90 Packets of Instant Noodles (16 page)

It takes us ages to get to Bunno. It's pretty weird seeing the world again, even if it is out of the windows of a police car and the view is mainly paddocks and petrol stations. When we get there and walk from the car to the office, with the cops a little too close either side of me, it fills me with the old hate from before, from those times with McPhee, makes me want to rage against them, against the unfairness of how everything has turned out. But this time I also hate myself for everything I've done—and haven't done—that has got me here. And if Craggs were here I'd punch his lights out.

I'm looking hell guilty. Whatever I say sounds pathetic. I'm in this picture, big-time, with or without Craggs.

There's some trashy women hanging around in the waiting area. One of them looks like she's about to go to sleep, she's so wasted.

The cops walk me up to the counter.

‘Joel Strattan, Sarge,' Wardle says. ‘We're bringing him in for questioning.'

The guy looks at me and nods. ‘Righto. Interview room's free. The other one's been brought in, too.'

Tremain glances at me and then says, ‘I'll look after him. Anything else, Sarge?'

‘Yeah, the store owner's coming in to do an ID later on. They reckon she's okay, just bruised, a bit concussed and shaken up. The other guy, though...' he shakes his head and looks hard at me. ‘They're not so sure about him.'

Am I starring in my own worst nightmare?
Please don't die, old man. You can't die.

Tremain goes into a room.

Wardle tells me to follow him and we go down a system of corridors like bad plumbing till we get to a small room.

‘Wait here,' he says, motioning me to go in.

He's gone about ten minutes and I spend the time in a cold déjà vu.

I swore I'd never find myself in one of these places again.

And yet here I am, again.

Oh, god, do I wish I'd never shown Craggs that fucking hut, or told him about the gun. What was I thinking? I should have known he wouldn't be able to resist,
I should have known.

Hang on, what am I thinking? I don't even know that he did it yet! They're bloody getting to you, Joel. Innocent until proved guilty, right?

I shut my eyes against the thought of the old guy calling out for help in the forest.

I try to imagine Craggs firing a gun—
that
gun—and it's, it's ... disturbing. Was the old guy shouting? What was Craggs doing in his house, anyway? Was he looking to get the old guy—to get him for what he said when he caught us snooping?

And the day when Craggs arrived, I remember how the woman from the shop pissed him off, that very first day, how he'd called her a
fucking moll.

Tell me it's all a coincidence.

They'll have called Dad by now. And my case manager. And Bella. She'll know about this soon.

It's all over.

Joel Strattan, he just gets better and better.

Wardle and Tremain come in after what seems like hours.

‘Your mate's a bit crook,' Wardle says with a smug grin on his face. ‘Seems he spent a rough night bedding down in the bush. The mercury dipped to minus two out there last night.'

I don't say anything.

‘Your father is on his way.'

Something inside me slumps. Dad. After everything, this.

‘And Mrs Pritchard from the Nallerup Store's here. We just interviewed her. She knows you, of course. Said you collected your mail there and signed the police register while you were at it.'

I look up.

‘You're not too bad a kid, according to her. Quite polite, she reckons.'

She must have seen Good Joel.

‘Mrs Pritchard says you met Craig outside her shop when he arrived in town.'

‘Did you?' Tremain says.

I breathe in slowly. ‘Yes.'

Wardle goes on, ‘She got a good long look at her assailant, seeing he was in there with her for several minutes before he knocked her unconscious. And she says she's 100 per cent sure that there was only one attacker.'

Yes.

‘Is there anything—
at all
—you want to tell us at this point, Joel? Bearing in mind the exceptionally serious nature of these incidents.'

I look at him. I feel so tired. ‘I only want to say that it wasn't me. I had nothing to do with this.'

Tremain stands up, nods at Wardle. ‘Righto, then. We'll go next door into the identification room. We've set up a digi-board.' He looks at my blank face. ‘It's a series of digital photo images of people based on witness descriptions. So we can make a positive ID.'

Jesus fucking Christ. A line-up, a digital line-up.

‘Don't worry,' Wardle says to me. ‘If it wasn't you, no one's gunna pick you, are they?'

They leave the room. There's a small square of glass above the door handle into the next room. I lean up on the table to see if I can see anything. A door opens, and Craggs comes in with another copper. I feel like I'm hallucinating. This is not really happening. Craggs looks like shit, pale and sick.

