News vans had sprouted like toadstools overnight in the Mish, so Caleb ducked around the back road, keeping an eye out for Kat as he drove.
Her parents’ house had been lit up like a landing strip when he’d got there last night. He’d arrived out of breath to find the front door wide open and the house crowded with friends and family, people fleeing the Mish. Kat had gripped him in a fierce hug, pointed him towards the coffee machine and gone back to answering the continually ringing phone. He’d stayed, making endless cups of tea and coffee, until the final report had come in: four homes destroyed, three people hospitalised, no fatalities. When the household had finally stumbled to bed, Kat had taken him by the hand and led him to her room. This morning she’d slipped from bed without waking him, leaving a cup of cooling tea and a note to say that she’d gone to the Mish.
He parked in the shade of a straggly wattle tree and went to find her. The Mish was only a few blocks wide, so it shouldn’t take too long. He passed a couple of burnt-out cars and came to the first ruined house: a shell of blackened walls and twisted beams. A pall of smoke hung in the still air, the stench of wet ash and charcoal. People were milling on the street and in their yards, some wearing dressing-gowns and pyjamas, empty disbelief in their faces. The feeling of eyes on him as he passed. No burnt letterboxes or bus stops, no half-hearted scorch marks around the bases of trees: the two men had done a good job with their Molotov cocktails, lobbed each one with surgical accuracy.
Sergeant Ramsden stepped out of a house ahead of him. Caleb ducked into a side street. He needed to give Ramsden a description of the arsonists, but he’d have a lot more luck getting people to talk to him if he wasn’t seen chatting to the cops beforehand. He turned the corner and came to an abrupt halt. There was a gap like a missing tooth where Aunty Eileen’s house had stood. An ache in his heart. First Jai, now her home – it was too much for anyone to bear.
He turned away and saw a young man across the road staring at him. Around Jai’s age, with long dark hair and a narrowed expression. He was standing in his front yard rolling a cigarette. Jai’s dog by his side. Jaws obviously held as fond a memory of Caleb as Caleb did of it – the animal’s ears were lying flat, tail down. Why the hell had Aunty Eileen allowed that beast into her home? An image of the dog’s makeshift bed and bowl, the strong sense that Aunty Eileen had quickly cleared her house of children. The way she’d deflected Caleb when he’d mentioned the vandalism to her house. Aunty Eileen hadn’t been worried about Jai getting into trouble with the police, she’d been fearful for his life.
Caleb went to talk to Jaws’ new friend. The man lit his rollie as Caleb approached, and inhaled deeply. ‘If you’re a journo, no fucken comment.’
Jaws quivered at his tone. The fence was a scant fifty centimetres high, an easy lope for the beast.
‘Not a journo,’ Caleb said. ‘I’m looking for Aunty Eileen. Do you know where she is?’
‘Why?’
‘I’m a bit worried about her. With the house and Jai and everything.’
‘Yeah?’ Another deep drag, but the man was looking at him with more interest. ‘Seen you around a bit. Where you from?’
Damn, he was about to fail a test. He’d hung around Kat and her family long enough to know what that question meant: Are you one of us?
‘The Bay,’ he said without much hope.
The man exhaled a lungful of smoke and headed for the house.
‘Married Kat Anderson,’ Caleb called, but he didn’t look back.
Caleb tracked Aunty Eileen down at the Boorai playgroup centre, a steepled weatherboard building that used to be a church hall. She was wearing new slippers and the clothes of a much larger woman, staring at a bundle of sewing that lay, untouched, in her lap. It was a sunny room with shelves of well-loved books and toys, and a hand-woven rug of red, black and yellow. Bright posters lined the walls: Koori Kids Are Great Kids; Nothing About Us, Without Us; Immunise Now. A handful of preschool kids were involved in a complex game involving saucepans and wooden blocks.
Aunty Eileen looked up as Caleb pulled a plastic chair around to face her. Her skin was yellow-tinged and tufts of her grey-white hair were standing on end. A local newspaper was folded by her chair, a photo of the scar tree on its front page, its trunk garlanded with flowers.
