Volcano Street (35 page)

Mr Novak had stayed with Roger all through the attack. ‘He’s out cold now. Cold as if he were dead. Damn, damn.’ His voice shook as if on the verge of sobs. ‘But those cowards wouldn’t touch him. Let them try.’

‘Hello?’ The new voice came from the veranda. A torch played through the darkened drawing room, its yellow beam buffeting
the piano, the clock, a brick on the floor, and catching blindingly in the mantelpiece mirror. Cautiously, a figure stepped through smashed windows.

‘Get back!’ Jack brandished his shotgun.

‘Now put that down, eh?’ The voice was male, young – afraid, but attempting to hide it. The torch hit Pavel’s face and he squinted. ‘For Christ’s sake, Pav, can’t you control your abo? He’s pushed his luck one time too many. I’m going to have to run him in, I’m afraid.’

‘What? We’re under attack.’ Pavel crunched forward over powdery glass. ‘Look at this place! It’s a war zone. And what the hell are you doing about it, Marky Bonner?’

P. C. Marky held firm. ‘Shooting at people is against the law.’

‘And them bastards out there? I suppose it’s not against the law to trash people’s houses?’

‘Ye-e-s,’ Marky admitted. ‘But Pav, people are upset. Can you blame them, after what yous lot pulled tonight? I don’t know if you’re a poofter too or your dad is or what’s going on, but that bloke shamed this town in front of the world. Don’t worry,’ he added, weary now, as if making a concession more generous than circumstances could warrant, ‘I’ve called for reinforcements.’ Reinforcements: Marky liked that word, it seemed. ‘But we’re going to have a hell of a time seeing that lot off. Pissed out of their brains, half of them. We can’t arrest them all. Sandy Campbell reckons they just want …’

‘Want what?’ Mr Novak said coldly.

Marky sniffed. Perhaps he knew he was playing an ignoble part. Perhaps it galled him, but he had no choice. ‘They want Mr Dansie to leave town. If yous can … make him go, that’s all. Then they’ll go home.’

‘Call yourself a cop!’ Sneering, Pavel slapped Marky in the chest. Torchlight veered wildly through the dark.

Skip tried to push between them. ‘Pav, don’t. The bugger’s not worth it.’

‘Come here, Constable Bonner.’ Mr Novak remained calm, beckoning Marky towards him. ‘See, here on the couch? There’s your enemy of the people.’ He gestured down to where Roger lay corpse-like. ‘To think they still hate him so much, after all these years!’

‘He’s not – ?’ Marky’s voice cracked.

‘No, he’s still breathing. Don’t worry, we’ll take him away in the morning. He won’t be back here again. Would you believe he loved this town? Nothing went well for him after he left. So he came home. I believe he’s a legend in some quarters, a myth. The ghost of Crater Lakes! For a long time Jack and I were the only ones who knew about him – really knew, I mean.’

‘Where’s the abo?’ Marky said doggedly. ‘I’m running him in.’

‘We both love him, you see,’ Mr Novak went on.

Marky’s face twisted. He looked as if he would gladly turn and run; instead, struggling, it seemed, to keep his voice level, he said, ‘I’ll say Mr Dansie’s leaving town, all right? You make sure he does, and I won’t press charges against the abo. But he’d better give me that gun.’

‘Do as he says, Jack.’ Mr Novak’s voice was soft. ‘But I’m telling you, Constable Bonner, if anything else happens here tonight I’m holding you responsible. You’re not a kid playing cops and robbers now.’

‘You reckon I don’t know that?’ Marky, trying – too hard, it seemed – to be a man, snatched the shotgun out of Jack’s hand. Quickly, efficiently, he emptied the ammunition. ‘Count yourself lucky no one’s been hurt. Christ, what were you doing, putting that crazy bugger in the play? People in the Lakes have always felt strongly about Mr Dansie. He’s, he’s a –’

‘Yes?’ said Mr Novak. ‘Tell me what he is.’

Marky shook his head and said, ‘He’s a murderer.’

‘Not quite,’ Mr Novak replied with dignity. ‘And remember this: whatever Roger is or was, he’s done his time. He’s paid – and paid, and paid. Must he keep paying for the rest of his life?’

‘Get out, Marky,’ Pavel said.

‘I’ll tell them he’s going,’ Marky said again, and made his exit, shotgun in hand. Jack, defeated, melted into the dark.

Skip turned to Honza. ‘Come on. Let’s get candles.’

