Smashed (10 page)

A nerve at the side of her eye starts to twitch as she waits for my reply. My head is trembling between her hands and I lick away a sliding tear. ‘No,’ I say. I try to keep any hint of uncertainty out of my voice, and hold her gaze so she’ll trust that I’m not fibbing, but the whole
time she’s processing my answer it’s like I’m expecting someone to leap out of a cupboard and yell ‘
Liar!
’

She kisses me then on the tip of my runny nose. ‘Okay …’

The lawyer, Sandra Leong, is an old school friend of Mum’s, and I figure Mum is going to owe her one hell of a favour since she dropped everything and rushed over straight away. She’s a bulldog of a woman, all head, no neck. I’m bloody glad she’s on my side. ‘Just keep your wits about you,’ she orders. ‘Stay alert.’ Then she sends Mum out of the room again and makes me run through everything that’s happened before we go back into the first interview room where the video’s still recording, and she lets DeVinnie start the questioning again.

He does so by making me go back over everything in picky detail — and he’s taking notes now, as well as videoing it. Every time I answer, I watch the counter ticking over, and it’s like I’m dictating my own death sentence, on record, for the world to see and hear. I can’t take my eyes off its hypnotising movement, the silent spinning of time and space, and the interview seems to stretch and spread for hours and hours. 

My memory gets stuck on the strangest things. When he asks me about the night of Lance Pagoli’s party, I can picture the silver spray of water droplets as Jacinta shook herself dry — a porn-video memory, where every detail of her dampened skin is so scorched into my brain cells that it hurts. Then I clearly see Dad’s delicate, copper-latticed radiolarian cage as he teases me in his quiet way about sex that next day. Then Rita’s eyes, over and over, as she hides, always running, like a startled foal. And then that ghastly memory of Don, his head swollen and not human any more, a zombie from the depths of hell.

By the time I’m up to waking in the greenbelt, my throat is dry and the words fall from my lips like stones. Nothing I say seems to convince DeVinnie that I’m innocent, and the more he tries to tie me down the less sure I am of anything …
I’m going mad
.

Finally he stops the flow of questioning. ‘One moment please.’ He stands and stretches, his shirt untucking from his pants to reveal a patch of hairy belly before he leaves the room.

Sandra pats my back. ‘You did okay. The main thing here is to keep calm. It’s just a process that we have to work through.’ She makes some notes in her diary and then snaps it shut. ‘I think you should prepare yourself — the way I read it now, it’s not looking good.’ 

I’m about to ask her to explain this when we’re interrupted by DeVinnie’s return. ‘Okay.’ He sits down opposite me, very upright. ‘Tobias Paul Young, I am arresting you …’

As he works his way through this whole ‘right to remain silent’ bit again, it’s as if I’m not part of what’s going on, now, in this room. I stare at his face, and there’s crust in the corners of his eyes like he hasn’t washed his face today, and a scrap of something green stuck between two of his teeth. I run my tongue around my own teeth, feeling the scum that’s grown since the last time I thought to brush them, and pull the sleeve of my sweatshirt down over my finger to give them a scrub.

I close my eyes and imagine the whole scene, looking down from somewhere way up high. There’s DeVinnie, his face growing red and blustery as this tiny Asian
nerd-boy
cowers uselessly before him, with a ferocious lady looking on like a spectator at some strange new zoo. It’s like I have become some alien explorer, peeking in on the behaviour of a whole new race. And, though I might not understand the language that’s being spoken, I can read the situation — that tiny Asian nerd-boy picking at his teeth down there in the cell-like room is in the shit.

When DeVinnie finally stops talking at me I open my eyes again. Sandra stands, and turns to me. ‘I’ll be in
touch with you again soon, Toby. Right now I’ll go and see your Mum.’ She pats me like I’m a pet, and nods curtly at DeVinnie. ‘Sergeant.’

I manage to blurt out ‘Thank you!’ just before she leaves, and am rewarded by a worried smile. ‘Spot ya, kid.’

When she closes the door and it’s just me and DeVinnie I crash-land back on Planet Earth. ‘I’m going to take you through and fingerprint you now,’ he states, ‘but first, I want your help with one more thing.’ He produces a cassette tape from his pocket and slips it into the machine. ‘This was the call made to the ambulance,’ he says.

