The Carnival is Over, page 14
She said, ‘I’ve just had a call from a man who sounded like he’d either been crying a lot or drinking a heap. Possibly both. He said he was staying at the Cactus and wanted to see Sergeant Goodenough. Alone.’
Glenn Schofield. Timely news indeed: Mick had some questions for Glenn. Ross offered to accompany him, but it was a half-hearted offer, and Goodenough told him to get on with his reports. Mick put his hat back on and headed out; Neridah yelled after him she would be sending out a search party if he wasn’t back in an hour. He saluted ironically and got in his car.
The Sombrero Hotel Motel was a string of ‘Spanish-style’ red-roofed white stucco bungalows built around a central dining room and bar that resembled a Mexican gaol block. A couple of giant prickly pears stood guard over the entrance, like bushrangers bailing up a coach. It was fondly known as the Cactus and did solid duty as an early opener that dodged the licensing laws by serving baked beans on toast in the dining room.
Mick found Schofield propping up one side of the bar. An elderly barmaid called Merle stood on the other, tossing her blue-rinsed curls and warning Mr Schofield for the final time that if he didn’t vacate the bar this second she’d be calling the police.
‘No need, Merle,’ Mick said, sliding onto a stool beside Glenn. ‘He called them himself half an hour back.’
She folded her arms over her cleavage and swept her fierce gaze onto Goodenough. ‘So it’s your fault he’s pissed as a newt and bothering the patrons?’
Mick looked around at the half dozen barflies slouched at the mismatched tables around the room, seemingly oblivious to any threat posed by Mr Schofield.
Glenn certainly thought so. ‘I’m not bothering a soul, you cranky old witch,’ he growled.
Mick squeezed his shoulder and winked at Merle, who was, understandably, seething. ‘He’s had a rough week.’
‘The only reason I haven’t bounced his arse onto the footpath,’ Merle said, and flounced off to the other end of the bar to confront one of her classier regulars.
Goodenough leaned closer to Glenn, who sat slumped over his glass, emanating a stale fug of sweat, cigarettes and rum.
‘How is he?’
Schofield fixed his bleary eyes on Mick. His haggard face seemed to have aged ten years overnight, and his breath was rank.
‘He’ll never walk again, they say. Be in a wheelchair the rest of his life…’ He blinked back tears. ‘We’ll have to teach him to talk all over again. As if the first time wasn’t hard enough. He was always the slow one, Troy.’
‘But he’ll live?’ Mick smiled.
‘That lady doctor said he…’ Then tears were rolling down his craggy cheeks like run-off down gullies.
‘Good, Glenn. That’s wonderful news. Now the main thing is to get Shelley out of care and back home, as soon as possible.’
‘How?’ Glenn held up his stubby fingers. ‘How’m I gunna do that? And how’m I gunna look after her? Be a full-time job looking after Troy. D’you know, all he can do now is blink for yes or no?’
As Glenn moved his glass in the general direction of his mouth, Goodenough intercepted it. ‘First things first,’ he said. ‘We need to know a few things in order to put together a case for Shelley.’
Schofield shut his eyes, then opened and shut them as if trying to blink away all that had happened in the last day and a half. ‘I don’t even know if she meant to do it or not. Should she be in gaol? Or the loony bin?’ He gazed into his open palm. ‘Ten years old, and she nearly killed her brother.’
‘Well, I don’t think she did.’ Goodenough leaned closer. ‘Glenn, we need to know exactly what happened, how your gun cabinet came to be left open. How that loaded Marlin came to be lying there in front of all the unloaded weapons. Why it was the only one with a live round in it.’
‘I never put it there,’ he said. He met Mick’s gaze and held it. ‘All my guns are kept unloaded. The kids know that.’
‘All your guns…?’
‘Every last one. House rule.’ Schofield nodded.
‘Then what I need to know, Glenn, is who put a loaded rifle there and why?’
Schofield kept shaking his head and shrugging.
‘All right then,’ Mick went on sternly, ‘who took the Marlin away last night? Because none of this adds up.’
Glenn gaped at him, his mouth a big wet circle of surprise. ‘Whaddya mean…took it away? It’s lying on the couch, unloaded. Where I told you I left it.’
‘Is it?’ Goodenough loomed into his face. ‘Are you absolutely sure of that?’
