Rocking Horse Road (15 page)

Of course the rest of us couldn't help wondering if
Jim and Carolyn were sleeping together. It was hard
for us to imagine just talking about stuff with a girl like
Carolyn Asher had become. But we knew better than
to ask Jim for details. All he ever told us about what
they talked about, and about what they did when they
were alone, was that it was private and that they were
good friends.

A couple of other things happened around that time
that are worth mentioning. The first has to do with the
dead dog.

There is a colony of godwits that arrives at the
Spit every spring. Some people make a pretty big
deal about it. Apparently the birds fly all the way
from Siberia non-stop before gliding in low over
the roofs of the houses on Rocking Horse Road and
touching down in the reserve at the end of the Spit.
They spend the summer feeding in the estuary and
then in April or May fly all the way back to Siberia.
If you were into birds, flying all that way is a pretty
amazing accomplishment, but frankly, at fifteen we
couldn't have cared less. To us the godwits were
just little speckled birds with long legs, not all that
different from the other wading birds who lived in
the estuary year-round.

We only got interested because that year something
started killing them. One morning in April a
research student from the university found about a
dozen of the birds dead on the beach. Mark Murray
first heard it from his dad, who had heard it on
the radio over breakfast. Of course we went down
after school to have a look. When we arrived there were
a few Bird Society types with beards, hanging around
discussing the possibility of putting up a temporary
fence around where the godwits nested. We were
disappointed that the bodies had been cleaned up.
Apart from a few feathers there was nothing to see.

One of the bearded guys came over to us. 'Are you
kids local?' We didn't like being called kids but we
nodded. He asked if any of us had seen a strange dog
hanging around in the last couple of days. We said
that we hadn't, which was the truth. Grant told him
that people were always walking their dogs up and
down the beach.

'No, I mean a dog with no owner, especially in the
evening.' As the guy spoke, he looked up and down the
beach as though the dog he was talking about might
appear at any moment and begin ripping apart more
birds. But we'd seen nothing like that. We didn't tell
him but we knew that with all the dunes and lupins a
dog could move around in the reserve for days pretty
much unseen.

Two days later,
The Press
reported on page two
that the killer had struck again. This time three
birds were dead. Another two godwits were being
treated by a local vet for serious injuries and were
not expected to survive. We were looking for a
distraction from school and from the Asher case, so
when Tug Gardiner suggested we build a trap for the
killer dog, everyone was keen.

We raided our fathers' garages and sheds and that
afternoon carried a selection of spades and shovels
down to the reserve. We chose a spot in the dip behind
the first dune, about a hundred metres from where
the godwits roosted. There was a thin track used by
rabbits where we had previously had some luck laying
makeshift snares. A dog, however, is a lot bigger than
a rabbit and we knew that catching one would require
more than a snare made out of string.

There were five of us there that afternoon and we
dug a fair-sized hole. It was about two metres square
and three metres deep, with sheer sides. It was hard
work. After we had finished digging we collected long,
thin bits of driftwood and placed then in a rough lattice
over the top of the hole. Using the edges of the spades
we then hacked down lupins and laid the branches
over the top of the sticks. The lupins bled milky white
and our hands became sticky as we worked.

Roy Moynahan had thought to bring some bait. His
mother had made a roast chook for dinner the night
before and Roy had brought the carcass wrapped in
newspaper. He unwrapped it and tossed the bones
down the hole. Then we covered the last gap in the
top with more lupins.

We returned the next morning before school. It
had rained hard in the night and the sand had a dark
crust that our footsteps broke through and shattered.
We thought that the rain would have spoiled our
chances of catching anything but from a distance we
could see that something had collapsed the sticks
and lupins covering the hole. When we knelt down
and peered into the shadows we saw two things we
were not expecting. The first was that the hole was
half full of water. The tide was still high, and it had
raised the water-table to above the bottom of our
hole. Sea water had oozed up through the sand and
into the hole, where it had mixed with the rain water
from the night before. The second thing was that we
had caught a dog, a small tan-and-white thing that
Al Penny identified as a Jack Russell. The body of the
dog floated side by side with the chicken carcass. The
fat from the chicken had made a shiny smear over the
surface of the water.

