Time's Long Ruin (12 page)

Dad pulled into the Thebarton barracks. Across the road the police greys stood motionless in the shade of almond trees. They drank water from troughs and shifted around a little, exploring the dirt with their hooves without expending much energy.

We parked our car in a deserted compound and Dad unlocked the door to an old red-brick two-storey building. He switched on some lights and we found ourselves in a reception area with a polished terrazzo floor. A root-bound aspidistra struggled in a cracked pot, its soil as dry as bi-carb soda. I'd watered it a few times but no one else ever did. Still, it was alive, which was more than most of the brown stumps and petrified ferns around the barracks were. We climbed a set of stairs to a landing and waited as Dad unlocked another door.

‘Where is everyone?' Bill asked.

‘Who knows,' Dad replied. ‘Drunk. Dead.'

We stepped into a dark, damp-smelling room and Dad switched on more lights. The fluoros flickered and eventually revealed a large warehouse filled with shelves extending almost to the ceiling.

‘Here it is,' Dad said. ‘Evidence.'

Bill shook his head. ‘Bugger me.'

‘This way.'

Dad led us to a far corner of the room, where a wire-mesh fence had been installed to create a secure compound. He unlocked the gate to this area and we went inside. ‘This is for the ongoing cases,' he explained. ‘The unsolvables.'

‘The ones who got away with it?' Bill offered.

‘Yeah. Lots of disappearances.' He almost smiled. ‘A funny crime, eh, stealing people; and not that hard to get away with. You'd only need half a brain and a bit of luck, if you were that way inclined.'

Bill's brain was ticking over. ‘It's true. How many times have I been driving through the country and seen someone walking all alone.'

‘If you were that way inclined,' Dad repeated, fetching a small stepladder and resting it against the shelves. Then he climbed up, reached for a box and handed it down to Bill. ‘Since you're so interested, there you go, the Somerton mystery man, or what's left of him.'

Bill put the box on a table. Dad came over and switched on an overhead light. He opened the box and produced a life-size plaster bust of the mystery man. It showed every detail: chest hairs, rolls of fat on the throat and under the chin, the lines on his lips and the pores in his skin, each hair on his head and the folds in his ear.

‘Bugger me,' Bill said.

Dad leaned over and kissed the man on the lips and said, ‘How are you today, old boy?'

Bill ran his hand over the man's face. ‘Come on, you can tell us. Who are you?'

His eyes were closed and he seemed to be asleep. He looked natural, real, like he might wake at any moment and then the whole business could be sorted. But then Dad showed us his broken neck. ‘I dropped him once,' he explained. ‘We had to glue his head back on.'

‘He was a big lad,' Bill said, feeling his shoulders.

‘I wish I could have seen his body,' I offered.

Dad looked at me strangely. ‘It's not something you'd want to . . .'

See? Touch? Smell? Being dead seemed strange. To be sitting there, all of your bits, most of them still in functioning order, but to be no different from a Sunday roast. A lump of meat. All because of something as simple as a faulty valve or broken blood vessel. ‘Wake up,' I whispered to the bust.

Dad produced a coat, a pair of brown trousers, a white shirt, a knitted jumper and a tie – all neatly folded. Bill took the jumper and held it against his chest. ‘Naphthalene,' he said, sniffing.

‘May as well give them to the Salvos,' Dad said.

‘Not yet,' Bill replied, folding the jumper. ‘You gotta solve this case.'

‘Bullshit. Everybody else had a crack and couldn't work it out. So who ends up with it? Stay in the box for all I care.'

‘But aren't you curious?'

‘Was. Some point you gotta say enough's enough. Stop wasting your time. Otherwise you'd go crazy.'

Bill ran his index finger down the man's nose. ‘Looks a bit like a fella I used to play golf with.'

