The Beauty Is in the Walking (7 page)

Palmerston's newspaper,
The Advocate
, leaves the outside world to the big city papers and sticks to local news. On Monday that was all it needed for the biggest headline I've ever seen.

POLICE TO

INTERVIEW

SUSPECT

The front page didn't name Mahmoud Rais, describing the suspect as ‘a student at Palmerston High School' instead, but everyone on Facebook knew who he was. It
did
name Mrs Bagnold. I'd been wondering all weekend why she hadn't gone to the police earlier and here was the answer: she'd left Palmerston on Monday for kidney dialysis and didn't hear about Charlotte until she returned on Thursday night.

I never read
The Advocate
; it was for olds like Mum and Dad and for that very reason everything it said seemed
more considered and legitimate than the bullshit all over the Net. When I sat down at the kitchen table Mum looked across at me with a smart-arse look on her face.

‘What?' I said.

‘Is that the boy you stood up for on Friday?'

‘It doesn't prove a thing,' I snapped at her in a tone that would have earned a clip over the ear if Dad had been there.

At morning tea, when I complained to my group about jumping to conclusions and getting the wrong idea about religion, I was calm, I was logical, I laid out the facts. Svenson would have applauded from the background if he'd been there.

‘You should be one of those nerds on the cop shows,' said Dan.

‘He's not good looking enough for TV,' Mitch said with a shove at my shoulder.

Amy jumped to my defence. ‘Jacob would look good in a lab coat,' and she winked at me, letting the others see, even though none of them would understand what lay hidden behind it.

I was serious, but they didn't take me seriously, except Amy who sensed how important the whole thing had become to me, even if she didn't know why. Did
I
even know?

At lunch, the guys went straight to the oval and Amy had a social committee meeting. I sat at the picnic table, now dragged into the shade because the summer was hotting up, and wondered if I should just leave the
Mahmoud thing alone. I'd never said a word to him and the only connection I'd ever made with the guy was because of the fight.

I was still making up my mind when Chloe slipped onto the seat opposite me and it wasn't hard to guess what she wanted to talk about.

‘You've seen all that stuff on Facebook, I suppose,' I said.

‘It's pathetic,' she snapped. ‘Soraya rang me yesterday. Jacob, she's so upset. Her parents have had to turn off their phones. She's not at school today, either, and you can understand why.'

She paused to let me take in the news. What could I say?

Straightening in the seat she said, ‘Mahmoud had been at the soccer field on Sandy Creek Road. It's the only place in town with goal posts, apparently. His little brother was with him, Jacob, only that woman didn't see him 'cause of the fence. It wasn't even properly dark.'

‘But Charlotte was killed after midnight. It was in the paper.'

She glared at me across the table. ‘Exactly.'

After school, I left my bag on the rack and walked round to the lane where Mahmoud had been seen. The Bagnold's house was halfway along and sure enough, it had a fence that came up to my shoulder. It was the school fence on the other side that grabbed my attention, though. It had to be three metres high and, with no crossbar, climbing over
would mean wobbling precariously on the floppy cyclone wire. I walked further, all the way to the corner, with eyes peeled for holes in the wire, but it was a new fence – the Ag farm especially had to be careful about sheep finding a way through. Mahmoud couldn't have entered the farm from this side and what would he have done with his brother, anyway?

Time to move on. The same high fence stretched all the way across the back of the farm and the only gate was off a dead-end street with a couple of houses on it. The gate barely came up to my chest, though, which pretty much settled the matter. If you were sneaking into the farm, you'd come this way.

What's more, the people in the nearby houses would have had the best chance of noticing anything suspicious. I knocked on the door of the first one.

A man in a singlet and footy shorts responded. ‘What can I do for you, mate?'

I told him.

‘Not you, too. I've had the police here twice already. What the hell do you think you're up to? Playing junior detective. Jesus! Look, I didn't see anything on that night, orright, and don't go bothering poor Frank next door 'cause he didn't see anyone either. Now piss off home to your mummy.'

He slammed the door in my face.

I walked back to get my bag, with my tail between my legs at first, until I gave myself a shake and saw what this meant. For all his bad temper, the guy had told me what I
wanted to know: Mrs Bagnold's sighting on the far side of the school didn't mean a thing. If the cops were halfway good at their job, they'd have worked that out before I did.

Detective Jacob O'Leary. God help us.

