Time's Long Ruin (43 page)

Liz took her cup of tea and sat on the lounge, and Mum settled beside her. Soon there was a loud, urgent news theme – drums and a trumpet fanfare, staccato notes and dotted crotchets preparing us for more bad news. Someone else's. So that we could sit and watch and hear and taste not-too-distant tragedies, and feel glad they weren't ours. Except that this time they were.

Still, it wasn't the lead item – the cricket came first. And then the newsreader's sombre face, and a picture of my friends with their arum lilies. And then Dad, explaining their lack of substantive witnesses, showing his photos and sketches, repeating, ‘Anything, no matter how small,' as he stared into the camera as if his own life depended on it.

Instead of watching the television, Bill was staring at his wife. She looked at him and said, ‘What?'

‘It's a big mess to clean up,' he whispered, and she just looked back at the screen.

Mum turned to Bill, trying to work him out. ‘You look okay on telly,' she said.

He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Considering,' and swigged.

‘. . . we'd like to ask people to search their properties . . .' Dad was saying.

Bill could see Gavin being held over the top of a well, screaming and kicking, as a man smiled and laughed in a sort of forced stage-giggle. He could see the man's fingers opening, and Gavin dropping – no screaming, no words – just a thud as he hit the bottom. He could hear Janice, still locked in a nearby car boot, screaming,
Our neighbour's a detective,
he'll have the whole police force out after you
.

More laughing, this time real, louder and heartier, as the man doubled over, tripped on a tree root and stumbled a few steps.

Bill looked at his wife again. ‘Jesus Christ,' he said, squinting, screwing up every muscle in his face, breathing and panting in a blur of alcohol and pain, a sort of paralysis at seeing his kids at the wrong end of the news hour as photographs, as static black and white memories – which suggested, which meant, which told everybody watching they were gone, past-tense, sitting half-dead down a well on a deserted goat farm somewhere east of Ceduna.

‘Henry,' Mum said, glaring, ‘go home and see where your father is.'

I stood up and walked from the room, trying not to look at Bill.

‘Lucky you didn't go with them,' Bill said, as I went.

‘Bill,' Liz growled.

But I didn't have to go home to find Dad. He was coming down the drive. Bert was a few steps behind him, consulting his notebook. ‘What's up?' Dad asked.

‘Bill's drinking,' I replied.

Bert pocketed his notebook and the two of them went inside. I didn't want to go home so I sat on the brick edging beneath the Rileys' lounge-room window. I listened for a while and then dared to stand on the bricks and stretch up until my belly was distended. I could just see in. All five of them were silently sitting on the lounge, staring at their own faces appearing magically on the curry-coloured screen in a room filled with dust and the half-light of early dusk.

Now it was Jim's voice:
. . . . great, great harm . . .

Bill saw the top of my head. I met his eyes and he stared at me. His mouth was open, but not to speak. He turned back to the television.

. . . . return the kids unharmed. That would be the decent thing
to do. The human thing. Everyone in this city asks the same
thing . . .

Liz was off again, crying, shielding her face in her hands.

‘Christ,' Bill shouted, ‘can't we at least get to the end of this?' He looked and saw himself on the television – calm, rational, pleading. ‘It's not like you had to go on telly,' he said to his wife. ‘You make the mess, I clean it up.' He stood up.

Dear Mum and Dad, I am just about to go to bed and the time
is nine . . .

‘Fuckin' Sonja,' Bill repeated.

‘Where were you?' Liz shot back.

‘Shut up . . . bitch.'

I have put Gavin's plastic sheet on in case he wets the bed. Gavin
wanted to sleep in his own bed so one of you will have to sleep with
Anna.

‘I was always left with them,' Liz pleaded, as Mum pulled her closer.

Bill was in her face. ‘It's yer fuckin' job, woman. One thing you had to get right.'

Dad stood up and moved between them. ‘Come on, Bill.'

Although you will not find the rooms in very good condition I
hope you will find them as comfortable as we do. Good night to
you both
.

‘Good fuckin' night,' Bill echoed, managing to get his hand past Dad, grabbing his wife's hair and pulling it with a jab.

‘Get off, I want to hear this,' she screamed.

‘Oh you do, eh? And then what? You got some sort of plan? You know where they might be?'

I hope you don't mind me taking your radio into my room,
Daddy.

Bill looked at himself on the telly. Then he drank half a longneck without stopping. We all watched his Adam's apple bob up and down. He wiped his mouth with his forearm, looked at Dad and asked, ‘They'll show it in the other states?'

‘Yes.'

‘Maybe it will do some good.'

Then he placed his empty bottle at Liz's feet. ‘What do I do now?' he asked her.

Liz shrugged.

‘Wait,' Mum said.

But Bill just shook his head. He walked from the room, mumbling, ‘For what?'

The newsreader had already moved on to Menzies. Time wasn't passing anymore. It had passed. This was something we could all sense now. Dad had already told me that the first twenty-four hours were the most important. After that, he (whoever he was) had already done what he was going to do. So now, I guessed, there was just a mess to clean up. Leads to investigate, hoaxes, and worst of all, hope that wouldn't fade or grow.

Chapter Five

‘This is from Doctor Gunn,' Dad explained, handing me the book.

I took it, and there, in those few hundred stale pages, was everything I'd ever catalogued, shelved, re-shelved, read, smelt, repaired (a special tape the doctor had, something like surgical plaster), coveted, browsed, wondered about or taken home for myself. The words
Treasure Island
were embossed in gold on a hard blue cover that was fraying around the edges.