‘I’m so sorry about everything,’ Caleb said. ‘About Jai, and your house. It must be hard.’
She nodded and found new interest in her sewing.
‘Aunty Eileen.’ He hesitated, then ploughed on. ‘Who was Jai scared of?’
She seemed to give the question some thought. ‘No one now.’
‘It’s not just teenagers mucking about. Not any more. Someone’s targeting your mob.’
‘No prizes for workin’ that one out, love.’ She turned her sewing over, and he realised that it was a doll; blank-faced and limp, the size of newborn baby.
He dragged his eyes from it. ‘Do you know what’s behind all the violence?’
‘Terra fucken nullius, love.’ She pushed the needle into the doll’s dark scalp and yanked it out. ‘Gubbas can’t stand that us blackfellas were here first.’
He chose his words carefully. ‘Some of us can.’
She stabbed the needle into the doll. ‘You want a round of applause? Bring me back my kids. Bring me back my aunties and uncles, my grandsons. I’ll give you a standing fucken ovation.’ Another stab of the needle.
God. Give it two more questions, then slink away. Make them count – what would bikies be interested in? Money, prostitution, arms, drugs. Drugs. Jai’s history with ice. The spark of an idea: violence as a sales technique. It wouldn’t be the first time a bikie gang had used fear to push ice in a small community.
‘Did Jai say anything about the Copperheads pressuring people? Forcing them to buy ice?’
Her head jerked up. ‘Jai was clean. You can ask the coroner. They opened him right up, had a good poke around. He learned his lesson after Pete, never touched the stuff.’
‘No, I didn’t mean – I think Jai witnessed something the night Portia died. I think he was killed because he knew something. What did he tell you about that day?’
‘That he wanted to go away. I told him that he’d lose his apprenticeship, lose all that hard work. So he stayed. I should’ve told him to go. Shouldn’t have held on so tight.’ She smoothed the doll’s back, a gesture of self-comfort she’d obviously done a thousand times before. She’d spoken about children a moment ago.
‘Bring me back my kids.’
A terrible realisation crept into his heart – Aunty Eileen’s children were part of the Stolen Generations. Taken away under the guise of assimilation. Taken to foster homes or servitude, orphanages, the unknown. How to convince her to put her trust in the same system that had ripped her children from her? How to convince himself?
‘Aunty Eileen,’ he said slowly, ‘these people aren’t going to stop. If you know something about Jai’s death, you have to tell the cops.’
Her face hardened. ‘Don’t you go bringing any gunyan around here.’
‘OK. It doesn’t have to be the police. Tell me, tell Maria.’
‘Leave me alone now, love. I’m tired.’
She looked more than tired, she looked frail and ill, and much older than her seventy-odd years. A sudden, terrifying thought at the chaos that would follow if she died now. Those young men at the funeral, with their clenched fists and boiling fury – another generation would be lost if they gave vent to that anger.
‘Aunty Eileen, you need help. Please let me help you.’
She shook her head with weary patience; a teacher who’d been lumbered with an endlessly stupid child. ‘You gubbas. Always thinking you’ve got the answer to everything. I don’t want your help, love, so piss off now, leave me alone.’
Sergeant Ramsden caught him coming out of the centre. There was a sheen of sweat on the policeman’s broad face, damp patches staining the armpits of his shirt.
‘Mr Zelic. What are you doing here?’
Caleb moved onto the footpath to draw the man’s attention away from the building. ‘Just helping out. I’m glad I found you – I’ve got a bit of information about last night.’ He went through the events of the riot, describing Rat-tail’s gang and the two balaclava-clad men, his vague theories about the Copperheads. Left out any mention of Jai and Aunty Eileen.
By the time he’d finished, Ramsden looked more exhausted than enthusiastic, but he pulled out his notebook and pen. ‘How…?’ he asked as he flipped through the pages.
