The Boy Under the Table (23 page)

The man had left his newspaper on his seat. Tina hadn’t noticed him reading it. She lifted the paper off the seat and slowly flicked through the pages.

In the middle of the paper was a two-page spread.

H
OUSE OF
H
ORRORS
!

The house had been photographed from every angle. The back garden had a small digger in the middle of it.

Tina put the paper back down on the seat. She didn’t want to know who he had been. She didn’t want to read about how much his mother missed him or how good he had been at his job. She didn’t want him to be human. He was the uniform—he needed to be just that.

After a few minutes she lost the battle with herself and picked up the paper again.

The uniform’s name had been Edwin Bleeker. He had been brought up by his housewife mother and policeman father. His parents had divorced when he was seven years old amid allegations of sexual abuse. The article didn’t elaborate on the allegations.

Edwin Bleeker. He sounded like a nerd. He sounded like the guy who ran the computer club and stuttered when he talked. He had been abused by his father and so he made sure the rest of the world suffered as well. Round and round it went.

That’s one sure-fire way to break the cycle that all the talking heads are always quoting
, thought Tina. Death stopped the cycle right there and then.

Edwin Bleeker had been found after his ageing mother, who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, contacted the police. She lived alone and her son would visit at exactly five o’clock every evening. When he didn’t turn up she called the police. They talked her down. He needed to be missing for twenty-four hours. He was an adult. Maybe he just didn’t feel like visiting that day.

But Edwin’s mother would not be mollified. She phoned continually until some tired police officer agreed to look into it. One call told him Edwin Bleeker had not turned up to work in two days.

There had been nothing suspicious at the house except for a few newspapers piled up by the door and a window that was slightly ajar. It was freezing and it was raining and the police officer became suspicious. Why leave a window open in such bad weather? Bleeker’s car was in the driveway which should have meant he was at home.

The officer called for help. The door was opened and Edwin Bleeker’s cold body with its bashed-in head was found. The police called an ambulance and then searched the house for clues. They found a lot more than they were looking for.

The article discussed his collection of child pornography.

‘One of the most disturbingly large collections I have ever seen,’ Detective Inspector Simms was quoted as saying. ‘Some of the images have made even the most hardened of detectives feel sick.’

No one knew who had killed Edwin Bleeker. His neighbours said he kept to himself but that was typical of neighbours. Tina had never heard of a neighbour who said, ‘I knew it. I said he was some sort of serial killer but no one believed me.’ People only ever had an interest in the world outside their doors when it was on television. In real life everyone kept their heads down and surged forward, buffeted by their own particular winds.

One neighbour—an old man in his eighties—did say that the television had been on all day every day. ‘It was a little loud but I didn’t like to complain,’ he said. On further questioning he admitted that he had sometimes heard shouting and crying but had thought it was the TV. ‘And of course I didn’t like to complain.’

Keep quiet and keep your head down. That had been Ruby’s advice as well. Tina smiled to herself. She hadn’t exactly been following anyone’s advice lately.

Sometimes trauma brought people out of their houses. They turned off the television and blinked at the misery that had been going on right on their doorsteps while they’d been watching TV detectives catch the killer.

Tina could just imagine the people who lived in the houses on either side of Edwin Bleeker having coffee together and discussing who might have done him in and worrying that the person was on their way back to do everyone else.

In the hospital Tim had been placed in a ward with two beds. The little girl in the bed next to him had the same kind of cancer. The mothers talked in whispers and bonded over their dying children. If you read enough or watched enough television you could almost believe that most kids survived. There was always some brave little soul on the news who had fought the good fight and won. The camera would pan across a smiling family, a little bald child sitting triumphantly among them. Tina hadn’t even considered the possibility of any other outcome. When the little girl in the next bed went into remission the staff made her a cake and sent her home. Tina smiled and clapped but really she wanted to spit blood. There was no explanation for why the medicine had worked on one child and not on another. Tina knew that she should be happy for the other family, but she would have sacrificed the girl in an instant for Tim.

People mostly think about themselves. It’s about survival.

Tina returned her focus to the paper.

The worst part was yet to come. The sniffer dogs had been brought in to try to find some clues, but they had found the back garden instead. The police had dug with spades and then brought in the digger. Seven little skeletons were found. Seven. Children aged between five and eight. The police were coordinating with the Missing Persons Unit. DNA testing was being done. Dental records were being requested. Parents had been put on standby.

Stand by while we analyse if this little skeleton belonged to your baby. Stand by and hold on tight. It’s about to get really rough. Tina imagined all those parents getting a call from the police. How long had they been waiting? Was it better not to know? Was it better to imagine your child somewhere out in the world growing up and living a life you couldn’t be part of? Or was it better to know they were no longer hungry or scared?

Tina wondered if her mother thought of her much. Was it every day or only every now and then?

The last thing the paper talked about was the possible connection between Edwin Bleeker and the disappearance of a child named Lachlan Williams from the Easter Show in April. There was evidence of something having been tied under the table in the kitchen. There was speculation about a dog or some other sort of pet.

Tina almost dropped the paper but she pushed her nails through the words instead.

Obviously they were going to mention Lockie. It didn’t mean they had connected the dots. They had probably brought out every file for every kid missing over the last few years. Lockie would just be one of the most recent.