If a larger dog had fallen into our hole, it would
have been tall enough to stand on the bottom with
its head above the water level. But a Jack Russell has
short legs. You could see the scratch marks where it
had tried to scramble up the side of the hole but the
sand must've kept collapsing back on it. Eventually it
would have become too tired to swim any more and
drowned.

Al raised the point, how did we even know this
was the dog that had killed the birds? The truth was
we had no idea. It was probably just somebody's pet.
The trap now seemed like a stupid idea, dangerous
and irresponsible, even childish.

Mark Murray got down in the hole and fished out
the body. His parents had always owned dogs, and he
was used to them, although he said he had never lifted
a dead one before and was surprised at how heavy it
was. Mark laid the body on a patch of tussock so that
it didn't get sand stuck to its fur. Its legs were stiff and
its body hard to the touch as though it had never been
a real, living thing but had been constructed from
fibreglass in someone's shed. The dog had a fierce
look on its face. Its gums were drawn back from its
teeth and its glassy eyes were open as though it had
tried to stare death down.

Of course we covered up the hole so that no other
animals — or worse, some small kid — would fall
into it (why hadn't that occurred to us before?). We
had no shovels this time so we used our hands and
it took us a fair while. Then we buried the dog. We
stood around the grave and there was an embarrassed
silence. We were already late for school but sensed
that something should be said or done. Eventually
Roy Moynahan spoke. He talked to the dog as if it
could still hear us, mostly about how we were sorry
we'd killed him and how we hadn't meant to. 'I hope
that there's a dog heaven,' he said. 'And that you've
got everything you want there.' And then we left for
school, shuffling through the dunes to where our
bikes were.

About a week later a handmade poster went up
in the supermarket with a picture of the dog we'd
drowned. Apparently, its name was Mac and a reward
was offered for its safe return. We never did call the
number. How do you explain to someone that you've
trapped and drowned their dog? We all agreed that
it was better Mac's owners thought it had simply
wandered away. At least then they were left with the
hope that their dog had been found by a nice family.
The parents could pretend to their kids that Mac was
living the good life somewhere with two or three
pet-mad kids who slipped him food under the table
every night and walked him twice a day.

Our only consolation was that after that morning
there were no more attacks on the godwits. Still, we
felt bad about the whole thing.

The other incident that should get a mention is what
the papers called 'The third sex attack in the South
Brighton area within three months' (
The Press, p1, May
11, 1981
). If we're clearing the air then we might as
well put down what we know about that as well.

For several weeks, Matt Templeton had been
carrying messages between his sister, Mary-Rose, and
a boy called Brent Cox. In '81 Mary-Rose was a year
above us at school; in what was then the seventh form.
Brent Cox was nineteen and worked at the local garage
as an apprentice car mechanic. We all agreed that
they were a good match. Both of them were generally
acknowledged to be good-looking. Also, both Mary-
Rose and Brent had the intellectual and social laziness
that beautiful people can often get away with. They
both drifted through life on their looks. Not that they
were bad people. We all agreed that they were just a
bit up themselves.

Matt was on to a good little earner with Brent.
The guy was sending one or two notes a day to Mary-Rose
and they were meeting pretty regularly. Luckily
Mr Templeton was distracted by the first XV's poor
performance. In addition to running the history
department he was now holding training twice a week
and keeping the team out to all hours. The players
hated it but Matt's sisters were thrilled. The long
summer holidays where their father hung around the
house were hell for them. Things had, of course, been
worse after the attack on their sister's friend — and
now there was the family friction over the upcoming
Springbok tour.

But the Templeton girls could get away with
a lot more during that winter. Matt's mum was
relatively easy to fool no matter what the season.
With seven children, all still at home, Mrs Templeton
permanently wore the dazed expression of a veteran
of the trenches.

