Smashed (7 page)

‘You said before that Donaldson assaulted your daughter?’ Sergeant DeVinnie glances over at Constable Gordon, who has quietly started taking notes.

‘Raped,’ Mum snaps. She starts to cry now, tears pouring down her cheeks while she struggles to fight back a sob. ‘I can’t take all this — it’s too much.’ She releases Dad’s hand and sinks her face into her hands.

The policemen reposition themselves nervously. ‘How about you tell me what happened, from the start,’ Sergeant DeVinnie suggests.

Dad’s trying to comfort Mum from the far side of me, so I pat Mum’s back and shift off the couch so he can reach her more easily. He puts his arm around her and I turn away, not wanting to witness Mum’s marathon effort
to pull herself together.

As the two of them start to tell the cops what happened to Rita, I edge my way out of the room. I just can’t bear to listen to it again — can feel myself getting all worked up. Once I manage to escape the house, out into the fresh air, I start shaking so hard-out I have to sit down on the rubbish bin before I fall. The whole world has turned crazy. Upside down. One minute I’m worrying about passing a few exams, and the next I may’ve turned into some kind of drunken psychopath. If only I could remember …

Sergeant DeVinnie pops his head out of the door and nods at me. ‘Just a few quick questions, son.’

I jump up from my perch and stand in front of him, feeling naked. He studies me as if he can read what’s going on inside my head, so I focus on genetic sequences, just in case he actually can.
A, A, A, G, T, C, T, G, A, C
…

‘What were
you
up to last night?’ he asks. He doesn’t sound accusing, just curious.

‘Not much,’ I reply. I think about Mum and Dad, and how they’ve always insisted we tell the truth; that lying
is a real sin. Not in the religious sense, like we’ll go to hell, but more that it’s a total breach of someone’s trust. They’re big on trust and honesty, Mum and Dad, and I can feel this weighing heavily on me now. The truth is that I’m terrified. I can’t remember what, but it certainly looks as though I’ve done something bad. But if I admit it, what are the odds of sympathy? Zero to none. Hell, I’m not even sure I’d feel sympathy for myself if it turns out I’m the one who smashed Don up.

Sergeant DeVinnie stands there waiting patiently for my response. I’m still trying to decide what to say when his mobile phone goes berserk. He pulls it out and checks it, moving off into the middle of the yard to take a call. I’m tempted to listen in, but am distracted by the bus slowing at our stop down the road. Rita! God, I’d forgotten she’d be coming home from school about now. If she sees the cop car here she’ll really freak. I have to get to her before she walks in on this little family gathering with the police.

But she’s already near our gate and glaring fit to kill. ‘Did they call the cops?’ she yells. She’s spinning on her heels, heading back off down the street.

‘Rita, wait!’ I sprint after her — not an easy feat with the hangover from hell. I make a grab for her jacket and hold it tight. ‘Listen up.’

She turns on me with the fury of a wildcat. ‘They
promised
me …’ She’s hitting at my hand, trying to break my grip. I’ve never seen her so worked up.

‘It’s not what you think.’ The only method worth trying now is blurt mode. ‘Don’s been attacked — his head smashed in.’

Her hands drop like dead weights to her sides, and her eyes do this weird roll back in her head. The next thing I know, I’m trying to catch her, to stop her crashing to the ground. For such a tiny girl she’s impossible to keep upright. I have to manoeuvre myself under her, so she kind of crumples into my lap, and we’re sprawled across the footpath together in this tangle of legs and arms. Should I be calling out for help? What if she’s had some kind of heart attack? What if she’s dead? I’m freaking, trying to shift her off me as I dredge up the old first aid lessons I had at school. What if I have to start CPR? Was it five compressions to two breaths, or two to five?

But now, thank god, her eyelids flutter and she’s back again. She’s kind of dazed, staring at me like she has no idea of who I am or how she got here. ‘It’s okay Rit — it’s me, Toby.’ I give her a bit of a shove, supporting her until she’s sitting, legs straight out in front of her. ‘You fainted, but you’ll be alright.’

We sit together without speaking. If I crane my head
around I can see through the bushes of Dobsons’ hedge into our yard. Sergeant DeVinnie is sitting in the police car with the engine running and, as I watch, Constable Gordon climbs in as well. They pull out of the drive, heading away from us, and screech off down the road fast enough to break the limit.

‘Did you do it, Tobe?’ Rita’s voice makes me jump. She supports her own weight now; swivels round to scrutinise me. I can’t read what she’s thinking. Her face is pale and devoid of emotion.