‘Course I bloody am—I put it there myself!’ he roared.
Some barflies cast irritable glances their way and Merle barked, ‘Last warning, Glenn.’
‘Lower your voice,’ Mick hissed out of the side of his mouth, and threw Merle an appeasing smile. He turned back to Glenn. ‘You put the Marlin on the couch before you left?’ Glenn nodded. ‘Then you locked the back door?’
Schofield looked pensive. ‘No, I wouldn’t have locked it. Not the back door.’
He lunged for the glass in Mick’s hand. Again, Goodenough held it away. ‘You’d swear to that?’
‘Fucking oath I would, we never lock it. But I keep the guns locked up. Always.’ He eyed the bottles on the shelf.
Mick rotated Schofield’s stool towards him. ‘Would it surprise you to know that when I arrived, the back door was locked and that rifle was gone? Missing?’
Pain and guilt racked his face. Schofield shook his head. ‘No. No way. I mean, yes, total surprise.’
‘Tell me, Glenn,’ Mick whispered. ‘Was it really a surprise that the Marlin 39A had turned up in your cabinet? Or that the cabinet door was wide open when Shelley went into the room to get a gun?’
Glenn jerked back as if stung by a hot wire. ‘What? What d’ya mean!’
Goodenough seized both his elbows. ‘It was your rifle, wasn’t it Glenn?’
‘I already said that.’
‘Then aren’t you responsible for all its comings and goings?’
‘Comings and g-goings?’ Glenn’s face was ashen. ‘Not always. I mean—what I’m trying to say is…’
What was he trying to say? Goodenough gripped him tighter. Schofield pulled his elbows free, but Mick kept staring at him. Saying nothing.
‘Jesus, what?’
‘You know something you’re not telling me, Glenn.’
Mick slid the glass back to him. Schofield grabbed it and guzzled it down then turned his stool away.
‘I want to go home now,’ he said, plonking the empty glass down. ‘Gimme the keys, Mick…Please?’
Goodenough shook his head. ‘You won’t be going home for a few days. At least not until the detectives have ascertained whether or not it’s a crime scene.’
‘Detectives?’ He frowned, as if the idea had only just occurred to him.
‘At the moment Glenn, I have to say it’s not looking too good for you. Or Shelley for that matter.’ He swivelled the stool around until Glenn was facing him again. ‘Shelley doesn’t deserve to be in custody, does she? You don’t want her to be stuck there for months or years, do you? A sweet kid like her, she’s going to have a tough time of it with some of those mean girls.’
Schofield’s mouth started quivering, and two fat tears dripped down his bristly cheeks. He wiped them off with his sleeve and shrugged balefully.
‘You’re going to need her soon. Even if you think you won’t, you’ll be leaning on her to help with…Troy. A daughter can be very good at times like these.’ Not that Mick could swear to this: Cheryl had left him entirely to his own devices from the day she turned seventeen.
‘I know…I know.’ Glenn sighed then nervously scanned the dining room, suddenly aware of all the chalky faces in the shadows. All the barflies studying him. Him and the cop he was sitting with. Cosy, aren’t they? He shook his head, and stood up, swaying, his hands grabbing the bar to stabilise himself.
‘Can’t help you,’ he said, loud enough for all to hear. He barged past Goodenough to the door and staggered out into the glare of the morning.
29
Sitting on her own in the big lunch room was sometimes preferable to sitting in the tiny admin lunch room, cheek by jowl with Joyce and her twin-set and pearl ladies as they sipped Earl Grey and read their Mills & Boons. Not easy to explain what she was reading. Which Allie had no intention of doing, since it was a slim James Baldwin paperback, The Fire Next Time, about the problems of the American Negro. Things were even worse for black people in America than here, she was thinking. And that was saying something. But the negroes were fighting back now. It made Allie wonder why her own mob were so quiet and polite about things around here. She was turning a page when the hairy thing landed on her plate.
It had been a while since she’d had things land on her plate or her person at meal breaks, and Allie was determined not to react. Then she saw it was a rat. She gasped and looked around. Deep-throated giggling came from two tables over, where she saw the tall ugly one, Pelican Shit, and his mates Spider and Ginger snickering.