My good spirits lasted until I reached home and found my laptop splashed with news that the police had gone round to the Rais house during the day. Mahmoud's name was there in black and white. I was too angry to read the comments and stayed most of the night in my room, studying (a bit) and mostly brooding.

On Tuesday morning, things got worse when I fell onto my usual chair at the kitchen table to find
The Advocate
laid out in front of me, too perfectly aligned to be accidental. Mum was studiously looking away while I took in the headline.

KNIFE SEIZED IN

MUTILATION CASE

These words were superimposed over a full page photograph of a policeman, Detective Sergeant Rob Dunstan, according to the caption, walking side-on to the camera with a clear plastic bag dangling from his hand. Weighing heavily inside was a knife with a blade about ten centimetres long which meant it was way too short to be a boning knife, and the more I stared at the grainy photo the more convinced I became it was nothing more than a steak knife.

When Dad arrived at the table I turned the paper to face him. ‘What do you think about this?' I asked.

‘Great, they've caught the bastard, then,' he said after a quick glance.

‘No, I mean about the picture. How could the paper get such a close look at the evidence? Aren't they supposed to keep that private, for the jury, or whatever?'

He studied the newspaper more closely. ‘I see what you mean. Awfully obliging of the copper to hold the bag like that for the camera. Cops probably tipped them off so a photographer would be waiting.'

Mum sniffed and turned back to the stove, but this only seemed to encourage Dad. ‘Coppers do that when they're under the pump. A week and no arrest, so the town's getting edgy, but this shows they're on the case,' he said, stabbing his finger onto the front page.

‘But it makes Mahmoud look like the killer.'

‘It's a tough world, Jacob,' he said with a shrug.

I stewed through Periods One and Two, and if the whole business wasn't already in my face I found a copy of
The Advocate
stuffed in the mouth of a bin. I ripped off the front page.

‘Have you seen this?' I asked, laying the sheet out flat on the picnic table.

They checked it out while I settled into the place Amy had kept for me.

‘It's a set-up, so bloody obvious,' I told them.

Bec, who sat on the other side of Amy, drew the page closer until she had a front-on view. ‘Yeah, the cops may
as well have held it up for the camera. Take my picture, mister,' she mimicked.

Dan turned the page towards him and I could see the light come on in his face, too. ‘It's like they're telling us what to believe. To be honest, I thought he must be the one when I first saw it.'

‘Me, too,' said Mitch. Then he checked my face and became worried. ‘Sorry, Jake, you were the big hero last week, I know, but seeing that, I thought, waste of time.'

‘What do you think now?' I asked.

‘You reckon it's not him, then?'

‘I know it's not him and I'll tell you why.'

I launched into my adventures after school yesterday.

‘You're right about the fence,' said Dan once they'd heard me out. ‘No way anyone's going to get over it without a lot of grunting and groaning for busybodies like old Bagnold to hear.'

‘If they had any real evidence, they'd arrest him, wouldn't they? They're trying to make everyone in town think it's him,' said Bec, who was catching onto my way of thinking faster than the others. She was often ahead of us in more thoughtful things and that day I was grateful for it when Dan took up her lead.

‘I don't like being told what to think,' he said more forcefully, his eyes on
The Advocate
. It was like he'd said,
nobody pushes me around
, one of his tough-guy warnings and he'd been in Mrs Schwartz's office a few times because of the way he backed it up.

‘So if Jacob's right, then the Leb kid would have had to go right round and come in over the gate,' said Mitch, summing up.

‘He didn't do it, Mitch. He's got no more reason to kill Charlotte than the rest of us. I bet he didn't even know we had a pig on the Ag farm, or that Kibble had a horse in that paddock in the first place. Anyway, how would he get up there? He's too young to drive and it's too far to walk the way you took us the other night in your mum's Barina. If he tried going up to Kibble's by the direct route, the river would've been in his way.'

‘There's the ford,' said Amy. By ford, she meant a series of boulders that let people cross the river dry-footed if the water was low.

‘Yeah, but the Lebs have only been in town a few months. Bet that kid doesn't know the ford's even there,' said Mitch. He stared across the table at me, impressed by the way I'd worked it all out and a little surprised, I'd say.

Someone else was impressed. Amy put her hand on my thigh which no one else could see, of course. Carefully, so the others wouldn't suspect, I removed my hand from the table and slipped it on top of hers. She splayed her fingers to thread mine between and gave a little squeeze. ‘You're quite something, you know, Jacob,' she said, which earned nods of agreement from around the table.

