24

MEANWHILE ADAM GARRETT was working up a few entries for the surveillance log: 6 p.m. subject arrived home from footy training, and 7.30 p.m. Domino Pizza delivery, subject paid at the door, and 10 p.m. lights out, no further movement from subject or his mother and emailed them to Melodie. Then he walked down to O’Connell Street for fish and chips, wandered back to the boarding house, watched TV for a while and went to bed.

He couldn’t sleep. His body ached from being mugged; he’d lost Anita; he still owed the Malady a heap of money. And he was really fucking lonely.

He tended to get philosophical when he couldn’t sleep: who he was and what he’d done; what he thought about doing. The notion of good and bad crimes. Was a crime bad if no one was harmed? What if the harm was minimal? You couldn’t call Casdorff, whose stamp he’d stolen, a victim. Casdorff had no concept of abstract worth, let alone beauty, anyway. Only of money, and he would’ve had insurance. Insurance companies are loaded. What about crimes that brought about the greater good of society? That Wikileaks guy releasing secret government files, for example—if you could even call a government a victim.

So, what was a bad crime? One that harmed a person, or society in general. Or harmed him, obviously. Maybe the Casdorff robbery was a bad crime—since he, Adam Garrett, had been no more than a servant doing someone else’s bidding. It didn’t matter that Melodie had knocked three thousand dollars off his debt, or that he’d actually done a pretty amazing job.

And the Craig Tolhurst thing. No pride in that.

Garrett ranged further back through the things he’d done, the things he should have done, the things he shouldn’t have done.

And the shitty things done to him, like Anita blowing him off when Galt came along. Pretending she didn’t have the Jaeger watch that time in the alley. It occurred to him then that he didn’t really know what he’d do to her if, when, he found her—except punish her in some way. Take from her something she held dear? Hurt her physically? He still had scars from when her cop boyfriend had him beaten up.

His legs tangled the sheets. He stripped off his sweaty T-shirt. Staggered downstairs to the kitchen at 3 a.m. and drained two glasses of water. Then back upstairs to his sofa, not his bed. Watched a few minutes of a shopping channel on mute…Woke, stunned, shivering, racked by aches, pains and the dregs of a dream at 5 a.m.

He’d seen a man with a gun enter a series of rooms. He’d tried to stop the man, but, too late, each door was slammed in his face and he didn’t know what the man was doing on the other side. His feet stuck in a slough of mud. His car wouldn’t start. He got lost. It was all a jumble, but Garrett knew this much: it was a bad crime to tail a teenage boy in order to find a teenage girl, and therefore her father, so that the man could be silenced. He guessed that Katerina Horvat and her family were in witness protection and sooner or later the Vargas would find them—probably through Katerina.

She’d been careful, presumably texting love letters which the schoolfriend had duly printed out and delivered to the Calnan kid. And he’d duly read and destroyed them. But these three kids wouldn’t get away with it for long. Someone would spot Katerina using a mobile, the schoolfriend would let the secret slip, or Leigh would try to find her. Or she’d try to find him, and the Varga family’s heavies would grab her.

At six-thirty Garrett showered, dressed, downed a coffee and took Payneham Road out to Tea Tree Gully in the foothills, where he bought a phone at a 7-Eleven. Then, after placing brief calls to state and federal police, the Advertiser and Sophie Calnan, Leigh’s mother, he destroyed the phone and snapped the sim card and tossed the pieces into several shopping-centre bins. Thwarting young love, he thought, but maybe saving a life.

He was halfway home when Melodie called. ‘I’m on my way to the Calnan kid’s,’ he told her, to explain the traffic noise.

‘Okay. Keep me posted. Saturday—he’ll be out and about.’

She rang off and Garrett took Portrush Road to Toorak Gardens. He was tired of being in the area, and wondered gloomily what a kid from a well-heeled family did on a Saturday. He realised he had no idea. When he was a kid his Saturdays and Sundays were like every other day. Fight the other kids for enough to eat. Beg in a doorway. Pick a pocket. Run from the cops.

As he drove, he ran the Tea Tree Gully phone calls through his mind. It was possible they’d amount to nothing, that everyone had thought the caller was a nutjob. But the woman on the Advertiser’s news desk had seemed interested. And Sophie Calnan’s voice had moved from early-morning bleariness to full-on alarm.

Using a shopping-centre men’s room to change into shorts, T-shirt and trainers, he returned to his car and parked it two streets away from the Calnan place. The sun, still low, directed a cool, benign light through the area’s plane trees, dappling his legs as he began to run. At first, he was the only jogger, then a couple more flashed by in the distance. An elderly woman collected her dew-soaked newspaper in her dressing gown. An unshaven balding guy watering his roses yawned and gave Garrett a nod: ‘Sooner you than me, pal.’ Cyclists now, and a woman bundling a pair of netballers into the back of her station wagon. A suburb waking up.

Garrett didn’t enter Galway Street at first but simply made two broad loops around it, chancing quick glances down it as he crossed the intersection at each end. There were signs of life but none at the Calnan house. No panicky Peugeot accelerating away; no sirens; no unmarked cars angled at the kerb outside the front gate.

But then, at 8.15, a police car shot past him on Dulwich Avenue. Lights; no siren. Garrett ran on, and when he crossed the intersection closest to the Calnan house, he saw the cop car pulled up outside it, joining an unmarked Toyota Kluger. He continued around the block and this time entered Galway Street, loping down it casually on the opposite footpath, his cap low over his face as he cast a curious glance at the drama—the way anyone might. Two uniforms stood at the front gate. One of them gave him a hard stare. And on the porch, obstructing his view of the open front door, were a man and a woman in plain clothes. A moment later they stood aside and Leigh Calnan and his mother emerged, toting overnight bags. Not altering his pace, Garrett reached the next side street and turned right. Now he charged like a maniac to his car, just in case that uniformed cop decided to follow up. He turned the ignition key, pulled out and shot down to Fullarton Road and eventually across to his North Adelaide boarding house. He imagined the doorstep conversation as he drove.

‘We received a phone call, Mrs Calnan.’

‘So did I. Should I take it seriously?’

‘That’s why we’re here. You should each pack a bag and we’ll take you somewhere.’

Or whatever. Didn’t matter, the kid was safe now.

Garrett made one pass along his own street, checking cars, and then pulled against the kerb and took out his phone. He called Melodie’s mobile, then the office landline. He wanted to say, ‘Hey, Mel, something strange is going on at the Calnan house, I had to get out of there,’ but she didn’t answer.