‘You want to know the truth?’ I ask.

She nods, solemn and serious as she gazes straight into my eyes. I can’t lie to her when she looks at me like this, even if I wanted to — and there’s a little part of me that really,
really
wants to.

‘I just don’t know,’ I admit. ‘The truth is that I can’t remember …’

A little frown drags at the corners of her mouth. She stands up then, brushing dirt from her backside. Offers me her hand and pulls me up. It’s like she’s waiting for me to say more, so I just start blabbing on to fill the space.

‘I mean I was going there to hassle him, no doubt of that, but …’

‘Whatever,’ she snaps. I figure she’s furious: she’s the youngest member of Amnesty International at school, for
god’s sake, so she’s hardly going to condone violence. But, instead of another furious outburst, she just says, ‘Thanks.’ And, as if that isn’t enough to totally blow me away, she puckers up to kiss my cheek.

I’ve heard that bees are prepared to lay down their lives to protect the hive — to have their whole rear ends ripped out when they stick their nasty little sting into an intruder. And those crazy ants again —
they’ve
been known to detonate themselves to save their ‘family’ too. Not so different from the Mafia, I guess. Or terrorists. I gotta say that’s how this kiss from Rita feels — like I’ve just been rewarded for some weird honour attack the Mafia would be proud of. Only I don’t feel good about it, just sick. Even though I know I went to the waterfront looking for a fight, I can’t believe I’d do that to Don. I’m the weedy one, the nerd.
I’m
the one who’s s’posed to use my brainpower, not my fists, to problem-solve.

And I don’t need the sick churning in my guts to tell me that odds on I’ll pay for it, even if it wasn’t me.

I
t takes me all my brainpower to convince Rita to come inside. She’s as jittery as Carl without his Ritalin and it’s like she’s transferred all her anger about Don to Mum and Dad. She launches in on an attack before I even shut the door.

‘You’d better not have told them anything.’

She’s puffed up like a little bantam hen, shifting from foot to foot and refusing to look either of them in the eye.

I’ve gotta give Mum credit. She doesn’t bite straight back, just smiles and pats the empty space beside her on the sofa. ‘How was school?’

Dad’s doing his best to calm things too. He fills the kettle loudly at the sink and plugs it in. ‘Hot drink, anyone?’

‘Coffee, thank you, darling,’ Mum replies.

Given what we’ve all been through, including the visit from the police, this sounds a little creepy — kind of
Stepford Wives.
I can tell it’s freaking Rita too. She glances over at me with a cynically raised eyebrow
(something I have tried for years to copy, but entirely failed to master) and shakes her head. But she
does
sit down next to Mum; perches on the sofa’s edge, her feet square on the ground as though she’s prepped for flight.

‘So?’ she volleys back at Mum. ‘What did they say?’

Mum waits, as Dad’s over-zealous stirring nearly shatters all the coffee mugs. He carries them over, a coffee each for him and Mum, and hot chocolate for Rita and me. I take my mug and let the rich smell waft up my nose. But I daren’t risk drinking it — if I puke one more time I’ll make the record books.

Rita doesn’t even touch her drink. She’s as wound up as a spring and no amount of playing at Happy Families is going to uncoil her. ‘For god’s sake …’

‘Okay,’ snaps Mum. I can see she’s annoyed at herself, and can almost hear her counting in her head to calm herself back down. ‘They came about Don, Rita. I guess Toby’s told you?’

Rita nods. ‘Good job.’

Mum and Dad’s eyes meet for just the slightest second before Dad answers. ‘It’s a little more serious than that, sweetie. Whoever did that to Don —’ he gives me such a meaningful stare I can feel my guilt glands heating up my cheeks, ‘— well, it’s really serious. For all we know, he could die — or be brain-damaged for the rest of his
life. It’s a terrible crime. Just terrible.’

Rita’s looking at Dad like he’s just claimed Don as his long-lost son, her mouth hanging open and her brow screwed up in righteous pain. And I have to admit I’m feeling pretty confused about all this too. I mean, I know what has happened is terrible — but does that mean he’s suddenly off the hook for what he did to Rita? Just like that?

I think Mum must be picking up our vibes. ‘The thing is, love,’ she says, ‘we had to tell the police about Don’s actions the other night. Sidney was trying to frame Dad — we had to explain to them the real facts.’

‘Like they’d care …’ One small, furious tear rolls down Rita’s cheek. I see Mum register it, blinking back the rising water in her own eyes.

‘The point is that they do,’ Mum says. ‘In fact, they’re keen that you should make a statement and the sooner you do it the better, love.’