Ramsden looked up. ‘How. Well. Do. You. Know. Luke. Blundon?’
‘I don’t.’
‘And. Yet. You. Managed. To…’
God, they’d be here all day at this rate.
‘You can talk normally,’ Caleb said. ‘I just couldn’t see your mouth.’
A slow-burn blush crept up Ramsden’s face. ‘And yet you managed to identify Luke Blundon from a distance? In the dark?’
‘Yes. He’s got a pretty distinctive haircut. Talk to him. It’s more than just the riots – it’s ongoing. Someone paid those kids to wreck the business in Bay Road, too.’
‘That someone being the Copperheads?’
Caleb would have caught the man’s disbelief even without the help of his aids; it was in the lift of Ramsden’s eyebrows, the downwards pull of his mouth. This was hopeless: the cop didn’t want more information, he wanted less. He wanted a straightforward case of racial violence, not some complicated theory about bikie gangs and diversions. He was just an average man, trying to do an average job. Not bad, not evil, just a little bit stupid and completely overwhelmed. And he was the most senior policeman in town.
‘I don’t know,’ Caleb said. ‘Maybe.’
‘Right.’ Ramsden tucked his notebook in his pocket. ‘Well, I’ve got your number. I’ll give you a call if I need anything.’
‘Text,’ Caleb said automatically.
The cop nodded and headed down the footpath towards the next house.
Kat was sorting tinned food into boxes behind the Mish’s community centre. She was flushed and dusty, the eagle feather threaded through the top buttonhole of her sleeveless orange shirt. She smiled as she saw him, and his heart gave a little kick. ‘Hey there,’ she said.
He kissed her, the salt taste of her lips raising memories of her sweat-slicked skin against his last night.
‘You should have got me up,’ he said. ‘I could have helped.’
Her eyes flicked across his face. ‘I thought you could do with the sleep. Are you OK?’
‘Me? Sure. What about you?’
‘Fine. You know, considering.’ She gave him another look, one that had him wanting to check the mirror for food stains.
He gave his face a quick scrub and thought about the best way of broaching what was going to be a touchy subject. ‘Maybe you should –’
‘Don’t even suggest it,’ she said. ‘This is my mob and I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I’m just –’ He searched the air for the right words. ‘I’m worried about you. Scared.’
Her expression softened. ‘I know. I’m scared, too. I’m scared for Mum and Dad, and all my ’lations. But we can’t all leave town.’ She laid a hand against his cheek. ‘And I reckon I’m OK. The fires were only in the Mish, and I don’t live here. I’m bourgeois black, remember?’
He couldn’t raise a smile at the insult one of her cousins had lobbed years ago; she’d turned it into a running joke, but he’d seen her stricken face as the words landed. She made a good point about the fires, though. Less than a third of the town’s Koori population lived on the Mish, but only homes inside its borders had been torched. The knowledge didn’t ease the pressure in his chest or wipe away the image of Kat’s family home going up in flames.
‘What if –?’
She shoved a tin of no-name baked beans into his hand, stopping him mid-sign. ‘Two to a box.’
Conversation over, no debate to be entered into. For now.
They worked without speaking, brushing past each other, guiding with the touch of a hand, the nudge of a hip, a little dance of lifting, sorting and stacking. In the spirit of his new glasnost policy, he’d told her everything last night – about seeing the arsonists and the rioters, his theories on Jai and Portia. She’d listened with a fierce focus, asking a string of questions that had shown him exactly how little he knew. How had Jai and Portia met? Why would the Copperheads use teenagers to do their work? Why would they escalate from vandalism to arson?
But now she was looking distracted, as though she was working through a tricky problem. One that drew her eyebrows together and tightened the muscles around her eyes. She didn’t seem ready to talk about it yet.
He grabbed another box and ripped it open. The shops had obviously donated all their off-brand tinned food: this one was Grandma Eileen’s Minestrone with ‘real’ ham. What to make of the quotation marks – an unschooled copywriter, or an honest one?