He presses the start button. I can hear someone say ‘What service?’ and another voice yells ‘Ambulance.’ It’s high-pitched and kind of foreign. Really weird. ‘A guy’s been hurt — beaten up — he’s unconscious — looking bad,’ the caller says, and all the tiny hairs on the back of my neck spring to attention. And when the next bit plays, where the caller details where Don is lying, something totally gobsmacking clicks inside my head. Someone’s trying to fake that voice … it’s jarringly American … it’s cowboy twang …

Unbelievable! That voice is Carl’s.

I
decide to tell DeVinnie nothing about recognising Carl’s voice until I’ve had a chance to think about what his involvement might mean. But I have no chance to ponder this because before I know it I’m in the lift with DeVinnie and going down. I look up at my reflection in the mirrored ceiling and can hardly meet my own eyes — the fear reflected there is too intense. Then, with hardly a bump, we’re on the processing floor, and I’m being patted down by a policeman wearing rubber gloves and an unfriendly frown.

Across a narrow counter, with a glass wall between us, I’m asked to sign a consent form to take my fingerprints. I fill in all the parts without resisting, but it strikes me as kind of weird that they are even asking.
What would happen if I just said no?
Then, next thing, I’m led through to a small room that reeks of something chemical, and have my thumbs rolled through ink and stamped onto the form I’ve signed. As if that isn’t bad enough, they press the whole of my hand into the inky
pad and stamp my palm print there as well. I never knew they did this — it seems bizarre.

‘What use would a palm print be?’ I ask the cop who takes the prints.

He’s an older guy, this one, and he grins at my question with a ghoulish leer. ‘Remember the body that was found up the coast a few months back?’ I nod, though I’ve only got the vaguest memory of what he’s on about. ‘They’d chopped his fingers off and removed his head — we managed to identify the victim only from the strips of skin left on his palms.’ He turns over the sheet with my palm prints and starts on each finger of my hands. He laughs. ‘Lucky he was known to us.’

The picture he’s describing makes me feel sick. To think I’m being lumped in with the kind of people mixed up in that. It’s now I discover that the pervasive stink is from the hand-cleaner that removes the ink, and try to breathe through my mouth.

Next I’m taken over to a wall and lined up for the photo shoot. Facing the camera I can see a tiny inverted version of myself in the lens — ferret-like and
really
scared. I can’t believe they’re doing this. Me. Up against a wall, my midget status confirmed by the marked measurements beside me — and they think that
I
could beat up
Don?
 

The old guy asks if I’ll allow him to take a voluntary DNA sample — a swab from the inside of my cheek. This really creeps me out. The thought that they’d store a bit of me — know the sequence of my DNA — is too intense. This is the stuff that makes me who I am; all the tiny, random intertwinings of my genes are totally unique to me — my secret code. But I’m so well programmed into doing what I’m told that I agree. I’m losing control of what is happening here, and it’s as if I no longer have the strength to fight it.

This must be how people who are drowning feel. At first, when they’re dragged out to sea by the rip, I guess they swim and fight like hell to get to shore. But the further away they are pulled from the world they know and understand, the more inevitable it all seems — until, finally, the fighting just goes out of them and it’s easier to lie back in the current and let themselves slowly sink under the waves …

Now I’m back to leaning on the counter, to fill another questionnaire. Name, age, place of birth, height … all the standard stuff, until we get down to the detail.

‘Have you been hospitalised in a mental-health unit or similar in the last six months?’

‘No … though sometimes home can feel like that!’ I’m thinking maybe a joke will lighten up the mood, but
the way he frowns down at the paperwork convinces me I’m wrong. There are no jokes in this place, and the charm Mum taught me to develop to schmooze teachers is obviously a no-go.

‘Are you currently under the care of a mental-health unit?’

‘No.’

‘Are you required to take any medication?’

‘No.’

The policeman studies me for the first time since we started this particular form. His wrinkled, deep-set, elephant’s eyes look tired. ‘Is this the first time you’ve been arrested?’

‘Yes.’ I don’t mean to say it so loud, but the word bursts out of me and I don’t stop there. ‘And I haven’t done anything wrong — I’m innocent.’

He winces, like he’s heard this excuse a million times, and carries on. ‘Have you stopped taking or changed any prescription medication?’