‘So Mahmoud's not The Ripper,' said Dan.

Although the music called us into class, I might as well have stayed around the picnic table for all the notice I took of the teachers. This morning's anger still burned,
yet four people had listened to me and in just a few words I'd turned them around. I wondered if I could turn a few more the same way – make them think for themselves.

Not on the Net, I decided. May as well piss at an incoming tide because people didn't read more than a few lines. The detectives had known that when they called in the photographer. One picture, a handful of words. Gotcha. The image of that knife in the bag still lay at the back of my eyeballs like an alien implant.

Was it Dan or Mitch who'd said half the homes in Palmerston had a boning knife? They'd all have knives of some kind. That was it! I'd take a knife from home and hand it in at the police station. I'd carry it in a see-through plastic bag and tell them I should be a suspect, too.

One idea gave birth to another – the picture in my head, the knife in the bag. I hadn't actually seen it, only a photograph in the newspaper, but I could still play the cops at their own game. Yes, that's how I'd do it. Everyone in town was a suspect if all you needed was a knife. This was going to be great.

At lunchtime I took my chances on the stairs, caught Mitch before he and Dan headed for the oval and with all five of us around the picnic table I asked them to join me.

‘Like a protest?' said Mitch.

Amy looked doubtful. ‘Dad won't like it. Should hear him when uni students protest on TV. Don't know what Mum'll think, either.'

‘She'll think you've got a mind of your own,' I jumped in. ‘It'll show you're making your own decisions from now on.'

Her face brightened at that idea, even if the frown didn't disappear entirely. ‘Yeah, okay,' she said tentatively.

‘You're really going to do it?' asked Bec, who was sitting opposite Amy this time.

Amy glanced at me and whatever she saw in my face made her sit up straighter. ‘Yes,' she said and gave a little laugh, more out of nerves than daring.

‘I'm in, too, then,' said Bec.

Our attention shifted to the guys.

‘You don't think it's all a bit PC?' asked Mitch, sounding skeptical.

The initials caught me off guard. CP backwards. I thought he was on about my cerebral palsy and the confusion must have shown in my face.

‘Politically correct,' Mitch explained. ‘You know, standing up for the ethnics out of guilt because naughty white guys like us are always slagging them off.'

He was having a dig, but he had a point. Was that the reason I was so fired up, because of some trendy cause?

‘No, there's more going on here than the ethnic thing,' I said firmly. ‘An innocent guy has been stitched up.'

I meant those words, but if I'd been entirely honest I'd have admitted to something more. The restlessness that had poked and prodded at me for months was demanding I get out front on this and it wouldn't loosen its grip on me until I'd lead some kind of fight back.

‘You're going to tell the paper, right? They'll take our picture?' asked Dan.

‘That's the plan,' I replied. ‘The only way to get one picture out of everyone's head is to replace it with a different picture.'

Dan paused, working things through. ‘You're sure this Mahmoud guy is innocent, right? We're going to look stupid if he turns out to be the one.'

‘Positive.'

Like Amy, Dan found something in my face that convinced him. ‘Yeah, let's do it,' he said, and if the rest of us were in so was Mitch.

‘Four-thirty this arvo, then. You have to bring a knife from home, something nasty.'

Talk about fired up! I went into class aware of the blood pumping through my veins in a way I'd never experienced before.

English last period. Chloe fell into step beside me on the way to the classroom and I told her what I was doing after school.

She stopped in her tracks. ‘You're joking.'

I shook my head. ‘My mates are with me. Five of us.'

‘Six,' she said instantly, then backed off. ‘That's if it's all right with you.'

‘Sure!'

We walked on another few paces before she stopped again. ‘You know what you should do – ask Svenson if you can talk to the class about it. I mean, this is so like
The Crucible
.'

Shit, could I
do
that? Imagine if all twenty of them joined in.

I sat through the first half of the lesson swinging wildly between determination and a wimp-out, and aware of Chloe's expectant eyes on me. Svenson was revising stuff from early in the year and dropping hints about what would be in the exam, so I couldn't interrupt, but ten minutes before the bell he ran out of steam and let us work on our own.

Crunch time. That was a Tyke expression.

I wobbled out to Svenson's desk. ‘Can I talk to the class for a minute?'