Dad took a briefcase out of the box. He opened it and removed another few shirts. ‘See, they match the one he was wearing, although all of the labels had been removed.' Then he produced a roll of thread. ‘He used this to sew on buttons.' A dressing gown, red felt slippers, underpants, more ties and another pair of pants with three dry-cleaning tickets in the pocket. ‘They tried every dry-cleaner in Australia, and no one recognised the stubs.'

Then he showed us a label attached to the underwear:
T. Keane
. ‘They thought he was a local sailor, Tommy Keane. They brought in some of his shipmates but they said it wasn't him.'

Dad took out a stencil brush and held it in his hands. ‘We have no idea what he used this for.' Then he shrugged and started throwing the objects back in the case. ‘One dead body.'

‘Himmler killed six million,' I offered.

‘Exactly. Follow me.'

Dad led us over to a fridge.

‘What y' got in there?' Bill asked.

Dad prepared us. ‘This is something we don't let anyone see. You gotta promise, Bill, Henry. Loose lips sink ships.'

Bill was smiling. ‘Come on then.'

Dad opened the fridge. It was packed full of longnecks and soft drinks. He gave me a Coke and opened a beer for Bill, the Somerton man and himself. Then we pulled up chairs and sat around the bust. Dad placed a beer in front of his tight-lipped offsider and said, ‘Drink up, old boy.'

We sat and drank for an hour. At one point Bill put on the dressing gown, climbed on top of the table and started singing ‘They're All Fine Girls'. Dad laughed and then tried to pull him down. Bill had already had too much. His foot slipped on the edge of the table and he fell. The bust wobbled but Dad quickly steadied it.

‘Don't you have another one?' Bill asked, looking up.

‘No.'

After a while he settled down and asked, ‘How do you catch them then?'

Dad shrugged. ‘They always miss something. Their minds don't work like a copper's. Detectives would make the best crooks.'

Bill smiled. ‘I'm not a detective.'

‘Yeah, but you've got a big car boot.'

‘All discontinued lines.' Bill looked at me. ‘What's he talking about, Henry?'

I shrugged. ‘Don't know.'

Dad repacked and replaced the box on the shelf. On the way out he showed Bill some of the collection's highlights: guns, knives, a pyjama cord used as a garotte, and a vial of arsenic.

We drove home through suburbs devoid of life. People had become plaster busts, sitting at bus stops in a catatonic state, dropping their heads and closing their eyes as they walked through hot northerlies with their shopping.

Fans, air-conditioners, cold baths and wet flannels on the back of our necks, anything to get us through the rest of the day. And then night: heat slowly lifting from the earth. The sound of bagpipes, trains and other people's air-conditioners. At one point Dad threw down his paper and said, ‘That's it, we're getting one.'

‘What?' Mum asked.

‘A Kelvinator.'

‘We can't afford that.'

‘I don't care. I'm sick of being so bloody hot.'

There was a hard, urgent knock on the front door and Janice's voice. ‘Mister Page, are you there?'

‘Come in,' Dad called.

A few moments later Janice was standing in our lounge room, red-faced, panting. ‘Mum says come quick.'

‘What is it?'

‘Dad.'

We all got up to go but Dad turned to me and said, ‘Stay here.' He took Janice's hand and pulled her towards the front door. Mum followed them out, leaving the fly-screen door open and calling for them to wait. I stood at the open door and listened. I could hear Bill's voice, loud and muffled above a fan of hot air through the cypress in our front yard. A tide of dry, dead gum leaves blew down the street, breaking like shells as they were dragged along the bitumen.

I couldn't stand it. I ran across our front yard, jumped the knee-high box hedge that separated us from the Rileys, crossed their drive and knelt down below their kitchen window. Then I slowly stood up, peering into the kitchen. Bill was standing with his back to me, leaning against the sink. He was holding a beer in his hand. Liz was sitting on the floor nearby, crying, rocking with her head between her knees. Mum went and sat beside her.

‘Have you seen the way she keeps this house?' Bill asked Dad. Then he turned on his wife, stepping forward and raising his voice. ‘Bloody pigsty. Shouldn't have to live in a pigsty. You got kids in there, you're meant to be their fuckin' mother.'