The paper said Lachlan’s parents had stayed in Sydney for a month in an attempt to locate their missing child but had finally gone back home to their farm in Cootamundra. The paper had contacted the local police but had not been able to speak to the parents. Sergeant Peter Morris—a close friend of the family—was said to be, ‘too upset to comment’.

Tina wondered how long it had taken Lockie to give up on his parents. How long had he shouted and screamed and hoped for rescue? Did he stop because of the beatings or did he stop because the uniform told him no one was looking for him?

Bleeker had been interviewed by police when Lachlan disap peared because he was a security guard at the Easter Show. There were a lot of security guards and obviously Bleeker had been very good at covering his tracks.

He must have thought he could get away with anything or he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to take Tina to his home. She could not believe he had done that. Maybe he wanted to get caught? Maybe he was tired of hiding the kid? Of hiding who he was? Maybe he thought he was invincible. He had obviously got away with his fucked-up behaviour for a long time. And then there was always the possibility that he wanted something different to add to his collection of skeletons. Mentioning Billy may just have saved her life.

Tina shook her head. Who gave a fuck why he did it?

Maybe the universe had had enough of him. She looked over at Lockie. He was stirring in his sleep. She leaned over and took the sleeping bag away from his skin. She stroked his head and, like the child he was, he settled down.

All those little skeletons in that yard. How come Bleeker was allowed to exist? How long would it have been before Lockie was in the ground as well? What if she hadn’t been standing out on the street that night? What if it had been someone who insisted on using the alley or a room nearby? What if. What if. What if. Her mother used to say, ‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans, we’d all of us be tinkers.’

It was a saying from her grandmother and basically it meant that there was no point in going over the ifs and ands. Things just were. Questions got you nowhere.

Tina folded the paper and pushed it under the seat. Then she took it out again and ripped it into squares. She put the whole mess under the seat again.

Edwin Bleeker, the uniform, was dead, and he wouldn’t get to hurt another kid. No question about it. Tina would choose dead every time.

Lockie woke up and they went to the bathroom. Outside the fields turned yellow.

‘What’s that in the fields, Lockie?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Margarine.’

‘Margarine?’

‘Yeah, margarine and oil.’

Tina shook her head and then the realisation came to her. ‘You mean canola?’

‘Yeah, canola.’

Lockie’s voice was flat. He should have been jumping around the train with excitement, but she could feel him shutting down. She took out the last sandwich and offered it to him but for the first time since she had met him Lockie wasn’t hungry. Something was wrong. She felt a bubble of anxiety rise in her stomach.

‘That’s Rebecca’s farm,’ said Lockie, pointing at a field they were passing.

‘Is Rebecca a friend of yours?’

‘She goes to my school.’

‘Oh. It must mean we’re really close to your home.’

‘Yeah, really close.’

Tina gave up. She was no psychologist. She had no idea what was going through his head and, quite frankly, she was tired of playing mummy. It wasn’t exactly the most rewarding job. She wished she had a cigarette and a cup of coffee. She wished she was anywhere but here on this train with this boy.

They stared out at the yellow fields in silence.

Lockie breathed on the window then lifted a finger and wrote something.

Bad boy

Jesus
, thought Tina. How was she supposed to deal with this?

Lockie rubbed the words away and wrote them again. Tina racked her brain for something to say. Something that he would want to hear. What did a nine-year-old boy want to hear? She couldn’t even decide what she would want to hear if she thought she had been a bad girl. Bad girls survived. Good girls got their hearts broken. That was the absolute truth.

When Tim had been little, about two or three, he had gone through a naughty phase. He wasn’t naughty exactly, more like curious. He wanted to understand how things worked. The DVD machine stopped working if you jammed a pen in there. The dog yelped and tried to bite if you pulled his tail. Tina yelled if you tore the pages in her books. Mum got angry if you threw your food on the floor. He just wanted to know where the lines were.

Their mother had never hit him but she had been big on time-out. Some days the poor kid would only be out of his room for about a minute before he had to go back in again. At the end of every day, when Tina was reading him his bedtime story, he would ask her if he was a bad boy.

No, Timmy, not bad. A little bit naughty maybe, but not bad. You could never be bad. You’re my little brother and I love you.

Even if I bad?

No matter what you do, Tim, I’ll always love you and Mum will always love you and Dad will always love you.

And Buster.

Yeah, Buster will always love you too—but you have to stop pulling his tail, okay?

Okay.

‘You know, Lockie,’ she said aloud.

‘What?’

‘The thing about parents is . . . the thing about good parents —and I think your parents are pretty good . . .’

‘Yeah, Mum makes cakes, amazing cakes, and Dad takes me fishing even when there’s work to do. They’re good parents, my mum and dad. But . . . but they didn’t find me.’

‘I know, Lockie, but I promise they were looking. When we get you home they’ll tell you. I promise they were looking.’

‘I should have stayed by the stroller. Maybe they’re mad and that’s why they didn’t look. Maybe they know I’m a bad boy.’

‘You are not bad, Lockie,’ said Tina. She said the words slowly, patiently. ‘You are not bad and your parents sound like they’re pretty good parents. And you know . . . well, the thing about good parents is that they kind of love you no matter what.’

‘No matter what?’

‘Yeah, whatever happens, whatever you do, they still love you. Sometimes they shout when you do stuff they don’t like but they always love you.’

‘What if the stuff you do is really bad?’

‘They’ll still love you. That’s their job.’

‘No, I mean what if the stuff you did is really, really bad?’