At the next table sat Charlene and Julie with one of the Judys and Donna, the Kamilaroi girl—grateful it wasn’t her with the rat on her plate—all of them in quiet hysterics. Which only set the dickheads off again. People at other tables were looking up, smirks on their faces, wondering what fun they were missing out on. Then, walking up to the table two behind theirs, she saw Hal.
He looked like he was thinking about coming over, which was the last thing she wanted, Hal trotting over and being linked to her, romantically or whatever. Last thing either of them needed. She shook her head. Don’t. He got it. Sat slowly down.
Allie looked at the rat sitting on her sandwich, it was shrink-wrapped in plastic, like the kidneys and liver she used to cryovac every day in the offal room. Cryovacked rat: they normally reserved that for the newbies. Casuals from the university, teachers’ college girls and smooth-faced boys on day one: separate the lambs from the rams, Can’tcha take a joke, mate? But they’d been laying off casuals lately and there’d been no newbies except for some big tattooed Maori shearers that didn’t look like they’d see the funny side of a shrink-wrapped rat. So it was Allie’s turn again. Just a bit a fun, eh, Ten-a-penny. She thought about getting up and binning it and walking out with her head high, like she’d done before; but where did it get her, that Mahatma Gandhi passive-resistance stuff? She looked at the book in front of her. What would James Baldwin do, or Malcolm X, or them tough American negroes, would they just do nothing? Like fuck they would.
The tittering subsided and people returned to their lunch, and even Hal had sat down with his sandwiches. She caught him giving her an odd look, and ignored him. She picked up her butter knife, grabbed the cryovacked rat and started sawing the plastic open at the head end. A foetid stink of dead rat marinated in its own juices wafted out—she jerked away in disgust. Allie put her book in her pocket, picked up the rat and walked past the bitches’ table, Charlene cacking herself, spilling half out of her lime-green nylon top.
‘Gawd, what’s she doin’ now? Siddown Allie, eat ya lunch ya idiot!’
Allie marched past her, straight up to the three morons, Pelican Shit with his back to her, his pals all guffawing and wiping their eyes. She stood behind Stretch, as his mates called him, and up-ended the packet. The rat and its juices slid out all over his sausages. While his two sidekicks were reacting like a bunch of little girls—‘Aw shit that’s disgusting. Eww it stinks. Urgh, I’m gunna spew!’—she grabbed the tomato sauce bottle and squeezed the red stuff all over it and plonked the bottle down in front of her bug-eyed enemy.
‘Bit of sauce on yer rat, mate?’ Allie beamed. She splatted the plastic bag on Pelican Shit’s shoulder, and watched the brown liquid ooze over his shirt, spreading the stench. The cackling tables went quiet, all eyes on Pelican Shit.
He looked up from the mess on his plate. ‘You fucken bitch, you’re dead.’
‘Bon appetite.’ Allie gave a fetching smile and sashayed off.
‘Sssssss…’ Spider hissed at her through his missing front teeth. And Ginger let out another ominous Ooooooh.
Allie was halfway down the corridor towards admin when a rough hand seized her arm: Ginger. He spun her around to face Pelican Shit, who was standing there, pimply-faced and hard-eyed.
‘You uppity bitch, think you’re hot shit,’ he said, pulling his hand back into a fist. But he must have thought better of it because even though she was a blackfella, she was still a woman, and Ginger was frowning. So Pelican Shit opened his fist and slapped her hard across the side of the face—the blow knocked her sideways and the only thing holding her up was Ginger’s arm. Her hand went to her cheek—it felt numb and hot at first, then started stinging like a wasp bite.
‘Is that all you got?’ she said, her grin trembling. ‘You hit like a girl.’
The words Pelican Shit had been waiting for, judging by his smile. ‘Hold her,’ he told Ginger, who grabbed her arms and pulled them so hard behind her back she thought her shoulder was about to pop out of its socket. No gentlemanly slap for her this time. As Pelican Shit pulled his fist back for the big punch, the door behind him opened and she saw Hal step quietly up behind the two dickheads. Oh no.
He grabbed each by an opposing ear, and before they had a chance to say so much as ‘You are fucked,’ he slammed their heads together. A colossal crack, and they fell to the floor moaning and rubbing their skulls.