‘Like they’re really going to go around to the hospital and slap him in handcuffs …’ Rita shoots up from the sofa, nearly sending her hot chocolate flying.

‘That’s not the point …’

Poor Mum, she’s never going to win on this. Rita’s madly swinging from one reaction to the next, and there’s no way of bringing her back down to earth. It’s like PMT
on overdrive — you’d have to be insane or suicidal to step in her path.

‘You think I’m going to put myself through that — stand up in court and let the whole world know about my private life? Let some seedy bloody bastard of a lawyer slag me off?’ Rita hardly ever swears — the result is electrifying.

‘Do you have to use that language?’ Mum starts, but Rita drowns her out with a furious wail.

Dad rises and reaches out to comfort Rita, but there’s no stopping her now. She flounces from the room, slamming the hall door so the whole house shivers on its wooden piles.

‘Damn it.’ Mum gets up to follow her. ‘I can’t believe this is happening …’

She
can’t believe it? There’s a joke.

Dad slaps his hands impotently against his sides. ‘Well, that went well.’ He turns to me now, and it’s clear another round of fun family time is planned for me. ‘The police are coming back, Toby. They want to question you some more.’ He’s looking at me like he wishes I’d come clean and confess all, his eyes sending out about the saddest vibes I’ve ever seen.

‘Do you really think I’d do that, Dad?’

When he doesn’t leap straight to my defence it
hurts like hell.

‘I mean, I know the evidence looks pretty damn incriminating, but can’t you show a little faith in me?’

‘If you’d just been home last night, there’d be no question …’ He pins me with a dagger stare. ‘Just where
were
you, Toby?’

I can feel him begging me to come up with some satisfactory answer — something that will solve it all. The trouble is, I bloody can’t. I start trying to tell him all about my night — how I remember everything quite clearly up until I headed for the waterfront, but after that it’s all a blur. It sounds pathetic and dodgy, even to me. I hate how he’s watching me, like I’ve destroyed the last seventeen years of family trust overnight. Like I’m a home-wrecker. A loser. And when Mum comes back in, waving my
blood-stained
sweatshirt like a flag, I want the earth to open up and swallow me.

‘I don’t remember doing it!’

Mum’s face has gone a dreadful pale, her freckles standing out like … like … like blood droplets on a pure white countertop. Oh holy crap. ‘This looks pretty bad, Tobias. You want to tell us what you’ve done?’

‘You don’t understand!’ I snatch the sweatshirt from her hands and biff it across the room. ‘If my own damn parents don’t have any faith in me, then how the hell
am I going to convince the cops?’

‘Hold on a minute there, mate …’ Dad looks about as miserable as any human being can as he scoops that smoking gun of a sweatshirt back off the floor and turns it over in his hands to see the blood.

‘Okay, I know it looks bad, but I really don’t believe I could have done it, Dad.’ I swivel round to include Mum. ‘You’d think I’d
know
, deep inside my soul, if I’d done something as foul as that? Wouldn’t I? Just like Don must know, somewhere in his munted brain, that what he did to Rita was totally wrong.’

Mum shrugs, and reaches out her arms to hug me. ‘I love you, mate.’ She squeezes me harder, maybe trying to wring the truth out of me, and sighs hard-out. ‘But, whatever went on last night, the police are going to figure it all out eventually, that’s for sure.’

Dad nods at this and smiles, real sour. ‘Believe it, Tobe. This sure as eggs is not the end. They took away some photographs to check with witnesses — yours and mine.’

I don’t know what to say to this. To think that somewhere, right now, someone’s perving at my photograph and sizing me up as Public Enemy Number One. The whole world has gone crazy, and the freakiest part is that the loony at the centre of it all looks increasingly likely to be me.

There’s always a time, in the middle of the night, when all the noises of the planet stop for just a minute, and every living creature seems to hold its breath. Nothing moves, nothing squeaks … even the house crouches silent on its old foundations, without its usual reassuring cracks and creaks. Mum calls this the ‘witching hour’, and it’s true that there’s a sense of supernatural danger prickling at my nerve endings which drives me far away from sleep.

I can’t stop thinking about Don. The further the night drags on, the more I have a burning urge to see him, just to put my mind at rest. That’s the way my brain works — seeing something makes it real. Besides, somehow I have to fill the gaps and find out for myself,
for sure
, if I could’ve punched him over so badly as they say, and then just left him there.