‘No!’ I can read the form he’s filling in, and even though I’m saying no I can see I’m in some identifiable ‘risk’ group: he’s ticked the box confirming that I’m male — and ‘agitated’ and ‘anxious’ too.
What the hell does he expect?

‘Have you ever attempted suicide, or told someone
you might?’ He’s eyeballing me again now, like he’s trying to read my mind.

How am I supposed to answer this?
If I’m really honest, the night Jacinta threw me out was fairly close. Okay, so in retrospect it doesn’t seem so bad — and chances are the closest I’d have got was poking around in the first-aid kit — but I reckon heaps of people try to kill themselves over something that a few days or months or years later seems pretty lame.

I realise the cop’s still waiting for my answer and is worried that I’m taking my time. ‘Nah,’ I say. There’s no point in trying to enter into conversation over anything as grim as this. The sooner we’re through this stupid paperwork, the sooner I can get on home.

I answer the rest of his questions without a fuss, and am relieved to see him tick the box that says I’m not about to do myself in. And I try to be as helpful as possible while he quizzes me about the amount I drank that night. But when I’ve said ‘I dunno’ about six times in a row, he sighs and turns the page over. ‘Can you empty out your pockets please?’

I don’t believe this — now I have to show them every bit of crap I’ve shoved into my pocket in the last few days. There’s an empty chewing gum packet, an embarrassingly small amount of money, three used bus tickets, a set of
house keys, my mobile phone, a couple of Panadol I shoved in my pocket before the cops dragged me here (and which I wish to hell I’d taken), some random twig from the greenbelt, and this mauled-looking party invite that I got from Carl.

Carl!
My god, I’d forgotten all about the tape of Carl. What the hell was he playing at, calling the ambulance like that? Why didn’t he say something to me about it when I saw him? I try to think back to the night on the waterfront, to figure out Carl’s place in it, but now the cop’s saying something that blocks all else out.

‘I need you to come into this room and strip down to your underwear.’

‘What?’

‘Clothes off,’ he says. ‘We’re going to do a body check.’

He pushes me towards a small cubicle, and closes the door. My hands shake as I try to undo my jeans and pull them off in the small space. Then the cop comes in and turns me around to search for god knows what. I’ve never felt so exposed in all my life. I think of all the movies and TV shows I’ve seen about guys being abused in jail and my heart starts clamouring so hard-out in my chest I reckon it will damn soon burst.

The cop stoops over the cloud-shaped birthmark on
my lower back and measures the bloody thing while I’m standing here trying (and failing) not to shake. But it’s the grazes on my face and the split skin on my knuckle that most interest him, and he notes all this down on the form in precise little handwriting, marking each thing off on the diagram of a body that fills the page. I can’t for the life of me remember why my knuckle is bruised and split, but the way he draws in his breath you’d think he’d found the mark of Satan.

‘Okay.’ He jerks his head at my discarded clothes. ‘Put them back on.’

I swear I’ve never dressed so quickly in my life, despite the fact my fingers fumble and I nearly keel over when I try to balance on one foot. I’m hoping like hell the worst of it is done and I’ll be set free, but now I’m led back to the cop with the form and it looks as if I’m in for more.

We work our way through another round of
name-and
-address stuff, but this time it’s all business — and serious business at that. He’s writing up the charge sheet —
assault with intent to injure
— and the sight of those words scares me stupid. Sandra, the lawyer, had told me what each charge might mean, but right now it seems to have completely wiped itself out of my brain. I know she talked about the possibility of a jail term …
but this can’t
be true
. Sweat is breaking cold and prickly across my forehead and everything in front of me dissolves into a misty blur. I start feeling queasy too, so I stare obsessively at the bald spot on the cop’s head and breathe deeply in and out of my mouth. But I can’t stop shaking and suddenly have grown so cold it’s like I’ve been dipped into ice. My teeth are almost at the stage of chattering before I get back in control. And I need to do this
really
fast, cos he’s reading out something about a police bail bond now and I’m agreeing to bail of five thousand bucks (although the very form he’s writing on assesses roughly what I’m worth — the contents of my pockets — as four dollars and sixty cents).
Could I get that five grand added to my student loan?

He says I have to stay at home between the hours of six at night and eight in the morning, and promise not to see Don or any prosecution witness. I sign my life away because I have no choice, but already I’m clear that if they think I’m going to stay at home and not find out what the hell is going on with Carl, then they’d better think again. Bail or no bail, I’m going to interrogate that psycho cowboy.