Ginger lay on his head like a flipped-over turtle, but when Pelican Shit laid eyes on Hal, he sprung up on one elbow and tried to push himself to his feet. ‘You fucken mongrel dog, come here, you’re—’
He got one leg off the ground when Allie’s foot kicked him in the stomach and he fell back to the floor, groaning alongside Ginger, gasping out dire threats. ‘I’ll kill you, you black bitch…Oi, shithead,’ he spat at Hal. ‘You and ya little brother…’ An evil grimace. ‘Watch ya backs…’
Hal was thinking he might have been a bit rash, and was about to say, ‘Leave my brother out of it,’ when the door burst open and a voice rang out like a chainsaw: ‘Who better watch their backsh?’
Lloyd barged in and shoved past Hal to stand over the two toughs on the floor, his fists balled and his face lit up with that maniacal grin that meant anything—anything—was possible. ‘Youse cunts. That’sh who.’
Pelican Shit stared daggers, but said nothing as Lloyd loomed over him.
‘Pretty good with girlsh aren’t ya? Come on, have a go.’
Allie was trying to get another kick in when Hal grabbed her hand and dragged her away, down the corridor until they burst out through the door marked exit, and they stood on the other side catching their breath and cautiously watching each other.
Finally she squeezed his hand. ‘Thanks.’
Hal’s breathing had calmed down enough to say, ‘Think practically…nothing of it.’
Then Lloyd flung the door open, saw them pull away from each other, and shook his head at Hal. ‘Fuck man, what have you done?’
‘What have I done?’ Hal replied, throwing Allie a stunned look.
‘It’s nothin’ to do with you, Lloyd.’ She scurried off down the hall, leaving the two boys watching her.
‘That washn’t too fucken bright, now was it?’ Lloyd said. ‘I can’t always be there to protect you.’
‘Protect me? Get out of it.’ Unbelievable.
‘What is it with you two anyway? You’re not…?’ Lloyd watched Allie disappear through the door marked Admin. He smirked. ‘You shly dog.’
‘Oh, piss off,’ Hal said. Leaving Lloyd gaping at him, he turned and marched to the door marked D Block and lurched through it.
Back in the offal room, in his apron and gumboots, Hal ran his steel over the blade of his knife a dozen times and went back to slicing sheep kidneys and livers with a new-found zeal. By the time the other workers filtered back in a few minutes later there was a mound of shining brown innards on Hal’s bench. No one said anything, though old Tommy cast a worried glance his way, which Hal ignored in his furious flurry of labour. He even ignored Charlene when he noticed her standing up beside him, her beefy arms folded over her chest.
•
At her desk in the admin office, under the curious glances of Joyce, Gail and Judy, Allie gathered her desk things and readied herself for come what may. It came soon enough, in the squat form of Bill McGuire, who descended on her like a calm and efficient thunderstorm.
‘Empty your desk, collect your cheque from the pay office and get out,’ he said.
She was in the process of doing just that, and didn’t feel the need to respond.
‘Just a minute Mr McGuire,’ Joyce piped up. ‘Do you mind telling me—?’
‘Stay out of it, Joyce,’ he snapped, staring at Allie. Perplexed by her eerie calmness, he banged on, ‘There’s no room for that sort of behaviour at my plant. And don’t expect a reference because you won’t be working in this town again. I’ll see to that, Missy, don’t you worry.’
‘Ya really mean that, Bill?’ Allie beamed at him as she emptied her in-tray onto the desk—he clearly knew nothing about her new appointment with Angus Hawley—and strode out under the anxious eyes of Joyce and the admin ladies. As she was walking out she caught Gail giving her a faint smile, and Judy, who’d never said boo to a goose before, whispered, ‘You tell ’em, Allie.’
She was at the payroll office getting her cheque when McGuire marched over, a dark look on his craggy face. ‘You left your book behind,’ he said and held out The Fire Next Time.
Taken aback, she reverted to politeness, her default response to older white men. ‘Oh. Thanks Mr McGuire.’ She reached for it, but his hairy fingers held it away.
He looked from the black faces on the cover to Allie’s. ‘You’re a smart girl. You could’ve had a job here for life. A few years’ time, play your cards right, you might’ve even wound up a supervisor. Instead you’re reading this guff. What do they call it, black power politics?’ He shook his head, salt and pepper hair slicked down and parted in the middle, amazement on his doughy face. ‘Next thing you’ll be thinking about going to uni or teachers’ college, something like that.’ His eyes crinkled like some friendly teacher giving advice to an apt pupil.