‘Have you tried this stuff?’ he asked.
‘I live on it.’
That was worryingly believable. Kat had a cast-iron stomach and little patience for cooking.
‘You’re not troubled by the quotation marks?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m an equal opportunity lazy eater. Who am I to judge if Grandma Eileen likes to flirt with non-standard food products?’
The grin faded from his face as he thought of the other Eileen sitting a few streets away in new slippers and borrowed clothes. She’d lost everything dear to her. How did she not just get in her car and drive into a tree?
Kat touched his hand. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, sure. I was just thinking about Aunty Eileen. At the funeral, what exactly did you mean about her forgiving Jai?’
‘Her grandson was the one Jai hurt when he smashed the car.’
No one he’d spoken to after Jai’s death had mentioned that little fact; if people in the Koori community hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him that, it was going to be an uphill battle trying to get any information about the Copperheads from them.
‘God. And she took him in afterwards?’
‘Before. Jai’s parents are gone, so Aunty Eileen grew him up. Pete and Jai were best mates, pretty much brothers. But now Pete’s… Well, I guess he’s in what you’d call a vegetative state.’
Pete. He’d seen that name recently. On Aunty Eileen’s lips, and written somewhere.
Kat wrote a name on the top of a box and tucked the pen behind her ear. ‘It nearly killed Aunty Eileen when Pete was hurt, but she took Jai back in when he got out of jail. She helped him get clean and get his apprenticeship. She copped a fair bit of flack for it, too.’
‘Why?’
‘I guess people thought Jai hadn’t suffered enough.’
Best mate as good as dead, two years in jail, guilt staining your soul.
He spoke without thinking. ‘God, how much is enough?’
‘Yeah, I know, but he ended someone’s life. That’s unforgiveable to some people.’
He stared at her. She didn’t know, she couldn’t. She was going on with her story as though nothing had happened, not looking at him with fear and revulsion. He forced himself to concentrate on her words.
‘…Jai never forgave himself. I used to see him going into that care place all the time, visiting Pete. Break your heart.’
He let go of the breath he’d been holding. So that was where he’d seen the name – the slack figure in the tiny room at Hilvington; the curling banner that read, Get well soon, Pete.
So Jai and Portia both had family members at Hilvington. And both visited regularly. They’d known each other a lot better than the just-helping-out line Jai had strung him. Had possibly used the visits as an excuse to meet up. But why? A woman with a sense of social justice and a young man trying to make amends, both dead. What had they been doing?
Kat wrote on the last box and put the pen down. ‘That’s it for now, thank God. I’m pooped.’
‘Maybe you should go back to bed. I’d be happy to join you.’
‘Did you get back to sleep OK last night?’ she asked.
‘After you had your way with me for the second time? Yes, but I’m flagging now, so you’ll have to be gentle.’
The frown had returned, pinching her forehead. ‘I meant after the nightmare.’
Shit, he’d thought she’d slept through that. It had been one of the bad ones. The really bad ones. Caught between dream and reality; trembling in sweat-soaked sheets, but somehow on the beach, facedown in the sand. The touch of the gun beneath him. Grabbing it, turning, squeezing the trigger. The bright spray of blood. The warmth of it on his skin, in his mouth.
Stop.
He wiped his damp palms on his shorts. ‘Sorry, did I disturb you?’
‘Jesus, Cal, don’t apologise. It’s a sign of stress, not bad manners.’ She hesitated. ‘Was it the warehouse again?’
‘No.’
‘Gary?’
‘No. A dream, that’s all.’
Her gaze had a strange intensity. ‘A bad one.’
‘Sure, it was a nightmare.’
‘Babe, it was pretty bad. When I touched your shoulder, you were out of bed and across the room so fast I didn’t know what had happened. You didn’t seem to know I was there. You were –’
‘Kat, seriously. It was just a dream. Leave it alone.’
Her blue eyes held his, unblinking. ‘OK,’ she finally said, and turned back to the boxes.