‘Not with me. With the mystery hand on the train, but not with me.’
‘How could we go anywhere? I’d barely got a grip on you when you left for Sydney.’
‘You encouraged me. I thought you wanted to get rid of me. Not at the time, I didn’t think that at the time. It came to me later.’
‘I had your interests at heart.’ I rolled over, took her chin in my hand. ‘What I didn’t know,’ I said, ‘was that once a starfucker, always a starfucker.’
Linda had been married to a doctor, left him for a rock musician.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve fucked the stars. Rock stars, TV personalities. But that’s behind me now. I’m going for the lesser lights in the galaxy. Butchers, I want. Newsagents. Seedy suburban solicitors even.’
‘As it happens, I can help you there.’
‘Yes?’ She had her right hand on me.
‘Yes, I know an excellent butcher and a…’
40
In the pre-dawn, misty rain in the streetlights, a much happier person left the boot factory, a rumpled, low- crotched figure fit only to be abroad in darkness. Today, I would vary my route, stumble along… no, the usual route was better. Stick with a known way.
As was always the case, I felt a surge of wellbeing as the recalcitrant muscles and tendons and sinews warmed up and stretched. I prepared myself for the dog ambush, was caught unawares yet again when the calculating beast waited until the last second before launching itself at the fence.
My thoughts turned to gluing the entire dog to a McCoy creation, but my mood was too good to be coloured by the encounter. I stepped up the pace to the point where I could have overtaken one of those scooters for the disabled, the silent machines that carry flags.
Did the drivers ever wish for something more under the pedal, a bit of grunt? Just for emergencies, mark you. An emergency power surge that spun the back wheels, lifted the nose. That would empower the disabled, brighten an entire day.
Thinking these and other innovative thoughts, I cantered in the dark up Napier Street to Freeman, turned left for Brunswick, the sacred ground on my right, the site of the departed Fitzroy Football Club, my sacred ancestral site. Here, Irish men, my antecedents, their founding male genes coming from the Jewish quarter of Hamburg, had on pale and icy afternoons heard the crowd suck the oxygen from the air as they rose to take the screaming mark.
Sucking oxygen myself, I turned right up empty Brunswick, still moving at tram-catching pace, went past the bowling club and turned right for the trip through the gardens. They were in near-darkness, the light from the lamps diffused by the soft rain.
Then the reserves of energy were found to be nonexistent. I slowed to a controlled stagger near the lovely tree where a young woman had been found one winter morning, sitting in the comfortable fork. Dead, strangled, dumped.
Where paths met, I was at a walk. Winded.
The walking winded.
Like a real athlete, my head was up, my hands were on my hips. I was always this way by the time I got to this point. Warming down, they called it. How can you warm down?
Exhaustion with signs of distress was what it was.
Standing there, panting, I heard something.
The shift of a foot on leaves?
Something out of the corner of my left eye, just a movement of the dark trunk of a tree.
Close, two metres away.
I turned my head, saw the figure take a step towards me, a man, saw light from the high park lamp ahead gleam on something…
Oh Jesus.
At once, a sound like a fist thumping a desk and a flash, a shutter blinking on a white-hot fire, a tug at the tracksuit hood, burning on the back of my head.
Instinctively, I reached for the man, lurched, covered the distance between us, got both hands on an arm as I fell, pulled him down with me.
He hit me on the side of the head with his left hand, lost his footing, fell towards me, half over me. I let go with my right hand, tried to punch him, made contact somewhere, he made a noise, I rolled over, took him with me, I outweighed him, a slim person but strong, I was on top, no face beneath me, a mask, a silk ski mask, mud on it. I tried to hit him in the face with my left hand, then my right, missed both, realised he had no hold on me.
I got to my feet.
He was bringing the weapon up.
I swung a kick at him, connected, turned and ran. Not for home, too far, get out into the open. I ran in the direction of the playground, the barbecue, sliding on the gravel, got off the path, looked back, saw him coming, moving well, I hadn’t hurt him.
Why didn’t he shoot? Had he lost the weapon?
No, he wanted this to be neat. He’d wanted to shoot me from close range, a clean hit, a professional hit, Alan Bergh had been shot by a professional…
Run, just run.
I could hear him behind me on the path.
He was closing on me. I could hear his running footsteps over the sound of my heart, of the blood in my ears, of my panting.
The children’s playground ahead, beyond that the road gleaming wetly in the streetlight, the school, a light on in the school, a cleaner at work…
If I could reach the road.
Just reach the road.
I wasn’t going to reach the road before he caught me.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the dark figure close behind, all black, white blurs for eyes. I changed direction to run through the swings, run between the swings, the ground wet and slippery underfoot.
No more breath in my body, slowing down, he was going to run up behind me, shoot me in the back of the head.
Shoot me. Metres from me.
I saw the swings, solid planks suspended on heavy chains.
I was between them, on an isthmus between the troughs worn away by children’s swinging feet.
Behind me, I heard his breathing.
He was almost on me.
Going to die.
I grabbed the swing to my left, grabbed the nearest chain, swung the heavy plank, it jumped up awkwardly, twisting.
He was a metre away, in stride, both hands on the pistol.
I brought the swing seat around shoulder-high.
It smashed into his forearms, knocked them sideways, he fired, the flat sound, no muzzle flash seen, the shot way off course.
His momentum brought him up to me, I smelt his breath, sweet, his left hand was off the gun…
His right hand was bringing the gun back towards me, not worried about neatness now, just a desire to kill me.
I had the swing seat in both hands, threw it over his head, grabbed the chains, pulled them together, no thought in any of this, wrapped them around his throat, twisted with all my strength. He had a hand at his throat, both hands, I twisted, twisted, maniacal strength in my arms, in my torso.
