Rachael's Gift (6 page)

She huffed at me. I shook my head. I was half-serious.

I’d watched Cam and Marguerite together, a single mum and her daughter – like two tangled ropes with a mossy growth underneath. We’d clicked, M and me, but I’d always been the outsider. ‘Don’t let them become like us,’ Marguerite had said, referring to Rachael and Camille. ‘She’s your kid, too.’

I collected the post from our letterbox and flicked through it – mostly bills and then one large envelope with Rach’s school crest on it. It was a formal letter from Ms Sheehan detailing our initial meeting, Rachael’s complaint, and Ashley Everett and Rachael’s suspensions – which were for both parties’ own ‘protection’. The police had called a number of times now, but Rachael had still refused to talk to them.

I wanted to talk to someone who knew about this stuff, so I called up an old mate I’d gone to cop school with, Anne Fellows, who now worked as a child psychologist for the police. She told me to come on down for a chat.

The city walls were an inch thick with graffiti and out of this seedy tip towered a monstrous cement building, bound in barbed wire and steel. The boys in blue strutted in and out. Ice-cool lawyers accompanied men in ill-fitting suits with odd-looking ties. Skinny men covered in tats lit their first bunger as they were let into daylight – the old man never forgave me for failing to make the grade as a detective.

I bumped into Walt and Sharpie. They were plain-clothed, but I could tell by the bulges around their chests they were carrying.

‘Wolfe, matey!’

The three of us shook hands and slapped each other’s shoulders. Old mates from old times. Years ago we’d been nippers, training for the force together and wagging to go surfing one too many times, but these two had got through and were now partners.

‘Come for a job, mate?’ said Sharpie, ever the smart-arse.

‘Nah, mate, just dropping in on Fellows.’

‘Mate, you’re damn lucky you made the great escape from here,’ said Walt, tucking his hands underneath his arms. ‘Terry’s crackin’ down on us all, wavin’ his dick around like a whip. I’m tellin’ you, s’not what it used to be. Not like when your old man ran the department.’

‘Let’s go for that beer some time,’ said Sharpie.

‘Yep, no worries, mate,’ I said, watching them walk off to their plainclothes car.

The automatic doors slid open and I walked into the air-conditioned enquiry room. There were rows of blue plastic chairs, a ticket machine and a small cubicle with a steel grille. Everything else was shut behind security doors. Anne met me in the foyer, signed me in and took me down a warren of corridors. She pressed a code into a keypad and we were buzzed through another door.

Anne Fellows had thickened out since I’d known her at cop school. She wore her hair cut short and had a tough, no-nonsense way about her. I guess you had to, working in this boys’ club.

‘Good to see you, Wolfey. How’s tricks?’

‘Good to see you too. Things have changed. I’m married with a grown-up kid – well, nearly grown up.’

‘So the lone wolf’s got himself a family.’

‘And you?’

‘No time for family round here,’ she said.

‘Can’t be too pretty.’

‘Yeah, not a lot too pretty. So tell me about it.’

I told her briefly about the teacher and Rach. She listened carefully, jotting down notes. ‘I was hoping you could give us some advice?’

‘No worries. Has she made a statement?’

‘Not yet. I mean she won’t.’

She thought for a moment. ‘She doesn’t have to give one if she doesn’t want to. Although we’d need one if you wanted to proceed with a criminal investigation. There also needs to be some corroborative evidence to press charges. That’s the trouble, you see: they often have to act several times before we can get something on them. It’s tough for everyone. Is Rachael coping okay?’

‘She won’t talk about it, even though she told the principal. She won’t tell us.’

‘It’s such a difficult situation. And you? Are you all right?’

I felt guilty about my creeping doubt. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’

‘I don’t blame you. But there’s plenty of assistance out there. Would you like me to speak with her, informally?’

‘Yeah, I guess. You know, she’s still just a kid. I’m not too good on girls. I have trouble enough with my own wife – sorry, I mean sometimes you lot are a bit hard to understand.’

Anne laughed, the lines creasing around her eyes. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘Um, she has no fear. You’d give anything to see her fly on a set.’

‘Just like her old man?’

‘Yeah . . . er . . . she’s just normal, I guess. Difficult. Just like any other chick. There were a few tantrums when she didn’t get her own way.’

‘And what about specific incidents? Has there been anything like this before?’

‘Nah . . . Oh, we had to change her school a few years back. She’d got into a fight in the playground. Got a black eye out of it. But you should’ve seen the other one.’ I smiled at my joke, but Anne didn’t. ‘Some other kid accused her of stealing their Barbie doll,’ I explained, ‘and she swore black and blue she never took it. I think the kid came forward and remembered they’d lost it.’ I hesitated, ‘Oh . . . yeah . . . there was this other time recently, she was a bit out of control. Started seeing this older bloke – a surfer.’ My eyes closed, unable to face the light, and my voice went hoarse. ‘She lied a bit about it, that’s all. Just a few white lies.’ Saying it out loud made it real and I found I couldn’t tell the whole story. ‘Teenagers,’ I joked. ‘Could’ve been anyone’s kid. Just a phase, you know? Did that crap myself.’

