impress you with the numbers on the proportion of the population that are
old and also LastGasp’ members.”

“Actually, I was referring to whether every message gave
you a warm and fuzzy feeling.”

“Fuck knows,” Ikel replied.  “I don’t even read them now. 
I just get the address, look at the name and fantasise about whether I’m going
to get some.  It’s not often though, but only because David gets most of the
good ones!”

“How does that work?”

“He’s a bit of a dark horse.  I think he uses the Research
Interface to track down pictures to improve his odds.  He takes the best ones
and leaves me the rest.”

“You said David was crap with the Research Interface.”

“Actually, I said David was crap at identifying people. 
But there’s no other explanation for the volume of nice ones he gets.  Maybe
he’s good when he’s got an incentive.”

Relative quiet returned to the car, periodically
interspersed with almost comical outbursts from Ikel directed at other
drivers.  Devlin was oddly calm.  Not only was he getting used to Ikel’s
driving, but he was also feeling remarkably comfortable with Ikel as a person
and a friend.  “I think I’m ready to tell you why I killed him.”

“OK then.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Devlin began, planning his words
carefully.

“Dev’, I’m not a jury.  Say what you want.”

“OK.  I didn’t mean to kill the guy, at least not initially. 
I’d known the guy since school and when he made a flippant comment, initially I
just wanted to confront him, but then I lost my cool.  There was a struggle and
before I knew it we were throwing each other up against a fence.  I didn’t even
notice the thunderstorm until WHAM!  I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. 

“He happened to be touching the fence at the time of the
strike.  His convulsion bounced him off the fence and threw him backwards quite
a way, and I was knocked out for a while just from the proximity of the
strike.  Somewhere in all of this, presumably in his convulsion with the shock,
the knife, his knife, must have been thrown into the air, only to hit him when
it landed.  What are the odds of that happening, let alone the odds of it
piercing his heart?

“When I came to, I saw he was dead and I was shaken up
obviously, and not really happy, but not disappointed either.  I would have
been content to close the page on that chapter of my life, and I did.  Until
the police did some fishing around and came up with what they described as a
‘body of evidence’ that I wanted him dead.”

“Did you?” Ikel asked.

“Yep, and even now I’m glad he’s dead.  In retrospect,
things might have been different had I lied, but I didn’t.  I was honest and
naive and I told them as much.  This really just set the ball rolling, and I
was going to be held responsible for his death.”

“But you said you blacked out?”

“I did.  But with a finger print or two on the knife, and
my admission, they had enough, particularly with nothing conclusive that I was
actually
knocked out.”

“Then what?”

“They called it manslaughter, and the only reason that
they didn’t try for murder, particularly with my intent, was that the knife
wasn’t mine.  It went to trial.  I had some piss-ant, freshly graduated lawyer
on my side, courtesy of the state, against an admittedly pretty reasonable
case.  I was gone even before the media got on board.”

“How’s that?”

“It made for good copy.  ‘Nice guy killed by bitter and
twisted long-time friend’.  The guy was played up as a saint.  Father of two,
his kids now father-less.  Once happy wife, now a widow.  And I was played as
the quintessential bastard.  And my family being who they are, or were, you can’t
imagine what that caused.  Until then, my father was the poster-boy for family
values, out-spoken social reformer, being groomed for all manner of politics,
state and federal.  There was even talk of interest from overseas, like the
U.N..  My predicament forced him to pick a side, which was pointless really
because there was no future for him whichever way he swung.  But he chose.  Cut
me adrift for the abomination that I am.  So there I was.  I’ve got no family
and no friends able and willing to contradict anything being said about me.”

“So what happened?”

“I was about to be hung out to dry.  And then it just
stopped.  My snot-faced little lawyer noticed something in the medical
examiners’ report.  Yes, there was a knife in the guy’s heart, but that isn’t
what killed him.  It seems that a second lightning strike got him, possibly at
the exact moment that the knife was set to pierce his skin, straight into his
heart.  Despite calls of irrelevance, it was brought to the attention of the
court and the jury found me not guilty.  That’s the short version anyway. 

“It’s funny how media hype of a killer is page one stuff,
but an acquittal of someone who is technically innocent until proven guilty is
relegated to page seven.”

“And then what?”

