He looked down at his schoolbag – just like any sports backpack, really. It seemed hot in his lap, and he wondered whether any of the other passengers could tell that it had travelled from the past, from another world.
Inside the bag, the boy from the streets waited to get out.
Joss changed buses again at Wynyard, but this time he crossed the road to catch a train to Cabramatta. He swung his backpack over his shoulder and jogged to the platform. The knife thumped against his thigh as he ran.
How does one go about making an anonymous call to the police, Isobel wondered. Can't send a fax or email, of course. Traceable. Her mobile? She always used a prepaid mobile phone because she knew how easy it was to find out someone's identity when they subscribed to a plan. Still, she'd heard that even though a prepaid number wasn't registered, the phone still acted as a satellite tracking system when it was switched on. If police had a number that was of interest, they could find the phone, even if they didn't know whose it was.
How ridiculous, she thought, and snorted as she sipped her coffee. She felt like she was in a spy movie or something. The woman from the next table looked up from her novel and stared.
Isobel got the file out of her shoulder bag and read it through again briefly. She'd found Henry Nguyen and had done a work-up on the Donatio file for Shields as well, and all before two o'clock. I am pretty good at this stuff, she reminded herself.
Nguyen had no Centrelink file that she could find, but she'd been able to find his Medicare record. There was also no hiding his criminal past. From age eighteen – it would take a bit longer to get any juvenile files – it seemed he had spent more time in than out of gaol. Violent crime and robbery. She chewed at her lip, worried Joss could be right – that this man could have been the one who'd attacked them at Andy Wu's. Still, she figured, maybe Joss would have a record, too, if he'd not been rescued from that life.
But that was crazy. It can't be him, she told herself. Joss was just shaken up by the robbery. God knows, she still was. And Joss also had his memories of Africa, of the massacre, to contend with. She could easily see how Andy Wu's blood could've triggered memories of his friend Fuzzy's death. Fuzzy made him think about Cutter, and he had just projected Nguyen underneath the mask of the devil at the home invasion.
There was no way Joss could recognise someone underneath that balaclava – there just wasn't any face to see.
The memory of Joss's panic at the movies yesterday surfaced briefly. It did seem a coincidence that they had run into this guy just after the home invasion, but it must just have been spooky chance. She pushed her doubts aside with the remainder of her coffee, not allowing them to fully register. She could not let herself believe that Joss was right about this guy. She'd collected this information just to placate her husband – to give Nguyen's details to the police and let them rule him in or out of this thing.
Isobel left the last bite of her toasted sandwich and stood up. She waited at the lights outside the cafe with a couple of dozen other people and crossed the street when they got the 'walk' signal. Then she stepped into one of the payphones opposite her work for the first time ever.
'Honey, I really don't think all this is necessary,' Isobel said to her husband in their bedroom that evening. She used her reasoning voice, trying to speak calmly, holding at her side the baseball bat Joss had given her. 'The police have his details now, and if he's implicated in any way, they'll pick him up.' She sighed, looking at his face. Nothing she said made any difference, she thought. He was just waiting for her to finish.
She was right.
'Show me again,' he said.
She gripped the very end of the bat with one hand as he had demonstrated, her other hand in the middle, as though she were holding a javelin. She lunged forward at an imaginary attacker, holding the bat at face-height.
'Remember,' he said, 'You can go for the face, throat, or the balls. Don't go for the chest. Winding him is no good. An eye socket will do.'
He looked her straight in the face, but she felt he wasn't really seeing her.
'Don't forget,' he continued, 'you don't want to hesitate. You don't want to listen to anything anyone's got to say. You'll have one chance only and you've gotta put every bit of strength you have behind it. And don't miss.' He paused, then held his fingers up to emphasise each point. 'One, use all your force; two, don't hesitate; and three, don't miss. Now, show me again.'
Five minutes later, Isobel finally threw the bat on the bed. 'Where are you going to be while I'm hitting this home run?' she asked.
'Don't worry about me. Hopefully, it won't come to this. If they come, with any luck, you, me and Charlie will be on the roof.'
As soon as she'd arrived home from work, Joss had again tried to persuade her to take Charlie to her mother's home in Cairns. She'd turned him down without waiting to listen to his argument. As though he'd known that would be her response, he'd insisted she come up to their bedroom and practise climbing out of the window and onto their roof.
'Can we at least wait till it's dark?' she'd wanted to know. 'And I'm not teaching Charlie to climb out a window onto the roof!'
'Fine,' he'd capitulated. 'We take her only if necessary.'
So, when evening had fallen, Isobel had climbed out of the low bedroom window onto their tiled roof. Joss had followed her out.
'Move around to the side a bit.'
He'd spoken softly, thank God. Isobel couldn't imagine trying to explain this to Mrs Wilkinson next door.
Isobel had inched her way around on the tiles; the slope here was gentle, and it was not difficult to move along. Fortunately, the rain had cleared up just after lunch, and the tiles had been dry and still quite warm.
'What the hell's this?' she whispered when she'd come across a dark shape wedged into a corner on the roof.
'The ladder, of course. How did you think we were going to get Charlie down?'
On her haunches on the roof, Isobel had found herself worried far less about a potential home invasion than about her husband's grip on reality. Was she right to humour him in this way? Should she just insist he see the counsellor, refuse to go along with his paranoid plans? Was all this making him worse? What was she doing squatting out here? She'd studied Joss from behind as he negotiated the roof, moving assuredly across the tiles, considering every angle. She determined to try to talk to him again tomorrow.
Back in the bedroom, Isobel put her hand on Joss's shoulder.
'Come on, babe, I'm tired. Let's have a shower and go to bed early.'
Joss picked the bat up from the bed and handed it to her.
'Remember, we're in a confined space,' he said. 'You don't want to have to try and swing it. And you don't want him to get closer to you than a metre. Show me again.'
17
'DO YOU WANT to get out of here today?' Jill asked Gabriel as they sat at their desks in the communal detectives' office in Liverpool. The taskforce meeting had just concluded and Jill was not looking forward to chatting with her colleagues this morning. As Gabriel's smiling eyes met hers over the rim of his coffee mug, she continued, 'It's that bloody current affairs show from last night. I don't want to hear what Derek Reid and his mates have to say about it.'
'You looked pretty tough handcuffing the dangerous assailant in the suburbs,' said Gabriel.
'Don't start, Mr Door Job.'
'Yeah, well,' he said, 'maybe we should go out and do some more interviews.'
'Who's up next?' Jill flicked through the folder in front of her.
'Um, that couple in Balmain,' Gabriel answered. He spoke without looking up, absorbed in the statements in front of him.