I hope that woman's got 20/20 vision.

After about a minute, the door opens again and Craggs gets ushered out. I don't see him again. Tremain comes back into my room, and this time Dad's with him.

I stand up as Dad comes through the door.

He looks right at me and says, ‘You all right?'

I nod. I can barely meet his face.

He reaches out an arm to me, drops it down halfway.

Tremain slides out the door again, saying, ‘I'll be right back.'

When he's gone, Dad and I are silent and the tension is drip torture. How do you start this conversation?
Hey, Dad, how's it going?
I know he is going to go fucking ballistic about this. Maybe not now, not here, but he will, after all the hassle he went through to save my butt first time round. I should have rung him and told him about Craggs coming down when I had the chance.

There are noises in the next room, chairs scraping the floor and people moving up and down the corridors outside.

Dad puts his elbows on the table and rests his chin in his hands. ‘I thought everything was going well with you out there.'

‘It was.'

‘Well, then, why...'

‘I didn't do anything, Dad.' I look at him. ‘I didn't
do
this, okay?'

He stares at me long and hard, like there's something in him that he wants to let out but can't. His mouth turns down at the corners in the silence.

‘You're pretty close to the main suspect,' he says quietly. ‘Too bloody close to that little—' He closes his eyes a moment. ‘It's harbouring, Joel. It's aiding and abetting. Do you know what that is?' He doesn't wait for me to answer. ‘It's when you provide the props but don't actually do the thing yourself.'

I look at him. ‘You make it sound like we had this planned or something.'

‘No, I don't mean that. I mean ... you let yourself become involved again!' He pokes out a finger. ‘One: you knew he wasn't meant to be at the cabin with you. And two, you knew that he is—that Craggs is—a ...
risk
to you. I could sense that you'd figured that out when you left, that you were going to start thinking for yourself for a change.'

Yeah, let's just get it out there: Joel's weak. Weak Joel. Pathetic Joel, can't say no Joel, yes-man Joel, fucking pushover mouse Joel—

I fume. I did everything I could to stop Craggs except tying him up to the water tank. This time I know: I
wasn't
a pushover.

‘Look.' Dad measures a breath. ‘I know you didn't do this. I knew when they called me that it wasn't something you would have done. The shop owner's already said she's sure it wasn't you, she saw who smacked her senseless.' He pauses and gestures to the door. ‘Even the sergeant—Wardle—is pretty confident it wasn't you.'

I'm blown away. ‘Then what am I
doing
here?'

He turns to me, then, with a full-on muted roar. ‘Why was
Craggs
down in the cabin with you, Joel? You tell
me
that and we'll
all
begin to understand why you're here.'

‘He just fuc—He just
came down.
I didn't invite him. He wrote and told me he was coming and I couldn't do anything about it.'

‘So you agree that you were meant to be on your own for those three months; you knew that.'

‘Yes, Dad, I
know.
I'm telling you, he just rocked up at the last minute—I didn't even really
want
him there.'

‘Well, you should have done something about that.'

I laugh at that. ‘Like what? Barricade myself in?'

He leans forward. ‘Joel, it hurts like hell to admit this, but you need to accept that while you may not have done this yourself, you are most certainly implicated in helping Craggs to do it.'

I stand up. ‘It's not like I showed him the old guy's place, thinking he was gunna go and
do
something—I would never have taken him there if I thought that. I can't help that Craggs was
born,
Dad!'

He leans back in his chair and runs his hands over his knees, over and over again.

This is too much. I haven't done anything. Doesn't anyone hear that?

When Dad looks at me again, he shakes his head and I can see he's welling up.

‘Dad, please—'

‘I just don't want you to
be
here, Joel. You're much better than this place.' He takes a slow breath.

He looks old, sitting there, waiting for the news.

There's a heavy scuffling bodyjam outside.

Dad looks over in that direction.

I'm sorry, Dad. I'm really sorry.

When Tremain comes back in, he's got Wardle with him and a pile of files and papers under his arm. They sit down and Wardle says, ‘Well, there's good news and bad news. What do you want first?'

His eyes are magnets. They don't let me go. After a moment I say, ‘The bad news. I guess.'