He glanced up at the clock on the wall, then back at me. ‘Go right ahead.'

Oh crap. I was back in Year Four when it was my turn for morning talk. I'd hated it back then and made my class squirm with how bad I was while all the time swaying around on legs that made me doubly self-conscious.

‘I want to tell you what's happening this afternoon,' I began. ‘Maybe some of you would like to join in.'

In front of kids who weren't closely connected to me in some way, I didn't have the nerve to come straight out with the word ‘protest'. They'd heard me say something about joining in, though, and eyed me with a mixture of boredom and suspicion in case I was asking them to collect for a charity.

I was learning the hard way what a difference there is between an enthusiastic idea and actually getting something done. Chloe stared up at me from the front row and I fed on her natural self-confidence, hoping it would become my own – in fact, maybe I should tell them Chloe had already agreed to be part of it.

No, a voice shouted in my head, she's not one of the popular crowd. ‘Dan Latchworth is part of it and Bec Wiley,' I said instead. Those two were liked across all of Year Twelve, as the lift in interest showed.

I became more aware of Chloe, almost in touching distance, and worried I was denying her, when this chance to enlist more help from my class wouldn't be happening without her. ‘Chloe, too,' I added, nodding down at her, and saying that gave me a boost I hadn't anticipated.

An expectant air filled the classroom by this time – behind me, I sensed Svenson had stopped reading whatever he'd been checking over to listen. Without planning it the way a great orator would, maybe, I'd managed to intrigue them all by holding back what the hell I was on about. Time to tell them.

‘It's about the picture in this morning's paper – the policeman with the knife in a plastic bag. Even if you didn't see it, you've probably heard about it. You know where it came from, too – one of the Muslim families that moved here for the meatworks and you'd only be like everyone else if you were pretty sure by now that Mahmoud Rais is The Ripper. That's his name,' I said quickly, when a few faces seemed confused. ‘He's the brother of Soraya, who's normally sitting at that desk by the wall for this lesson. I guess we all know why it's empty today.'

Pointing out the empty desk stirred up memories of Soraya at the centre of feminine laughter whenever Svenson was late for class. The girls liked her and from that moment I picked out the girls in the class especially as I spoke. I was connecting, too, if the serious way they returned my gaze was anything to judge by. Hey, they were actually listening to me.

I stopped worrying about the dribble from the corner of my mouth and let the years of therapy do its work. Slowly, letting the words come when my tongue was ready, I said, ‘The police are barking up the wrong tree and here's why.'

I described my afternoon exploring the school's boundary and made a huge thing of the time discrepancy when Mahmoud was seen – with his little brother – and the time of Charlotte's death.

The faces before me had lost their blankness and many were leaning forwards, eager for what I'd say next. This had never happened before when I'd been speaking to a group and so I'd never understood what an inspiration it could be for a speaker. Ideas were coming from everywhere now and I found myself saying, ‘If the police spend their time checking out the wrong person, then they're not looking for the real Ripper and that's bad for the town, don't you agree? The trail will go cold and eventually there'll be another attack like the one on our own Charlotte. None of us here want that, do we?

‘This is what we're going to do,' and I outlined my plans for knives in plastic bags. ‘It's simple, it's symbolic and it's powerful,' I said, summing up and at the same time wondering where those words had come from.

I needed something more, something poignant to finish with and, looking at the many thoughtful, almost-convinced faces in front of me, my dodgy tongue surprised me again.

‘Guys, Palmerston is better than this. The people of our home town deserve better and it's up to us to show them the way.'

Afterwards they clapped me, for God's sake, and when the bell set us free two girls came up to me right away, wanting me to explain the protest again. Soon four
or five were gathered round and, after glances between them that hoped someone else would take the lead, Alicia Greaves said she was in and immediately three others agreed to join us as well.

Svenson was waiting to lock the classroom. ‘Have you rung the newspaper yet?' he asked as I passed through the door.

I shook my head.

‘Do it now. Give them notice so their reporter doesn't get called to another story.'

I made the call as soon as he walked away. It took a while to make the guy understand what we were going to do, but once he did he wanted as much detail as I could tell him.

‘Post office at four-thirty and then the police station. I'll be there,' he said.

‘And a photographer?'

‘Don't worry. You'll see yourself in the paper tomorrow.'

My phone sang with texts from Amy and Mitch to say they were on their way home to get a knife. I was reading them when I passed the stairs leading up to the staffroom.

