Harry drove the final screw into the deadlock and mopped sweat from his forehead with a dirty tea towel. He had been to the mini Mitre 10 on the corner the minute it opened, bought two locks and a screwdriver and spent forty minutes fixing the locks to the door. They looked a little bit crooked to me, maybe because he had been drinking, but judging by the number of times he swore, it seemed like Harry didn’t do a lot of DIY. But it was done. I would stay till tomorrow morning.
‘I’ll be back by six,’ he said. ‘Hopefully before. Don’t open the door for anyone. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And are you sure you can be back by six because –’
‘I’ll be back by six. You have my word. And are you sure you can send me a message if you need to? You’ve got enough credit or whatever?’
‘Enough for messages.’
‘Well, I’m only a few blocks away. If you hear or see anything …’
I nodded. I wanted to suggest again that we go to the police. He must have read my mind.
‘Give me today,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I finish work and I’ll tell you more then. I just need some time to check some things. You’ve played hard, done good, telling me this information and now you have to trust me, Sam. Can you do that? Can you trust me?’
I wanted to. I really did.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can trust you.’
He unlocked the two new deadlocks, opened the door and said, ‘See you tonight.’
I wanted more than anything to go with him. I felt tired and like I might start bawling again so I just said, ‘Okay.’
Harry slipped out the door. ‘Lock it up,’ he said in a low voice.
I pushed the door closed and twisted the brass knobs. He tested the door and then said, ‘I love you.’
‘Huh?’ I asked.
I heard his quiet footsteps fade down the staircase.
Then it was just me and Magic again.
I love you? I thought. He had never said that before. Sure, he had said it through a door and then scurried away, but he had still said it. Hadn’t he?
I kneeled on Harry’s unmade bed and peered through the dirty window and down Victoria Street. I waited for him to appear, hobbling along in his coat and hat.
The young homeless lady in the purple puffer jacket was on the corner of the street diagonally opposite, breathing clouds of steam through cold air, shaking her paper coffee cup, asking for donations. I’d seen her on a couple of other days when I’d watched Harry leave. The lady was outside Pan, the bakery that Harry had gone to more than once during the week. The last few orange leaves fluttered down from the almost-bare tunnel of trees over the street.
Harry crossed the road towards Pan. I desperately wanted to go down in the lift and follow him. I did not want to be here alone. Watching him from above, I saw how bad his limp was, how bad mine might have become if Mum hadn’t forced me to have the operation. He heaved open the heavy door of the bakery and, a moment later, a woman – chocolate-brown hair, knee-length black coat – exited, coffee and brown paper bag in hand. Harry followed her out. His girlfriend? I wondered. That made me angry. I don’t know why. Why shouldn’t he have a girlfriend? Still, the uncomfortable feeling stayed with me.
‘Watch the bad feeling but don’t engage with it.’ That’s what Margo would say. She was a therapist Mum had been sending me to. I called her my coach. Her voice was annoyingly soothing but I kind of liked her anyway. She read comics, especially The Phantom, and she talked with me about them. Not in a fake adult way where she pretended to be interested just to make me have a conversation with her, but in a real way where she actually knew stuff.
‘Don’t push the anger away or act it out,’ she would say. ‘Just let it sit there. What’s behind it? Moods are like clouds passing the sun. Let them pass.’
In that moment, watching this lady coming out of the bakery with my dad, I felt really annoyed. He said he had to go to work and that he couldn’t stay with me or take me with him but he seemed to have time for her. As soon as I noticed that I felt annoyed, though, and I named it, the feeling kind of drifted away, like a cloud. It was one of the first times that I’d been able to do what Margo suggested and it actually worked.
I pulled out my phone, switched to camera, zoomed in and took a bunch of pictures. The woman looked much younger than Harry. Was she another journalist or maybe a cop? She could have been either. A criminal? Maybe. Probably not. She didn’t look like a criminal. But what was a criminal supposed to look like? A scar on her face? Shifty eyes and rubbing her hands together, like a bad guy in an old movie?
Commandment number six: Never assume anything. And don’t convict people. That’s the job of the courts. Just report the facts. Be as objective as you can. Innocent until proven guilty.
Harry and the woman walked off up Victoria Street, turning right at a little laneway with a backpackers’ hostel on the corner and disappearing from view. I wanted so badly to follow them. Where are they going? What is he going to do till 6 pm? Had he planned to meet her? Is he telling her about the crime I witnessed? Or is it totally unrelated?
I looked back through the pixelly, zoomed-in photos on my phone, then turned and looked around Harry’s dimly lit bedroom.
Solve it, said a voice in my head.
I didn’t feel sleepy at all now. I felt jumpy and alive.
Solve it.
7.57 am.
Harry was due to put me on the 8.01 train back to the Mountains tomorrow morning. I only had today to find out more. When Harry came home at six I would show him the fresh evidence I had found. He would be pleased. I could be useful to him, like a researcher or an assistant. He would love me for it. Maybe we could find the perpetrator of the crime and the man who fell. I had always wanted to be a crime reporter. Maybe this was my chance.