Friday night. The third night in a row I’d watched Kerry’s house. Exams finished, all that freedom, she’d have to go out sometime. I’d changed cars. Another one of Danny’s. This time it was a dark green Monaro. I preferred not to ask how it was he had access to all these cars. Parts for the Daimler were taking longer to arrive than expected, he said. I had the feeling Danny was deliberately holding back to wean me off it. Three nights, three different cars, three different parking spots. First two nights no-one came to the house and no-one left; the lights went out at eleven. But on Friday nights in Sydney everyone goes out.
Kerry came out wearing a black bomber jacket, Blundstone boots and a short gold-flecked skirt. She walked the short distance to the bus stop and leaned against a fence, waiting. To pass time she took a small gold compact out of her pocket, flipped it open and checked her face in the mirror. There appeared to be a small skin blemish under her chin. She rubbed her finger over it a couple of times but before any permanent damage could be done the bus came along.
I followed the bus to Riverwood station where everyone alighted. I grabbed my leather jacket and made it to the platform just as the train arrived. It had only gone two stops when Kerry got up and went to the door. But instead of getting out when the train came to a halt she waved to someone waiting on the station platform. It was her friend from school, Tamara, but I barely recognised her. The hair that had been neatly held back in a ponytail was now running rampant. If you lost something in that hair you’d spend a week looking for it.
When the train started up again, Tamara took out a pair of big gold earrings and put them on. ‘What did you tell her?’ I heard Kerry ask.
‘The movies. That was cool, but guess what?’ Tamara grimaced. ‘Midnight curfew.’
‘Bummer,’ sympathised Kerry.
‘She gave me money for a cab home but.’
‘Great,’ said Kerry, ‘maybe we can buy our own drinks for a change.’
‘Come off it,’ retorted Tamara. ‘It’s only for a cab from Strathfield.’
Fifteen years old trying to look eighteen. Acting tough and being cool. I hoped that’s the way it would be if they got into any trouble.
They alighted at Kings Cross, where trouble is easy to find, even for those not looking for it. I followed them up the escalators and out past a shoe shop. Tamara was briefly diverted by a pair of red patent-leather platform shoes but when she saw Kerry striding so purposefully along, she quickened her step. They stood at the traffic lights, waiting for the WALK sign.
This was the hour when the Cross was at its best. The night was young by nightlife standards, some of the clubs were just getting going. There were bright lights, pleasant rich garlicky smells emanating from restaurants. The people up here for a night out wore an air of hope and expectancy for what the night could bring. The touts and hustlers hadn’t yet started working the street with that quiet whispering desperation.
Kings Cross drew street kids and deros like a magnet. It was the place you came when you no longer had a home to go to. The public space that people who have homes only ever visit. In a way it was the village green, the kind of village green you might find in hell. A sick and seedy place that only really looked good when all the lights were on. In the glare of bright lights the tourists, partygoers, couldn’t see the homeless. They were invisible, blending into the shadows of side streets and darker areas off the main drag. Once the partygoers went home, they would reclaim the streets.
When you become homeless you develop cockroach habits. Scavenging, hunting for food in bins, wherever you can find it. You enter a parallel universe, living in the buffer zone of the drugs you take to numb the damage caused by the hard edges. You become the truest citizen of the city, inhabiting its streets and public spaces, its parks, its doorways and recesses, the cracks in the wall. Its stormwater canals.
Kerry and Tamara walked a little way down Bayswater Road and went into a large terrace house converted into a club, from which music was faintly emanating. A neon sign above the doorway-Horn of Africa—pulsated red light. I hung back and made a few adjustments to my person. I mussed my hair up, letting the front section drift over one eye. Then pulled the collar of my leather jacket up and walked in.
Horn of Africa was a serious music venue with a live band, tables to sit at down the front for the people who wanted to listen rather than talk. Mostly though, everyone hung around the bar area. I made my way to the bar and held out a ten-dollar note. Being tall, I got served almost straightaway.
I spotted Kerry and Tamara with a couple of guys. They were leaning up against a side wall. Not the best place to listen to the music but it was a nice safe corner in the dark, where they didn’t look as underage as they would have in the light. They were all chatting away but in between sips of what appeared to be rum and Coke, Kerry would look around, as if expecting someone. When she finished her drink she excused herself and went to the rest rooms. She came back amidst applause—the band had just finished a number.
As the applause died down I became aware of the smell of patchouli oil. ‘There’s a better place down the road, R ‘n’ B, funk, great dance music. Like to give it a try?’ I looked at the guy who’d just sidled up to me. No, I did not want to give it a try.
Kerry and Tamara were saying their goodbyes and leaving.
‘That sounds great. Can you hold this?’ I handed him my beer. ‘Thanks. Won’t be a minute.’
I followed Kerry and Tamara back to the entrance to Kings Cross station. They were having a discussion, Kerry pointing up the road and Tamara hovering. Kerry trying to convince Tamara to go somewhere with her, Tamara hesitating and looking at her watch. Tamara had forty minutes to make the midnight curfew. She’d be late, but not by much.