The cop gathers up all the papers. ‘Okay, that’s it.’ He stands now, and indicates for me to do the same. ‘This will take a while to process, so follow me.’ 

He leads me over to a bunker-like corridor that’s lined with cells. Outside each door two black footprints are painted on the floor, and further down I can see two sets of boots outside two doors. He makes me take my shoes off too and place them here. Maybe they think I’ll tie the shoelaces together and make an escape … or maybe it’s to stop me doing myself in with them? I just don’t know.

He directs me into a pale-yellow painted holding cell, and shuts me in. Then I hear the door lock — a tiny noise, yet it has the power to totally freak me out. There’s no escape, and the place smells of hard-core disinfectant from the wall-hung urinal with an underlying stink of sweat. The sweaty smell’s so mean it clings to the roof of my mouth, and there’s no avoiding it — especially when I realise it comes from
me
. I sit down on the thin mattress of the concrete bed that takes up one whole wall and sink my head into my hands.
Time to take stock
. Oddly, the panic wanes a bit. Not that I feel any better, just that my brain clicks into the kind of intellectual coping mode that makes me feel more in control.

At first the fact I’m sitting here, arrested, is almost too big to get my head around — a bit like trying to picture what the universe is really like, that it just goes on and on forever and there’s nothing on the outside to hold it all in. It’s the only part of science that really makes no sense to
me. I mean, everything else can be pictured in one way or another — even if it’s just a complex calculation that is not yet proved. But the universe … if it formed from the Big Bang, what was there before it to create that bang? And how can it just keep spreading out and spreading out? Spreading out into
what?
And
why?
It makes no sense.

The fact is, nothing makes sense any more. One moment I’m a nerd-boy and the next I’m up there with Osama bin Laden. It’s mad. A week ago I had two good mates who I trusted with my sad-arsed life — now one of them’s lying in a hospital bed, and I have no bloody idea whether he’ll live or die, or whether I even care if he does, and the other one seems to be lying to me, or keeping something from me big-time, and I have no clue what’s going on. And me? I could be on the road to jail. My whole brilliant career over in one hit — and it’s not even me who did the hitting. There’s the joke.

I close my eyes and draw in a breath real slow. Outside I can hear the rumble of voices and movement but, in this coffin of a cell, no life exists. It’s like the place of limbo people talk about when someone dies — the
in-between
existence where your spirit goes before you’re judged and sent up on the elevator to the Pearly Gates, or down to hell. Only, unless Mum’s lawyer Sandra is real slick, I’ll be going — quite unfairly — straight to hell,
or some seething karmic soup. In truth, I may as well be dead; it’d solve a lot of problems and embarrassment for Mum and Dad.

I bet I’m not the first one who has sat here on this bench and thought of ending it — those questions the policeman asked are proof of that. I just feel so powerless — so useless. And yet … no, bugger it, I’m not about to play that game.
I didn’t do anything wrong
. I need to get out of here and track down Carl. Have to concentrate on this — not on some ‘poor me’ drama act … It’s just not
logical
to kill myself. It’s really lame. It’s the kind of thing kids at college used to talk about as if it was cool.

Take Jeremy Tofts, two years ahead of me. His girlfriend dumped him for a Snots College senior and the next thing he’s found hanging in the garden shed. What was he thinking at the time? Some weird revenge fantasy that maybe she’d be sorry she dumped him and she’d want him back? Did he really think he’d be flapping around on angel wings to see her grief and then somehow be able to walk back into his previous life?
Where’s the sense?

All around me, the yellow concrete-block walls are littered with scratchings and graffiti from past prisoners — names, curses, threats, dates — I kind of understand the niggling need to make a mark. Being locked in here is
like you’ve been locked out of the whole world. No longer wanted. Dangerous goods.

I curl up on the cold hard mattress and close my eyes.
I wonder what Rita’s doing now?
I hope like hell she’s not beating herself up about me being here — there’s just no point. Mum’ll be absolutely freaking too. I wouldn’t want to be one of those cops if they screw up even slightly — dead cert she’ll bite their heads off given half a chance.
And Dad?
I’ve dropped the whole family in it, when all I really wanted was to put things right.