“Then I was released, theoretically with a clean record. 
I moved interstate immediately, met Glen on a train and the rest you know. 
Somewhere in the detail is the fact that the few friends I thought I had aren’t
there for me now, and I remain an outcast from my family.”

“But why?” 

“Stuff came up in the Police investigation and then the
media got on board.  It changed everything.”  Devlin went quiet, drifting away
into his thoughts.

“What came up?  Why’d you need to speak to the guy in the
first place?”

Devlin thought long and hard about whether to say any
more.  So far he’d explained more to Ikel about that entire episode of his life
than he had to anyone else since it all began.  But what he’d covered so far
was the easy stuff, but to say more would be to potentially re-open a very
recent and deep wound.  He considered whether he was strong enough to say
more.  More importantly, he needed to assess whether Ikel was capable of
hearing it.

“The guy called me a paedophile,” Devlin said at last.  To
him, this would explain many things, but he’d since learnt that the rest of the
world would require further explanation.  He waited for the volley of questions
in reply.

“That explains your outburst at that message yesterday,”
Ikel commented, adding, “but it doesn’t explain why you killed him.”

“I didn’t intend to kill him.”

“So, if I called you a
paed
, would you assault me,
kill me?” Ikel teased, only half in jest.

“Fuck off, Ikel!”

“
Sticks and stones
, Dev’.  What’s the problem?”

Devlin expected questions, but answering meant raking over
warm coals.  He breathed deeply, composed himself and began.  “It changed
everything, Ikel.  Get called a murderer, and there’s an expectation that you
can do the time in jail for it, get out and then resume a normal kind of life. 
Admittedly as an ex-con, but still a relatively normal life.  True, ex-cons
might never really get a truly ‘fair go’, but the point is that you can get on with
your life. 

“Get called a paedophile though, and nothing is the same. 
There’s no such thing as an assumption of innocence, and the entire legal
system will be corrupted just to appropriately
deal
with you.  The
greater community at large wants you dead, and castrated, but they’ll
invariably settle with you just being dead.  Friends don’t exist, and
opportunities don’t exist.  Who cares that there were no grounds for the
accusation in the first place.  If I say anything in my defence, then I attract
a wider audience.  Say nothing and the silence says it all. 
Where there’s
smoke there’s fire
.”

“So why’d he say it then?”

“I don’t know.  The fact that he’s dead hurt me more than
anyone else.  If I knew where he got the thought in his head, then I might have
some recourse, or maybe even get to the root of it all.  That’s what I went to
talk to him about. But once the Police did their investigation, they learnt
about his accusation, and from there it was very easy to make a case for
revenge.  And the media?  My favourite headline was ‘Paedophile’s revenge kills
family man’.  There’s no future after that.”

“You still glad he’s dead?”

“Close.  I don’t care he’s dead.  As unfortunate as it is
that he’s left behind a widow and kids, I didn’t mean to kill him.  That’s been
proven.  Whether or not his family or the world at large actually believe it is
another matter.  I’d still love to know where it all started, but as I’m
persona
non grata
, the chances of me ever finding out are virtually zero anyway. 
Who would care if the truth actually did come out?”

It occurred to Devlin that Ikel hadn’t exactly supported
his quest for the truth.  He couldn’t let the thought rest.  “Do you believe
me?”

“What’s to believe?  And what do you care if I believe you
or not?”

Devlin considered whether he’d be reduced to convincing
the world one person at a time.  “Do you believe what I’m saying is the truth?”

“For what it’s worth, yes.  But the truth doesn’t prove or
accomplish anything.  I’ve seen a thousand messages of secrets that would have
been better left to die with the sender.  I always wonder what good those
messages will do when they are received.  You’ll see this soon enough.”

“Perhaps, Ikel.  Perhaps.”  Devlin drifted into deep,
silent thought.  He thought about what Ikel had said, but also about how his
little outburst must have appeared.  He didn’t want to appear obsessed, but the
fact was that he held only a thin veneer of calm to suppress his anger about
that
entire episode.  He knew that this would be something he’d learn to live with,
but in the meantime, he’d have to get a better grip on his emotions.  As he
calmed, the more he focussed on Ikel’s last comment and immediately his
curiosity about LastGasp’ returned with a vengeance. 

Ikel broke the silence.  “See how you feel about truth in
a week’s time.”

                                                                                                                                                        
Chapter - 27.