‘Jacob,' Svenson called. He came bounding down the stairs two at a time. ‘How are you getting home?'

I normally bummed a lift or, if I missed out, dawdled my way to Mum's office. It was just dawning on me that I needed more than that today when Svenson solved the problem for me.

‘I'll drive you.'

He had an MX5, a bit knocked about and it probably had a million k's on the clock, but it had style, no doubt about that, and in Palmerston that made him a big note. Tyke could get away with it because of who he was and, besides,
his
flash and dash was a shiny red ute.

‘Bloody hairdresser's car,' Dan had said about Svenson's. Mind you, he'd have taken it if Svenson was giving it away. We all would.

‘That was an impressive speech you made,' said Svenson once we were rolling. ‘Not surprised Alicia and the rest signed on afterwards.'

The Mazda turned into Meredith Street, giving me a glimpse of the police station as Svenson made the right turn. Another two blocks of silence, then he said, ‘I've read your assignment on
The Crucible
. It's the best work you've done all year.'

So my assignment was worth all the sweat I'd put into it. I risked stepping out of line and asked, ‘Was mine better than Chloe's?'

Svenson thought about this while he made the last turn. ‘Not quite,' he answered, smiling gently, an encouraging smile that said don't take the news too badly. ‘Chloe's had more experience in writing this kind of assignment. You lot are a year behind out here, compared to where she's come from. Not your fault, Jacob. The insight and intelligence is there in what you wrote.'

What did he mean by that? I waited for him to explain, but we'd already pulled up outside my place. Svenson waited in the car while I threw all our knives out of the kitchen
drawer, knowing damned well Mum'd kill me if I took one she used every day. I found what I needed among all the forgotten utensils in the bottom drawer. We were halfway to the police station when I remembered the plastic bags.

‘Do you think we could go back?' I asked, once I'd explained.

Svenson glanced at his watch. ‘Time's getting away. I'll stop at the supermarket.'

More than that, he went in for me – even paid out of his own pocket. He really was on board with the whole thing.

Amy was already outside the post office and looking every way at once until she saw me in the Mazda.

‘I thought you'd changed your mind,' she called when I'd extracted myself from the passenger seat. ‘I can't believe we're doing this. Is this knife okay?'

She held up a steak knife like the ones they flog on late-night TV. It looked ready to slice through the flimsy bag she'd dropped it into.

‘Perfect. Put it in this,' I said, giving her one of the sturdy zip-locks Svenson had bought.

She went back to staring up and down the street, reminding me that only two of us had turned up so far and the whole thing would fizzle if it stayed that way.

‘You don't think this'll be like the birthday party that nobody came to, do you?' I asked.

Amy put her hand on my arm in a way she'd carefully avoided in the school yard. ‘If it's a party, then you should expect people to come late,' and despite her own nerves she sent me the cutest wink.

I wanted to kiss her, there in the street – just go for it – but before my uncooperative legs could move me that half-metre closer, she pointed behind me. ‘There's Bec.'

Alicia and one of the other girls appeared round the post office corner soon after, and when Dan and Mitch arrived together I knew the protest would definitely go ahead.

Dan made a show of lifting the shirt from his waistband to reveal the handle of a knife.

‘Concealed weapon,' he said wickedly.

‘Careful you don't cut your balls off,' Bec shot back and that set the tone. We were all nervous as cats and the best way to cut through was to laugh. Dan, especially, was enjoying himself, playing up for the girls and helping the others arrange their knives inside the bags.

While I watched him entertain the girls, I noticed more school uniforms across the road. They weren't kids from my English class.

‘What's with them?' I asked Amy.

‘Word's been tweeted around. Bec and I texted a few ourselves.'

‘Are they going to join in?' I was thinking about the plastic bags. Svenson had bought a packet of twelve.

‘No, they've come to watch,' said Amy, as though she'd been over there to ask and that was the way it played out.

‘Jacob,' said Alicia Greaves, who took me aside and spoke softly, seriously, in contrast to Dan's antics. ‘I just got a text. The other two aren't coming. Sorry.'

That left Chloe to arrive and, from the worried expression on Alicia's face, I guessed she and her companion would back out if Chloe didn't turn up to bolster their courage. But there she was, stopping briefly to let a car pass in the wide street. I wasn't sure where she lived and guessed by her flushed face and the heaving of her shoulders she had run part of the way.