The candles gave the room an unearthly beauty. At the piano, Mr Novak played Fauré, Debussy, Satie. The notes sounded like echoes of another world. Different music drifted in from outside. Honza, who had been scouting, said that parked cars were banked up for a hundred yards down the road. Food and kegs of beer had been ferried in; people had lit bonfires; Sandy Campbell fried sausages on a fork while ‘Eagle Rock’ blared from car radios and kids danced.

Several times they had heard excited voices close by or footsteps creaking across the veranda. Skip, brandishing a shard of broken glass, had seen off a group of boys who tried to look through the window. But there had been no further attacks. The clock beat like a metronome. The night had entered its long middle, when all should be sleeping and the world still.

‘Won’t they go?’ Marlo said to Pavel. ‘They must.’

‘That lot? They haven’t had their show.’

‘But when we bring out Roger, what then?’

‘We’ll drive away. That’s all.’

‘Until some kid chucks a stone. It won’t end well – it can’t.’

Pavel kissed her temple. They sat apart from the others, tangled together, but not uncomfortably, in a single deep armchair. Scratchy horsehair burst through split leather. Marlo had changed out of her silver suit. She was sad and happy. Life lay before her like a strange highway leading to a place she had never been. Her suitcase stood in the hall; Olly Olivetti, in his green zippered case with the single black stripe, waited beside it expectantly.

But Pavel’s next words did not surprise her. He said, ‘I can’t take you to Sydney. You know that, don’t you? This is a crazy night. It’s
not real. Those exams of yours, you’ve got to do them.’

‘How can you say that, here in Roger’s house? This is the place where everything changed. Nothing can be the same for us again. Not now.’ But Marlo, as she spoke, felt something flutter inside her, something trapped and frightened, and wondered what was right and what was wrong and how she could know the difference. What would Germaine do? she wondered. But Marlo wasn’t Germaine. She was herself: there was nobody else she could be. The strange highway was one she had to pass down alone.

‘We’ve had a good time, haven’t we?’ Pavel was saying. ‘I’m no hero. I’m not brave or smart. If it wasn’t for Mr Dansie, I’d be off to the army, not Sydney. Oh, Marlo! You’ll meet people. You’ll do things. You don’t need me. You’re so beautiful. You’re so smart. I love you.’

She picked at a paint splash on the knee of his jeans. ‘And I love you,’ she said and began to cry.

Chapter Nineteen

Where am I?

Brenton Lumsden woke with a snort. His head had fallen forward, constricting his windpipe. Knives stabbed his forehead and his bladder felt as though it would burst. Silver-blue moonlight played at wide windows. Snores and grunts rose all around; others on the Greyhound still slept, splayed at odd angles across sticky vinyl seats. The air was a sludge of stale aromas: smoke, beer, sweat, belches, farts.

Lummo’s big feet slapped down the aisle, crushing a Foster’s can underfoot. He was the only kid on the coach. The others were grown men, mates of Mr Campbell’s, except for some old slut of a barmaid who had let the blokes grope her. One of her tits, a mound of mottled flab, hung half out of her dress. Lummo snapped his eyes away, ashamed. Mr Campbell, in the driver’s seat, slumped back like a murder victim; a dark-stained upper set, drooling spit, hung from his gaping mouth. There was a sound like a raspberry.

Aw, Mr Campbell! It smelled like rotten eggs.

Lummo had to piss real bad. Holding his breath, he reached over Mr Campbell’s beer gut, jabbing at levers until he found the
one that released the door. Gasping, he zigzagged down the high steps, nearly turning his ankle. Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck. His stream drummed and drummed against the Greyhound’s flank. Afterwards his dick throbbed as if he had spunked himself, and the pounding behind his eyes doubled in force. He laid his forehead against the coach’s chilly side and rolled it back and forth. Was he going to chunder?

Fewer cars lined the road now. Coppers had moved some drivers on; others had got bored and buggered off. What had they expected? Lummo imagined the poofter coming out while they pelted him with rocks. Mr Campbell had reckoned they would give him until morning. ‘Can’t have his sort in Crater Lakes,’ he had said to Marky Bonner, and Marky Bonner knew it was a threat.

The old Dansie house rose, grim and silent, against the pale moon. Lummo, curious, restless, scuffed his way between screening trees. Something had to happen: that much he knew.