‘You've seen him?' I asked, sitting up in bed, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the morning light.

‘We've seen everyone. Door-knocked every house and shop in Croydon.'

‘And what did he say?'

‘Who?'

‘Doctor Gunn.'

‘About what?'

‘Janice, the kids.'

‘Nothing. Why?'

I looked at the cursive inside the front cover, and below this, in blotted purple ink:
To Doug, Merry Christmas and
happy reading, From Granny Rowett, 1942
.

‘He said he was missing you,' Dad continued.

‘Missing me?'

‘His books. Says he's got a lot of work for you.'

I shrugged.

‘Wasn't he paying you enough?'

I stopped to think. ‘No.'

‘Anyway, he thought this might take your mind off of things.'

‘I've read it.'

‘Take it back to him then, he'd like to see you'

I held it out to him. ‘Could you?'

He half-smiled, half-wondered. ‘Why?'

‘I'll keep it then.'

He stared at me for a moment and then said, ‘He's replaced you. He's got another kid doing the job now.'

‘Who?'

‘I don't know.'

I stopped to think again. After I'd come home the previous night I'd retrieved my copy of
The Egyptian Book of the
Dead
and flicked through it. The last few pages were covered with mould. The photos from the papyrus of Ani were flecked with black dots of various diameters, their margins broken and fuzzy, each coloured grey and black and white where thousands of spores had grown. But there, towards the middle, untouched, was Anubis.

‘What was the boy doing?' I asked.

‘Sorting books.'

I could feel Dad's eyes on my skin. There was nothing you could hide from him. He was more than a detective, he was a thinker, a clairvoyant, a second-guesser who could smell with his fingers and feel with his eyes, and he had a mind that glowed like the tip of a Garrick double-filter. ‘What are you thinking?' he asked.

I turned my head and our eyes met. ‘Nothing.'

Then he sat on my bed, stretched back against the wall and rubbed his eyes. ‘You never heard this doctor . . . say anything strange?'

‘Like what?'

‘Anything to do with . . . kids?'

I swallowed. Could I lie? I wanted to tell him, but not like this, not under interrogation. I wanted us to be sitting in a park, or walking down the street, and I'd turn to him and say,
That Doctor Gunn, he's strange.

How?

The way he just watches me, when I'm working.

Dad picked up a
Superman
comic and flicked through it. ‘Or anything unusual?' he asked.

‘Unusual?'

‘Like, touching you?'

I gave him my very best astonished look.

‘Has he ever messed your hair, or hugged you?'

‘Like you?'

‘I'm your dad.' He paused. ‘So?'

Images were going through my head. Doctor Gunn, sitting on a chair in the corner of his library, refusing to stand up; Doctor Gunn, starting a library that no one ever visited; Doctor Gunn, preferring the company of boys, or standing in front of his shop, watching with a not-quite-right grin as the world passed by.

‘He'd met Janice?' Dad asked.

‘Yes?'

‘Did he talk to her much?'

‘No.'

And what I should've said, but couldn't: he only met her after, after what happened, and then it was like he was sending a message to me, If you blab, then others might suffer, innocent people, people close to you, but then I thought, No, it wasn't him that took them . . .

‘Did you ever think it was strange that he liked to be around children?' Dad continued.

‘There were grown ups.'

‘Coming and going. The thing is, sometimes people that come across as harmless – '

‘You know what it's like,' I interrupted, only half-aware of what I was saying, ‘when you're watching someone do something like sewing, or playing chess, moving the pieces around slowly. I thought that's why he liked to watch me.' And then I stopped.

‘Doing what?' Dad asked.

‘Sorting. He'd just sit there and stare at me and I'd think, You can go do your work, I'm okay now. And then, once . . .'

A moment later I'd told him. I don't know how, with a whisper, or shaky breath, with my hands clenched or pressed flat against my legs, but I'd told him. And then he was sitting with his head bowed, whispering, ‘Christ.'

‘Dad?'

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘I don't know.'

His face had changed. His mouth was open and I could see his teeth, deep yellow against the gums. He'd shaved but he'd missed a spot on his throat. He had a few long nasal hairs that trembled as he breathed and his eyes were bloodshot, the white bits a sort of boiled-egg grey. Then his mouth slowly closed, his teeth came together and his face fell flat and serious. He stood up without saying a word, walked from my room and almost ran out the front door. I pulled a pair of pants on over my pyjamas and tore off my top. I found a T-shirt I'd been wearing for four days and put it on inside out. No time for shoes. I was out the door and across the yard in seconds flat.

‘Where are you going?' Mum called out from the kitchen.

‘Playground. Need any milk?'

‘Yes, here's the money.'

But I was already gone. When I caught up with Dad he was halfway along Elizabeth Street. He was wearing his suit pants and a white shirt and Mum's pink slippers. Ted, setting up fruit in crates outside his shop, waved and said hello but Dad walked straight past him. I went up to Ted and we watched as Dad went into Doctor Gunn's clinic.

‘What's up?' Ted asked.

I shrugged. ‘Dunno.'

We waited for a couple of minutes or so and eventually Ted went back to polishing apples with his apron and laying them in diagonal lines on fluffed-up pink paper. ‘Any news?' he asked.

‘People looking everywhere,' I said.

‘Think they could use me?'

‘Perhaps.'

The doors to the clinic flew open. There was a crack as one of the glass panels shattered.