He looks down and takes in a long breath. ‘Robert Neville, your neighbour in the forest, died half an hour ago.'

Dad covers his eyes with one hand.

‘He'd lost a lot of blood by the time he got to Emergency. The Western Power guy said he passed out on the drive to the hospital—he never regained consciousness.'

There's a sort of silence around the table that is heartbreaking. The words hang.

Dad lets out a sob.

The pain comes in like a rush.

I liked him, funny old guy.

He didn't deserve this. No one deserves any of this.

I look back up at Wardle. My lips can't move.

He leans forward and says quietly to us, ‘But we've had a positive ID on the kid, and got his prints off the gun, hair from the house, so ... you're in the clear, son.'

Nothing much goes in.

‘It was as we thought: Adams, Craig Michael. Admitted it to Constable Tremain over here after a bit of
encouragement,
shall we say.'

Dad eventually clears his throat. ‘So ... is Joel going to be charged with anything?'

‘Well...' Wardle drums his pen on the table. ‘Given that Adams corroborated Mrs Pritchard's story that Joel wasn't involved, I think he'll manage to scrape out of this relatively unscathed. You can thank your lucky stars, though, son,' he says to me. ‘Adams reckons you had a blue last night and he left shortly after.'

Dad looks at me.

‘What will happen to him?' I ask.

‘He'll appear in Bunbury Children's Court on Monday, and then we'll see. It depends on how he pleads.'

I must look confused, because Tremain explains, ‘If he admits to all the charges, then it's likely to be a relatively quick process. But if his lawyer decides to contest the charges, it will probably end up in Perth. And there might need to be some psychological assessment done, given his age and some of the things he said in his statement...'

I look up. ‘Psychological assessment?'

Tremain treads carefully. ‘He's saying that he thought it was his father, that he sort of lost grip of reality and didn't know where he was. I believe there is a history of domestic violence in the home ... That might afford him some leeway when it comes time for sentencing.'

‘Joel will need to make a formal statement,' Tremain says, ‘but we can do that tomorrow. Come back at 9a.m. and we'll get it down. It shouldn't take more than an hour.'

Dad has to sign some forms and Wardle gives him a business card. ‘Nine a.m. Don't forget.' He heads towards the door but turns back just as he gets there, nods at Dad. ‘And maybe you should try to get an early night. You both look like you need it.'

We drive into the centre of Bunbury, down the main strip, looking for a place to park up for the night. They've tried to make it look like Freo down here, with cafés and bars and tables on the sidewalks, but it looks pretty try-hard to me.

It's about 6p.m. We must have been with the police for hours. The sun's going down and you can smell the salt from the ocean. Around us, people are going home from work. I get a whiff of how completely abnormal my life is. I should be coming home from school now. I should be choosing DVDs to watch with Bella this weekend. I shake my head. What was that saying she gave me? Einstein?
In the middle of difficulty is opportunity,
or something? Yeah, well, that's bloody top stuff, Albert, top stuff. Feel free to show me the opportunity in this situation any time you like.

We're stopped at lights. The people cross in front of us as though they know exactly where they're going. Dad looks like he's just done a round with Mike Tyson. I look at myself in the side mirror.

‘I wanna go to court, Dad.'

‘What?'

‘When Craggs goes, on Monday. I wanna be there.'

He leans back in his seat. ‘Oh, why, for Christ's sake?'

‘Dad, I have to go.'

‘Being there won't help him.'

‘I know. But I have to be there.'

‘Joel, he knows you support him without you having to show your face in court, for Christ's sake. You want to stay out of those places.'

I keep my voice even and say it again: ‘I'm going to be there on Monday.'

He looks over at me. ‘Well ... then, so am I.'

We book into this scungy motel out the back of town. It's the kind of place you imagine people having affairs must go to. I check the sheets for pubic hairs. Clear. There's no smell of mushrooms and no mice scampering around, so once I'm used to the tackiness of it, I actually feel like I'm staying at the Ritz.

Now today is over, Dad's going for the
Guinness Book of Records
longest silence. He spends about an hour in the shower, and by the time he comes out and sits for an age on the edge of his bed, I'm pretending to be asleep. He stays there, looking out at the black and white lighthouse, for as long as my eyes will stay open.