His mum would kill him when he got home. Let her. Stupid old twat. When uproar broke out in the theatre last night, he had been glad to lose her. Slipping into the Greyhound just before it roared off down Volcano Street, he felt a sense of victory. Since the Show, everyone had laughed at him, jeered at him. Even his so-called mates – Kenny and Greaso, those bastards – had turned their backs on him. Now look at him! He had stuffed himself with sausages cooked over the campfire. Blokes had given him tinnies and he’d glugged them back. Mr Campbell lent him a lighter so he could light everyone’s smokes. ‘And have one for yourself too, eh?’ The lighter still lay in Lummo’s pocket and he fingered it fondly like a rabbit’s foot. Mr Campbell had told jokes. There was one about a girl called Fuckarada; everybody damned near pissed themselves. Lummo told the one about ‘Would you bum off Brooker for an apple?’ as if he’d made it up himself, and they liked that too. Fuck the kids at school. Lummo was one of the blokes. The old slut mussed his Brylcreem,
pulled off his bow tie, kissed his lips. Blokes played two-up and he tossed the coins. ‘Come in, spinner!’

Lummo scouted around the house. Would the poofter ever come out? He looked into one side window, then another.
Stickybeak
, Mum would say. What could he see? Dust. Filth. Mum would have a fit. He tried a door at the back. Shut fast. Bugger it, he would get in somehow. There were broken windows at the front, but he didn’t fancy clambering over jagged glass. He was more likely to get caught there, too. What about upstairs? Feeling like a hero, he grabbed a pillar of the back veranda, balanced on a rickety railing and hauled himself up, then thumped down on the decking above. The long rear of the property stretched away: sheds, stables, wreck of a barn, horror-movie trees. A loose strut of the balustrade lay beside him and he picked it up. Might need a weapon.

Crouching low, careful of creaky boards, he made his way to a glassed-in door and peered inside. No sign of anyone. Had the bastards slipped away?

The room contained a big old-fashioned bed. Curled asleep on the bed, grey in moonlight, was a fat stripy cat. Lummo hated cats. On cracker nights, the Lum’s Den’s favourite game had been to catch one, stick a banger up its arse, and light the fuse. What about that mother cat with kittens at school? He’d fixed that one, hadn’t he? He shuddered with pleasure as he remembered the cat, its spine broken, trying to crawl back under the portable, dragging itself on its front paws, while the back ones trailed uselessly behind and the kittens bleated,
mew-mew-mew
. Best laugh ever. For weeks afterwards a delighted Lummo had imitated the paddling front paws and the pathetic cheeping kittens.

He slammed his stick into a panel of glass. The cat looked up sharply. ‘Here, kitty kitty.’ Still the knives drove into Lummo’s forehead, and as he reached inside the door and turned the handle he sliced his wrist on the jagged glass. ‘Fuck.’ Blood ran
from his wrist as he stumbled inside. The cat stared at him, but didn’t move.

Lummo raised his stick.

Skip heard the smashing glass.

She had woken, minutes earlier, with a guilty start. All through the night she had imagined its end: Roger and his guards (as she thought of them) emerging in mournful procession; the crowd silent, strangely awed, as the Land Rover rolled away, never to return. She had vowed not to sleep; no break must come between night and morning. But eventually she had fallen into a heavy doze, head on arm, legs drawn beneath her in a dusty armchair. Someone had covered her with a blanket. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the others still asleep in the tea-coloured light: Marlo and Pavel, his arms around her shoulders, her head resting on his chest; Honza, by the piano, curled up with Baskerville; Mr Novak in a stiff-backed chair, head nuzzling his chest like a pigeon’s in its coop. Only Roger had moved. He had gone. Skip felt disoriented, as if their vigil of a few hours before had been a dream or a story she had heard. Empty glasses and plates lay all around. On a low table stood a chess set with pieces still in play.

She got up and went to the window. Far off, through the trees, glimmered the Greyhound. All was quiet. She stretched, yawned, and passed into the hall. Moonlight spilled down the wide staircase, exposing threadbare carpet and missing banister rails. She climbed the stairs. Where
was
Roger? Perhaps he was looking his last on the old Dansie house. She must find him. She would hold his hand and tell him, as if she believed it, that everything would be all right; then he would hold her in his arms and she would cry and not be ashamed. In the murk of the upstairs corridor, she softly called his name.

She heard a crack, a clatter. She stiffened. Breaking glass? Wide awake now, she turned her head this way and that. Her heart
pounded hugely in her chest. She heard a cry, then a howl. Mowser? The sounds had come from a far room. Gasping, she raced towards it, to find the frenzied cat engaged in battle with a rolling, writhing Brenton Lumsden. Lummo, blood flowing from his wrists and arms and face, grabbed Mowser by the neck. The stick swung back in his hand, ready to strike.

Skip hurled herself on the bed, knocking Lummo sideways. The stick clattered down and Mowser leaped free, hissing, tail upright like a chimney-brush, every strand of fur aquiver with fear and rage.