and sad.’
Ellen blinked away sudden tears. ‘I’m sorry, Donna.’
‘Yeah, well, so you should be.’
Ellen said carefully, ‘What about his relationship with the little one. Shelly’ She held up a placating hand. ‘I have to ask, Donna, to get it out of the way. If I don’t, someone harder and more senior will come along and ask,’ she added, feeling nasty and small.
‘Shelly? Shell adores him.’
‘She doesn’t say, “You’re not my father”?’
Donna was disgusted. ‘Justin is her father. God. Get your fucking facts right, why don’t you.’
Ellen blushed. ‘Forgive me, Donna, I should have checked. Are you Shelly’s mum?’
‘No. God. When we first met, I was alone with Katie and he was alone with Shelly.’
Ellen bent her head to her notebook to hide her face. She should have been told all of this. She should have checked.
‘Justin’s not involved, take it from me. His mates aren’t, either. They’ve all got kids of their own; we’re always in and out of each other’s houses. Yeah, they’re rough, they’ve got tattoos, a couple have even been done for minor stuff, but they’re not into anything sick. It’s a stranger, I tell ya.’
Ellen nodded, closing her notebook, glancing at the crowded refrigerator, where drawings, cards and photographs jostled. Peninsula Plumbing, the cards read. Mr Antenna. Waterloo Motors. Rising Stars Agency.
10
The Seaview Park kids were notorious for surging and flickering about the town like a dangerous organism, appearing, disappearing, dispersing, merging again. On Saturday morning they were first spotted forming inside the main entrance to the estate, eight of them, mostly Jarretts and Jarrett acolytes, aged between six and eleven; a moment later they were outside it, throwing eggs at passing cars. They were gone well before the police arrived. ‘So what else is new?’ sighed Pam Murphy, taking witness statements from irate motorists in between doorknocking and handing out flyers.
Over the next hour she tracked them by their crimes. They lifted packets of LifeSavers from Wally’s milk bar and spray paint from High Street Hardware. All along High Street they went, like quicksilver, terrorising the law- abiding. T-shirts from Hang Ten Surf Wear, sunglasses from a rack in the pharmacy, cheap jewellery from a couple of the $2 shops. Their movements were obvious: they were heading straight down High Street to the parkland on the waterfront, to the dodgem cars, shooting galleries, Ferris wheel, ghost train, flower, jam and cake displays, pony rides, outdoor art show, sound stage and food stalls that denoted the annual spring show in Waterloo. Pam didn’t know what they’d do there, but did know they’d do more than merely gawk or spend any money they’d stolen or cadged. It wasn’t in their nature to give to the community but to take. That was the Jarrett way, and there were plenty of takings at the Waterloo Show.
They had the Show sussed out within five minutes. The eleven-year-old said, ‘You like it up the arse?’ to a young woman pushing a pram. The nine-year-old snatched a purse. The twins pushed and shoved an old geezer who went red and breathless and an ambulance was called. They grabbed a fistful of Have You Seen Katie? leaflets from Donna Blasko and dumped them in a rubbish bin. On flowed the estate kids, untouchable, undetectable until the last moment, which was when their victims recognised that distinctive estate/Jarrett look, something quick and soulless.
‘Where you from?’ they demanded at one point.
Four kids visiting from Cranbourne, thirty minutes away. Outsider kids. The Jarretts knew all of the local kids.
‘Nowhere,’ the Cranbourne kids said.
‘Gotta be from somewhere.’
‘Over there,’ said one of the Cranbourne kids, meaning a few hundred metres up the road.
‘Liar.’
They crowded the outsiders, poked and jabbed. Wallets were taken. A knife was pulled, flashed once, leaving a ribbon of blood. Miraculously, an opening appeared. The Cranbourne kids ran for their lives. Whooping, the estate kids chased them, herded them, out of the showgrounds and back up High Street.
‘Save us!’ cried the visitors.
‘Get out,’ said the local shopkeepers, recognising the pursuers.
‘Youths hospitalised,’ said the next edition of the local paper.
While that was going on, Alysha Jarrett climbed over the fence at the rear of Neville Clode’s house, trampling the onion weed as it lay limp and dying, and knocked on his back door. When it opened she stood there wordlessly, looking at but not seeing the doorsill or his bare feet, the left foot with its birthmark like the remnant of a wine-red sock, the nails hooked and yellow.
‘Don’t remember inviting you,’ he said, smirking.
She said nothing. He made room for her and she passed him, into the house. She breathed shallowly. He never aired the place, but that wasn’t uncommon in Alysha’s experience. She came from people who kept their doors and windows closed and abhorred the sun. She could detect cigarettes, alcohol and semen. She knew those smells.
‘Can’t keep away, can you?’ he said. She was thirteen and would soon be too old.
She shrugged. She never talked, never looked him in the face. Never looked at him anywhere if she could help it. She never used her own hands and mouth on him but pretended they belonged to someone else. Everything switched off when she came here. In fact she was never entirely switched on when she was away from here. She floated. She was unmoored. Her body had nothing to do with her.
‘Here you go,’ he said afterwards, giving her twenty dollars. Sometimes it was smokes, lollies, a bottle of sweet sherry. At the back door he sniffed, holding a tissue to his nostrils; he often got a nosebleed from the strain of labouring away at her body. Giving her what he called a cuddle, he peered out into his yard like a nervy mouse. ‘The coast is clear,’ he said, giving her bottom a pat. He’d washed her in the spa. She felt damp here and there. Alysha floated away with her $20, which she later spent on pills and went further away in her head.
Meanwhile Tank had the morning off. He’d been slotted for a grid search of Myers Reserve later in the day, followed by night patrol, so the morning was his one chance to take delivery of his Mazda. He went by train, getting off one station past Frankston, where the road that ran parallel to the tracks was used-car heaven, yards stretching in either direction, plastic flags snapping joyously in the breeze from the Bay. He set out on foot for Prestige Autos.
It was good to be decisive. Last weekend he’d driven all the way up to Car City, on the Maroondah Highway, and been told, at more than one yard, ‘It’s no good taking this car for a drive unless you mean to do business today’ Tank couldn’t believe it. ‘How do you sell cars if you don’t let anyone test drive them?’ The salesmen would gesture as if they didn’t care. Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps there were plenty of idiots with money to burn. ‘Do I look like a tyre kicker to you?’Tank had demanded. Another indifferent shrug. ‘Don’t you want my business? Do you think I’m broke?’ And they’d said, Are you prepared to do business today, or are you “just looking”?’
Tank shook his head now at their stupidity and the obscure shame he’d felt. Anyhow, last weekend he’d also stopped off here in Frankston, and in the third caryard visited he’d found the Mazda. Sleek lines, as new, Yokohama tyres, the paint still glossy and unmarked. The guy there had no problem with Tank taking the car for a burn: ‘Go for your life, mate,’ he’d said. Luckily, the freeway was close by, and Tank was able to really test the car. In the blink of an eye he was doing 140 km/h on the straight. Effortlessly. The car sat straight and true, braked well, the exhaust snarling so sweetly it got him in the pit of the stomach. Tank, being canny, had even run a fridge magnet all over the bodywork. Not a trace of filler anywhere.