A bit more discussion then the two girls waved goodbye and went their separate ways. Tamara down the steep escalator into the bowels of the earth, and Kerry into the heart of the Cross. I followed Kerry.
She turned off the main drag and cut through to a back alley. Suddenly all the noise and bright lights stopped. There was nothing but the backs of buildings here, very few windows. It was a short alley that crooked around and disappeared into the backs of more buildings. It looked like a great place for a mugging. There was no-one else in the street. I stayed where I was and waited to see where she was going. Kerry walked briskly, with purpose. Just before the bend, she disappeared.
I walked on down to The Squeeze. A facade painted matt black, Gothic lettering in silver. If it hadn’t been for the sign it would have been hard to tell the black door from the black wall. Behind me I heard a car pull up. A cab. Out of it got a group of adults dressed like schoolkids. Thirty year old women in short short tunics, hair in plaits, a smattering of fake freckles across the noses and cheeks. Men in short pants and dinky little caps. I pushed the door and went in, wondering just what sort of place The Squeeze was.
But I wasn’t inside yet. There was another door to get through with three bouncers guarding it. Black trousers, white short-sleeved shirts on the tight side to make the biceps bulge just that little bit extra. We had guys like this at karate class. Martial artists. Tuning their bodies to be perfect fighting machines. Then looking for fights to put the whole thing in motion.
The outer door opened behind me and in came the ‘schoolkids’. The bouncers stood aside and we all went in together.
There was lots of chrome and flashing coloured lights inside but it still managed to look dark and mysterious. The club was divided into two sections, a bar in each. In the bigger, more ‘public’ section was a dance area where the lights were flashing. Circling this entirely was a counter with bar stools. If you wanted to sit you could watch the dancers; if you wanted to dance there was somewhere to rest your drink. An arc of the far wall was entirely enclosed by glass, for use by private parties. This is where the schoolkids headed.
I don’t know if it was because the night was wearing thin or if it was simply the venue, but the atmosphere here seemed more dissipated than at the previous club. Darker, smokier, lots of black clothes. The sort of place you wouldn’t have to look far to find whatever it was you develop a taste for in the wee small hours. A few groovers danced, some alone, some glued to each other. Most of the patrons stood in clusters around the walls, outside the range of the flashes of light. I couldn’t see Kerry. It was hard to see anyone. People were in either darkness or distorted light. Gradually though, my eyes got accustomed to it. I made out the rest rooms which were designated M and W, presumably Men and Women. I bet as the night wore on those M’s and \V’s got confused.
‘Well, here you are. I thought I’d lost you.’ I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. The sweet stale smell of patchouli. Good grief. Even as he talked he was moving in time to the music. I gave him a tired smile and started dancing. After a minute or two he was completely self-absorbed and I was able to lose myself in the crowd.
I spotted Kerry at the pay phone near the M and W. She said something then she waited. And waited. Finally she slammed the phone down and left.
Outside, the early hopefulness of the night had worn off and the desperation was showing. Kerry seemed oblivious to the drunks making lunges at her, the streetgirls watching her pass. She waited for the lights at William Street to change. Further down this road, outside the car showrooms displaying Ferraris, Porsches and Jaguars, HIV-positive transvestites did business in cars with blokes from the suburbs too drunk to know or care.
She crossed to Darlinghurst on the other side. So did I. Though we were only a road’s width from Kings Cross, everything felt different. We had left behind the prickly garden of delights and were back in the city again. Shit happened here but there was less of it. There were no neon signs winking lecherously at you, you didn’t feel as if the whole place was lying back, legs open.
She walked past the fire station and the row of little Italian cafes, converted terrace houses with seats out on the street so you could see and, more importantly, be seen. Andiamo’s, Morgan’s, Nicolina’s, the Coluzzi bar. Breakfast, any time of the day or night, for high profile lawyers, bankrupted property developers, boxers, film producers, and the people who want to be seen with them. Kerry walked straight past without giving them a second look.
A minute later the ambience changed abruptly. We were in the part of Darlinghurst where street gangs fought, gays got bashed and low-rent prostitutes plied their trade to cruising cars. Kerry knocked on a door, a pink door with graffiti and street art sprawled all over it. A brass number 9, or maybe it was a 6, was dangling by one screw. Two steps was all that separated the house from the street. Music was thumping away inside, you could almost see the door vibrating. From somewhere in the vicinity wafted the slow pungent smell of dope. No-one came to the door.
Kerry then tried tapping on the window. ‘Maddy,’ she called out over the music. No response. ‘Ralph? Simon?’ Still no response. Kerry spread her fingertips out on the glass, pushed the window up and climbed in, disappearing into the darkness of the house.
She’d called out her name. Maddy. She was here, in this house. Madalena was here.