One evening in the Turners' garage, Matt told
a few of us that after dinner Mary-Rose had been
secretly meeting Brent Cox at the surf club, which
was only a few minutes' walk along the road from the
Templetons' house. Mary-Rose would tell her parents
that she was going to her room to do her homework
and then slip out the window. She would only go for
about half an hour. Matt or her sisters would cover
for her, if necessary. But with so many people in the
house, one more or less was unlikely to be noticed
— not in the short term.

A few evenings later, with nothing better to do,
Grant Webb, Pete Marshall and Jase Harbidge went
down to the surf club. They camped in the dunes at
an elevated spot, and waited. Their motivations were
mixed. We all suspected what Mary-Rose and Brent
were doing at the surf club and the idea of catching
a glimpse of them at it caused a tingling knot of
excitement in our guts. Grant had his own reason for
being there. He been pushed around by Brent Cox and
a couple of Brent's mates at the start of the third form.
It had been nothing too serious, just your garden-variety
bullying that didn't last more than a couple
of weeks, but the idea of some kind of payback was
undoubtedly in Grant's mind.

About half an hour after they got there, Mary-
Rose arrived. They watched her walk beneath the two
car park lights. She was looking around furtively as
she hurried across the open space. As Jase said later,
'The way she was acting, even a blind man would be
suspicious.'

The surf club has two levels: below the large open
hall where the life guards hang out is a storage area
where the two surfboats, the surf-skis and all the rest
of the equipment are stored. To get in underneath
there were two doors, which swung outwards on
tracks. These days there is a metal roller-door but
back then the doors had wooden slats. They were
split down the middle and swung outwards so that
there was enough room to wheel the boats through.
Normally the doors were bolted top and bottom and
padlocked shut but apparently Brent Cox had a key.
When Mary-Rose knocked and called his name, one
door was pushed open slightly from the inside, and
Mary-Rose disappeared inside.

Grant and Pete and Jase waited a while but nothing
happened. They began to get cold. Jase later admitted
suggesting that they slide the bolt on the door home
and then wait to see what happened. Grant said that
he had a better idea. The three of them crept down to
the door of the storage area. Mary-Rose had pulled it
shut after her and Pete had to lift the heavy door so
that it didn't scrape on the concrete pad.

It was almost totally dark. The last daylight came
through the slats in the door and they could just make
out the outlines of the two surf-boats. Luckily Brent
and Mary-Rose had chosen to go right down the back.
The three guys could faintly hear them whispering.
They crouched perfectly still and waited for their eyes
to adjust. After a few minutes Grant gestured for Pete
and Jase to stay where they were and then he slipped
away.

Jase and Pete stood and listened to the sounds
coming from the back of the big open space. Mary-
Rose had stopped giggling. There was another, deeper
sound now. As Pete stood and listened uncomfortably,
he realised that the sound was Brent Cox grunting
deep in his throat, like a pig. Pete admitted to some of
us later that he started to feel bad about being there.
He expected at any moment for there to be a shout and
for Brent to come charging out of the darkness after
Grant, pissed off as all hell. But for what seemed to
him to be a very long time there was only the darkness
and the animal sounds.

And then Grant suddenly appeared next to them
like a genie out of a bottle. They could see that he was
grinning in the darkness, his teeth white. He had a
bundle in his arms. Grant held one finger to his lips
and gestured. The three of them slipped out the door
and returned to their observation post in the dunes
where Grant showed the other two what he had got.
Of course, it was Brent Cox's clothes, his jeans, inside
which nestled a pair of white jockeys, and his sweat
shirt. There was no sign of his shoes or socks. Grant
also had Mary-Rose's dress. Grant admitted that he
had been hoping to get a pair of trousers at best but
Mary-Rose had folded all the clothes up and put them
on the edge of a surf-boat, a short distance from where
she and Brent were lying on a pile of life-jackets. All
Grant had to do was reach out and take them.