It’s getting close to 2 a.m. when I finally give in to the urge. I sneak through the house on tiptoes like a cartoon thief, open the back door real slowly, so its ancient hinges won’t give me away, and plunge out into the moonless night.

Even though there are street lights, and we live within comfortable walking distance of the hospital, I’m uneasy.
I’ve never quite got over my fear of walking alone at night. It’s like the moment the sun goes down my senses somehow sharpen, alert to danger in a way they never are during the day. It doesn’t help that we live close to the greenbelt, and walking here means passing tracts of gnarly pine trees and scrubby bush.

Once, when I was young, Rita and I found some kind of carved voodoo mask hanging from a pine tree in the gully down below our house. It totally freaked me out — way more than the dodgy-looking mental health patients who lurk around the run-down boarding house further on. In fact, those creepy, carved-out mask eyes still glance around the edges of my vision when I walk this route, and tonight it’s as if I can feel them boring between my shoulder blades as I trudge along.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Being afraid of the dark’s okay. It’s an evolutionary instinct based on damn good reasons — my ancestors were wise to huddle round their cave fires and let the stupid, fearless dudes go out at night. I mean, what silly bugger’s going to purposely choose to go somewhere completely blind, when they know there are monsters — real monsters — waiting out there in the dark? They’d end up as a lion’s snack … as someone’s slave … attacked by thugs.

Damn it, this makes me think of Don again. Was he
happy when he drove down to the waterfront to meet Carl? Did he even for a moment think what Rita must be going through? Wonder if he’d screwed things up? And where is Carl? I can’t believe I haven’t heard from him — this is the kind of drama he lives for. Hell, I wonder if he thinks I attacked Don as well? That really is a scary thought. Carl may be the world’s most annoying psycho, but the idea he’d suspect me really stinks.

Just as I see the entrance to the hospital I realise I don’t even know what ward Don’s in. How on earth am I going to find him? And what if there’s some kind of police guard? That’s the kind of thing they have on cop shows, but I’ve no idea if that’s likely here.

The only place that looks open to the public is the A and E, so I figure that’s the logical place to check out first. Inside, there’s a man pacing the waiting room with a screaming baby, a couple of drugged-up looking goths and some drunk guy with his head wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. I’m going to have to come up with a story fast. There’s no way they’ll tell me anything about Don if I’m not family — so my best bet now is to lie. Sorry Mum.

I approach the woman at reception and try to look suitably upset, but I needn’t bother. She hardly lifts her gaze to me. ‘Yes?’

‘My brother Donald Donaldson’s somewhere in the
hospital — I just got told. I really need to see him now, if that’s okay.’

She sighs, like she’s heard this kind of thing a thousand times. ‘You’ll have to wait till morning, then ring the information desk.’

‘But you don’t understand — the police said that he’s really bad — that he might die.’ As I say this, a wobble comes into my voice. I can see it’s working on her, that she’s softening, and I feel kind of awful because I said it to trick her. But the truth is now I really do feel close to crying. It’s like I’m stuck in the middle of a bizarre movie where the bright lights are revealing my raw emotions to the world. Blub-eyes Young — guaranteed to trip over my feelings and screw things up.

The woman glances over her left shoulder at the empty nurses’ station and then back at me. Sighs again. Then she types something into the computer in front of her. ‘He’s in intensive care. Go through the doorway at the end of the waiting room and take the lift to the second floor. Follow the signs.’

‘Thanks.’

I get the hell out of there before she has a chance to change her mind. Only when I’m in the lift do her words sink in.
Intensive care.
So it’s really true — no exaggeration from the cops to make me sweat.

There’s hardly anyone about, and those who are pad by like ghosts on silent missions of their own. The corridors seem to stretch for miles, and the whole place is spookily quiet, with only the occasional banging of a door or ringing bell. It reminds me of a sci-fi movie — those long space-station corridors where you expect to see a silver-suited Clone Trooper emerge from around a corner at any time and aim his gun. Only there’s no mistaking the smell of this place. The sickly antiseptic stench brings me out in a sweat and dredges up every awful hospital experience I’ve ever had: the stabbing pain of injections; the claustrophobic stink of gas as they re-broke my arm when I was eight; the disgusting slop I had to eat when I had my tonsils out; and, worst of all, the time my grandmother was dying and we sat with her for days on end while she shrivelled up into a small dried prune. This memory I’d rather not have right now.

Finally I find the sign that leads me to intensive care. There’s no police on guard, so that’s a start, and I’ve already figured that neither Don’s mum nor dad will be here at this time of night — it’s not their style. But I crane my neck around the corner of the doorway, just in case.