5

WITH THE book safely in my handbag, I jumped aboard a passing tram. It took off, speeding along Racecourse Road, the wheels screaming on the turn at the Showgrounds. It stopped at the lights on Bloomfield Road. I glanced around at my fellow passengers; none of them took any notice of me. Why would they, a sleep-deprived middle-aged woman in a tatty jumper, old jeans, and hair like a feral? No big deal, I’d looked worse. After a day of docking lamb tails, say, when a pile of tails stinking in the heat, bloody and covered in black flies, meant a good day’s work. Or that one time during the school holidays when it was my job to ride my motorbike through mobs of sheep to find the flyblown ones. When I found one, I had a tin of foul-smelling chemicals that I poured over the fleece and watched the writhing maggots flee. After that, having fluff on my clothes and a few bags under the eyes were nothing.

Confident I was not being observed, I pulled the book from my bag, now curled and battered. I smoothed it across my knees and started to flip through it. Mrs Chol was right about one thing. It was mostly blank. There was a creative writing piece in the front about a boy with a flying skateboard who saves his family, and the world, from space monsters.

The centre pages were filled with a table of badly ruled lines, with a column of initials followed by several columns of numbers. I fanned out the pages, shook the book a few times, but nothing dropped out. I turned each page separately, the whole book, all forty-eight pages. Not one mention of me, other than my address. Nor was there any reference to an event at a certain commission flat six years earlier, nor the two junkies who lived there and the amount of money involved. I checked the list of initials to see if I recognised anyone: I didn’t — nor did I see my own initials there.

I sat back, not knowing what to feel. Relief? Disappointment? I was a bit hungry, I could murder a bacon sandwich and — wait, why were we not moving? The lights had changed more than once and the tram hadn’t moved. I craned my neck trying to see what the hold-up was. Cars had stopped at odd angles. Behind us another tram was backed up. I looked up at the sky, the low grey clouds, icy spit falling from them.

I flipped through the book again, slowly this time, studying each page. Then I noticed something on the page opposite the one with my address; it was the word: Funsail. It was circled and had arrows coming off it, leading around the page to my address.

Funsail?

An employee of the transport corporation began herding us from our tram, across the intersection and onto a packed tram in front. As I trudged along with everyone else, I heard quite a lot of whinging from the other passengers. Sure, it was raining again, and the temperature could freeze the tears in your eyes, but there were worse things that could happen. Toughen the heck up, Melburnians, I thought. Toughen up yourself, they said back to me, with their red, frozen eyeballs. You know what you should do.

Yes, I did.

I shunned the tram and kept on walking. Twenty minutes later I entered the grounds of Ascot Secondary College. I went directly to the office, where a harried woman slid open the reception window.

‘Mabor Chol please, he’s in year ten I believe.’

‘What’s your relationship to the boy?’

‘Stella Hardy, I’m a social worker with WORMS.’

‘Gee, sorry to hear that,’ she chuckled.

‘Look, can you please just page the student Mabor Chol?’

‘Do you have clearance? Authorisation from a parent or teacher? We’ve had issues in the past.’

‘How about the student counsellor, she in?’ I asked.

Still chuckling to herself, she slid the window shut and turned on a staticky mic. ‘Student counsellor to the office.’

The waiting area was directly opposite the principal’s office. While I waited, I relived the trauma of high school, flashbacks of the hours of waiting for punishment, followed by my customary excuse: ‘But it was all Shane Farquar’s fault, sir!’

The counsellor bustled up to me, in a bright orange, over-sized jumper. I launched in like a woman on a mission, which I was. ‘Mabor Chol. I need to see him.’ I held up both my WORMS ID and my Department of Justice ID. She gave them a nod and started writing on a clipboard at the office window.

‘Dear Mabor, such a good kid, you know? Really bright, hard working.’

‘He’s terrific, amazing. Look, this is urgent, can you hurry it up?’

‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s a confidential matter.’

‘I’ll keep it confidential.’

‘It’s about … his brother. You are aware of his brother’s death?’

‘Yes. Tragic. Would you like me to be present?’

‘No, thanks. It’s all strictly … confidential.’ I was led to a room and told to wait again. Thirty seconds later, Mabor shuffled in. When he saw me, his eyes darkened with scorn. ‘What?’ he demanded.

He watched me as I closed the door — then we were alone. ‘I’m not the enemy, you know,’ I said.

A hint of a sneer. ‘You? You’re nothing.’

‘Then who is?’

He shook his head and sat behind a desk. ‘What is this? Huh? What do you want?’

‘Are you in trouble?’

His face was deadpan, but his thumbnail was gouging at a crack in the desktop.

‘Can you tell me what’s going on with you? Who are you protecting?’

‘You spying on me?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not protecting anyone.’

I considered my next move. ‘A long time ago, when you were just a kid, there was an incident at the flats, same building as yours. There was a young couple living a few floors down from you, and they were junkies. One night they overdosed and they both died.’

He looked up, slightly bewildered. ‘So?’

‘I wondered if Adut ever told you about that.’

His puzzlement was clearly not an act. ‘Adut? No, why would he?’

‘You sure he never mentioned it?’

‘What’s this shit you’re on about, huh? Junkies dying years ago — why would he care? Why would I? I’ve got enough problems to worry about.’

‘Yes. Well. You were only about eight at the time, but gossip gets around. I thought you might have heard about it.’

‘Can I go now?’

‘Because there were lots of rumours at the time. People said there was money in the flat — drug money.’

‘So of course you think me and Adut took it. If I was eight then he was ten; we were probably watching The Simpsons or some shit.’

‘Of course you didn’t take it.’ This was not going well.

‘I’m missing a science test for this garbage.’

‘Just one last thing, Mabor. What is Funsail?’

‘What?’ He looked at me for a moment, then he closed his eyes and sighed. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I watched him stand and head for the door. Before leaving, he turned to me. ‘Stay out of things you don’t understand.’

I don’t understand? The nerve of him, the little juvenile delinquent. I understood all too well. I considered the events of the morning. I considered the book. The gangster type in the coffee shop. Then there was also the exchange of a bag, probably belonging to Adut, passed through the window of a four-wheel drive in the middle of the night. Clearly, it was time to swallow my pride and go see Phuong. Time to tell her everything I had heard. She could refer me to one of the detectives working on Adut Chol’s murder. If that went well, maybe I could even show her the book, explain my reasons for taking it — after all, was it even a crime if the owner was himself a criminal? No, I could not tell her about the book. Never.

I pulled out my phone. There was a text from Boss, asking where the hell I was. I replied that he should calm down, and that I had been doing a home visit. Then I took a deep breath and rang the Footscray police station. Eventually, someone picked up. I said, ‘Phuong Nguyen, please.’

‘She got transferred. St Kilda Road.’

I hung up and checked my watch. Boss wouldn’t miss me for another hour or so. It was time for a visit to the St Kilda Road police complex.