The window remained open. When Kerry didn’t reappear I assumed she’d found her friends and joined the party. I was just about to climb in and join it myself when the door opened, letting out an even louder blast of music. A wispy young man was there, seeing Kerry out. ‘Well call me if you hear anything,’ I heard Kerry say.
‘Sure you won’t stay?’ invited the young man. ‘No, I’m going home. Mum’s there by herself. See ya, Simon.’
‘See ya, Kerry.’ The door closed.
Kerry sat down on the steps; back hunched, elbows on knees, chin cupped in her hands. The confident young woman who had strode through the streets of Kings Cross was gone now and a worried child took her place. Something was weighing her down, something she didn’t understand. Reluctantly she stood up and started meandering back to the Cross, lost in thought.
Before I’d taken two paces, someone stepped out of the shadows and barred Kerry’s path. He was dressed differently and it was dark, but I was positive it was the man I’d seen at the Hoyts cinema. He said something to her. She may have replied, I don’t know, with her back to me I couldn’t tell. She tried to get past but he blocked the way. She took a few steps back, but he grabbed her by the shoulder. Suddenly in the darkness I saw the glint of a blade.
‘Hey!’ I started running towards her. The guy saw me coming. He pushed her to the ground and ran off into the darkness.
I bent down and helped Kerry up. ‘Bastard,’ she swore. ‘Look at my tights.’ She couldn’t be too badly hurt if all she was worried about were her tights.
‘What did he want?’ I asked.
‘He was asking questions about a friend of mine.’
‘About Madalena,’ I said.
She looked at me curiously, wondering who I was.
‘Her mother is worried,’ I went on. ‘If you are in touch with her, ask her to call home.’
Kerry looked away, biting her lip. I thought she may have been deciding whether I was an adult she could trust but there was more to it than that. ‘She’s disappeared,’ she finally blurted out.
‘I know,’ I spoke softly, ‘that’s why her mother is worried.’
‘No,’ Kerry said, ‘you don’t understand. She left home. But now she’s disappeared.’
‘Perhaps I can help,’ I suggested.
‘I was on my way home,’ Kerry said.
‘I’ll see you get there safely.’
‘It’s OK, I can manage. It’s a long way. Peakhurst.’
‘It’s no trouble. I’m going there anyway. My car’s parked near your house.’ She looked at me, completely stunned. ‘My name’s Claudia Valentine, I’m a private investigator. Mrs Grimaldi hired me to find Madalena. You’re her best friend, I thought you might know.’
‘Have you been following me all night?’ I told her I had. ‘You mean, right from my house?’ I said yes, right from her house. ‘Far out.’
We got the train from the Cross then a cab from Riverwood. By the time we got to Peakhurst I had Kerry’s version of events. There’d been the fight with Madalena’s father over the tattoo. The next day-the day, according to Rosa, that Madalena had disappeared—Madalena, Kerry and the rest of the netball team had played at Concord. But Madalena hadn’t come home with everyone else, she’d decided to go to Leichhardt. To see her father. Kerry didn’t know exactly why but she thought it was to apologise about the fight. Leichhardt’s not far away from Concord and she figured she could maybe get a lift home with him. That was the last time Kerry saw Madalena.
But she had a phone call from Madalena a few days later. To say she’d left home and was never going back. She was OK, she was staying at Darlinghurst but she made Kerry promise she wouldn’t tell anyone, especially her parents, where she was. Something had happened that afternoon when she went to see her father but she wouldn’t talk about it.
She had arranged to meet Kerry tonight at Horn of Africa, just to hang out, listen to the music. The things they used to do. But Maddy hadn’t shown up. Kerry thought maybe she’d be at The Squeeze but she wasn’t there either. When Kerry phoned the Darlinghurst house someone had answered the phone then just gone away and forgotten about it. So Kerry came round. They were having a party and couldn’t hear her knocking on the door so she went in the window. ‘I guess you saw that bit,’ she said to me. But Madalena had disappeared. Completely disappeared. She went out to buy some milk and didn’t come back. I suggested to Kerry that perhaps Madalena had decided to get out of town altogether, maybe hitch up the coast.
‘She’d never hitch, not after those backpacker murders.’
‘Perhaps she got a lift with someone.’
‘She would have let me know,’ said Kerry. ‘It’s not as if they don’t have phones up the coast, is it?’
I asked Kerry what Madalena’s father was like. She said she’d never met him but he sounded like a bit of an arsehole. ‘Totally freaked by the tattoo. I mean, it’s not like she had a nipple ring or anything.’
‘What was the tattoo like?’
‘Like this.’ Kerry pulled her jacket off her shoulder and showed me. It looked like a keyhole with ornamentation around the top of it.
‘Madalena’s was the same?’
She readjusted her clothes. ‘Yeah. We had them done together.’
‘What did your mother say?’
‘Couldn’t say much, could she? She’s got a tattoo herself.’
We’d arrived at Kerry’s house. I gave her my card. ‘If you want to call me anytime, here’s the number.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘See you later.’
I watched till she went in the door and turned the light on. I waited a few more minutes, just to be sure.