Then he looked at Dad again. ‘She hasn't got any self-respect.'

Dad nodded his head in agreement. ‘Not too good, eh? Best thing is, we get out of it, leave them to it.'

Bill stepped forward again. ‘Too bloody busy at your mother's. How's about if you stayed here a bit? I gotta go off every day. Think I wanna do that? Think I enjoy fuckin' . . . pillow cases?'

Mum helped Liz stand and led her out the back door. Bill came towards her, screaming insults, spitting and dribbling, and Dad stood between them. Bill moved against him but Dad didn't budge. ‘What y' doin'?' he asked.

Dad looked at the window and met my eyes. ‘Home,' he said, firmly.

‘Go on, Henry, get home,' Bill echoed.

I squatted down, thought for a moment and then retraced my steps towards the safety of our lounge room. I collapsed into Mum's threaded armchair, clutched the armrests and waited, listening to the seconds tick away on our station clock. A few minutes later Dad brought Bill into our house. He led him down the hallway and into the kitchen. I turned down the television to hear them. Bill raised his voice to complain about Liz and Dad raised his to counter. ‘Christ, you go on when you're pissed, Riley. You think she's hopeless, you should live here a few days.'

‘Your lady runs a tight ship.'

‘Bullshit.'

Until it was the volume of a normal conversation, until Dad changed the topic completely. ‘You know how much trouble I could get into for taking you there today?'

‘A few old clothes?'

‘Evidence.'

It was all too much. I ran next door. I found Janice sitting in her room on her bed, her arms around Anna and Gavin on either side.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘Nothing,' she replied. ‘Go home.'

I stood in the middle of her room, motionless, speechless. Janice leaned against a wall that was bare except for a crack, some peeling paint and a magazine photo of the Three Stooges: Mo in the middle, Larry and Curly looking at him.

‘Moo,' I said.

‘Go home!'

I turned and walked into the hallway. Liz was still in the backyard, sobbing, and Mum was still trying to talk her through it. Janice got up off her bed and slammed the door. There was nothing to be done, so I headed home.

They would've sat there for hours, I suppose. Janice, holding her brother and sister tightly. Watching over them. Protecting them. Soothing them. Striking the best deal. Trying to be reasonable with an unreasonable world. Holding things together when Liz was off sooking and Bill was on the turps. When she was the only one Anna and Gavin could rely on.

Bill loved the taste of beer. He'd hit Liz a few times. Once, the morning after a particularly bad night (after he'd slept at our place, as usual), Dad warned him that Liz could have him charged. Bill laughed. ‘With what? Being married? I should be given a prize.'

Bill lived for his nightly longnecks. Dad should've remembered that in the evidence room. But that was Dad, always trying to show off: detective with fridge full of beer and room full of gruesome stuff. Look at me, Bob Page, CID, sheriff of the western suburbs.

That night Mum stayed next door. Bill slept in my bed in his clothes and I slept with Dad. When we got up the next morning Bill was gone. He'd made my bed as best he could (although Mum later stripped and washed it). He'd taken his car full of linen and set off for work. To show all of us that he wasn't so bad after all.

A few hours later I was alone in my room, my eyes drifting across the rough plaster walls, sticking in a crack that seemed to lengthen and widen every day. I'd filled it with homemade playdough and Dad had come along and removed it, saying it had to be fixed properly. It was on his list, he said. The list of things that could wait – until next week, next month, next year, until he died and someone else moved in and did it.

I sat on the floor painting my model of a Stuka. I'd done a decent job. Most of the joins were glued tight. The pilot was smiling, even if half of his face was painted leather-brown. There were a few bits left over but there always were. Bits no one could see anyway: the rudder pedals, the joystick, the pilot's legs. Dad would come in and look at these bits and say, ‘What about this? Poor bastard, just about to dive-bomb a convoy and . . .'