THEY’D SET UP A floodlight. Its yellow arc lit a bleak body lying in a pool of blood. Bunter was standing guard as a tech guy scraped something into an evidence bag. Harley stood back, leaning against a fence and dragging on a smoke.
I got out, glanced at the corpse: a whitefeller, burly and burnt. Face up. Not a face I knew. He had a marine haircut, black jeans, a glistening T-shirt.
I spotted Cockburn standing with a couple of uniforms talking to—talking at—a group of young men. He had them up against the mesh fence, back-up ready in case they bolted. I came up beside him.
‘Sir?’
He was busily scribbling onto a pad, but I felt him tense the moment I opened my mouth. ‘Kind of busy right now, Emily.’
‘Where’s Danny?’
‘You oughter be in hospital.’
‘Just want to know what the hell happened.’
I recognised some of the young men: town boys, one or two from the Westside camp, others from the Scorpions, some of them still in basketball gear. Their eyelids flickered and twitched, their fingers tugged and drummed. No sign of Danny.
‘What’s happened is that these…youths’—from the tone of voice, little black shits might have expressed his thoughts more frankly—‘were doing what they do best: drinking, fighting and generally fucking up. Only this time it’s got out of hand, and an innocent bystander—a white man—has wound up with a knife in the heart.’
I nodded at the buzzcut in the gravel.
‘Who was he?’
‘Still trying to work that out. Someone said he might be a relative of one of the boys in the fight.’
He caught my puzzled expression.
‘There were some white boys involved as well,’ he explained. ‘Bit of unfinished business from an earlier basketball match. Most of them scattered before we got here.’
And you only managed to pinch the black ones?
‘But I still don’t understand. They told me you’d arrested Danny Brambles…’
‘The boy?’ He checked his notes, turned away with a casual click of the tongue. ‘That’s right: he’s back at the jail now. He was the one who did the stabbing.’
I touched him on the elbow. ‘That’s not possible, sir.’
He cast an oblique eye at me: ‘Saw it happen then, did you Emily?’
‘You know I didn’t, but I do know the boy. There’s no way he could have…’
‘We’ve got witnesses—one of them a police officer.’
‘It just doesn’t make sense. What happened to Bandy?’
‘Who?’
‘His father.’
‘The older bloke? Lost a lot of blood, but they tell me he should survive.’
‘Survive what?’
‘A cut throat.’
‘Shit!’ I glanced at the dead man. ‘He did that?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Pretty enthusiastic innocent bloody bystander.’
‘Well if he was, he’s paid the price for it. Now if you don’t mind…’ He returned his attentions to the detainees.
As I made my way back to the car, I spotted a couple of white boys lurking in the shadow of the grandstand, leaning against the scaffolding and staring at the gravel. I took another look at the nearest of them: shoulder-length blond hair, slim build, athletic. Cockburn’s son.
I went across to him.
‘Jarrod.’
He was slow to recognise me. The light was poor, but there was more to it than that: the boy looked like he was in shock.
‘Jarrod? You remember me? Emily. I work with your old man.’
His eyes drifted onto me fleetingly, then flickered across to his father. ‘Course I remember you,’ he mumbled. ‘You’re the one who…’
‘Did you see what happened here tonight?’
He stared at the ground, his face disappearing in a hank of yellow hair. ‘Not supposed to talk about it.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Dad.’
The other boy—hardscrabble skin, squat, with a peeling red nose—wasn’t as reticent. ‘Come on, man, she’s with the cops too. Just tell her what you told me.’
‘Dad said…’
‘Jarrod seen it all,’ he interrupted. ‘He stabbed him.’
‘Shut up, Crimsy.’
‘Who’s “he”?’ I pressed.
‘The skinny feller, the one they got locked up; used to play for the Scorps. Danny, is it? There’s a bit of a fight going on over at the court, right?—us and the Scorps, nothing much—feller comes over to see what’s goin on and Danny just stuck him in the guts…’
‘Emily!’ Cockburn’s stentorian voice cut into the tale from across the court. I turned around. ‘That’s a witness in a homicide you’re interfering with there. You want to end up in custody as well?’
I made to respond, then decided against it. I’d heard enough. Crimsy didn’t seem all that bright, but nor did he seem a liar. I walked away, my head spinning. It all sounded unreal, horrible beyond words. What the fuck was happening to this town? Was the weather driving everybody out of their minds?
I made my way back to the car, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast. Magpie and Meg were waiting anxiously. A grim-faced Jojo came and joined us.
‘Learn anything?’ I asked him.
‘More than I wanted to: looks bad for Danny. And for Bandy, but the paramedics reckon he’ll survive.’
‘That’s about what I got, too. Cockburn says one of his men saw it happen.’
‘Harley. There was a punch-up after the game; night patrol was trying to break it up. Sounds like the feller was stabbed over behind the grandstand.’
‘None of this makes sense,’ I said. ‘Danny kill someone? He’s a scrawny fifteen-year-old boy; he’d jump if a clock bonged.’
But I thought about him, the way he’d been in church this morning. The flare in his eyes, the anger and confusion, the deliria. What did I know? I’d been stuffing up everything else of late; no reason I shouldn’t have got this wrong too.
I gazed out over the sporting complex: the police moved about, their silhouettes radiating diamond light, their shadows troll-like.
I remembered my promise to Danny: I’d look out for him.
Over by the crime-scene tape, Harley lit up a smoke; I read brutal indifference in the cup of his hands. Bunter scratched his balls and yawned. They did this every night of the week. Cockburn turned to another of the young men; I saw the contempt in his stiff shoulders and military bearing.
Could I entrust Danny’s well-being to this lot?
Like hell I could.