Anne nodded her head reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, Wolfe. I’ll help you or at least get you on the right track. The teacher incident is serious. Do you know who’s handling the investigation?’

I fished out the piece of paper from my wallet with the details of the policewoman who’d been calling us and gave it to Anne.

‘Right, let me speak to them first and then call you to make a time to come back with Rachael and Camille, okay?’ She scribbled on her notepad. ‘You said the school had requested Rachael see a psychologist, but Camille didn’t tell you about this because she believed it wasn’t necessary – that right?’

‘Yeah . . . yeah . . .’ I shook my head. ‘They said she’s got a problem with lying.’ I felt my face go red, as if I had handed Rach over to the lions without a fair trial.

Anne smiled. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve done the right thing.’ She touched my arm and I saw how she’d be good with the kids. How they’d trust her. She had a nice way about her – kind, but to the point.

I leant forward. ‘But what makes a kid lie?’

Anne chewed the end of her pen and said, ‘Could be anything – a number of reasons.’

‘Yes, but what if it’s all the time? What if it’s more serious?’

She laughed, showing silver molars at the back of her mouth. ‘Nine times out of ten they’re just testing boundaries, wanting attention or sometimes they don’t even know why they do it! Very rarely is it more serious than that – a personality disorder for example: antisocial behaviour, borderline personality, sociopathy. But you can’t formally diagnose a kid with these things. Seriously, though, I wouldn’t worry. She’s probably just got character – just like her old man.’

*

The Ford was like an oven. The steering wheel was hot to touch. I sat on the edge of the driver’s seat with my feet on the running board and waited. It was mid-afternoon and the sun touched the tip of the skyscrapers in the city. The air was still, not even a burp. I could feel the grease on my forehead. A yard away, a bloke with a beard and a brown paper bag pushed another bloke who’d tried to grab it. A few cars down, a parking cop wrote a ticket. I took a towel from the back, draped it across the wheel, started the engine and got the hell out of there.

On the motorway, I rolled the windows down and hung my head out in the wind like a dog. It was a start. I just had to get Camille on board and then tackle Rachael. Neither an easy task.

The beach was rammed. The sea sparkled emerald on the shore, growing dark blue as it got deeper. There were the odd black patches of seaweed, but otherwise the water was clear. Unsurprisingly, the swell was non-existent. A couple of keeners, a row of black specks on the horizon, just drifted. They were getting nothing anytime soon.

The tar burnt my bare feet. I reached the boardwalk and hung over the railing. Half-naked bodies shone with oil and sunscreen, young kids played with their buckets and spades, red-and-yellow flags marked the safe swim zone. A group of young girls – Rach’s age – sunbathed on their sarongs. They were smoking, wearing big shades and flirting with the lifeguards. They’d come down after school. Just doing normal teenage stuff. Rach should have been down there too.

My feet sank into the yellow sand, hot at first and then just warm. I dropped my towel and ran headlong into the water. The coolness washed over me, peeling back the layers of dirt. I plunged under again, swimming breaststroke, staying under for as long and as far as my single breath could take me.

*

I picked Rach up from the gym. She was tight-lipped and surly the entire way home. I thought a workout would have sorted her, broken her mood, but she just stared out the window.

The traffic was moving freely. Mr Brown fumbled about on the floor by Rach’s feet and the Eagles crooned low on the radio.

Her fingers tapped the screen of her phone. I wanted to snatch it from her and chuck it out the window. ‘What do you do on that thing all day?’

She held the phone out against the side mirror and pouted. It clicked. Then she brought it back towards her, typing madly.

‘You know, when I was your age –’

She made a loud groaning noise.

‘No, hear me out – we actually hung out with our mates. Or there was the really old-fashioned thing called a landline.’

‘Yeah, yeah, Wolfe. Give me a break.’

‘Mind taking a break and giving your old man some airtime?’

She rested the phone by her side. ‘It’s a selfie, Dad, we put them on our Facebook walls or post them on Insta or Snapchat.’

‘Snapchat?’

Another groan. ‘It’s like a
Mission Impossible
photo or video that blows up or disappears into cyberspace after ten seconds.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds dangerous.’

‘Facebook and Twitter are worse: they stay forever.’

‘Twitter?’

‘Oh my god. Do you live under a rock? It’s all about building an online presence. Some people get famous this way. It’s good for my art profile.’

‘Never thought all this celebrity stuff would be your go.’

‘God, Wolfe, don’t be such a philistine.’

Rach switched her focus to the little Hawaiian doll playing the ukulele dangling from my rear-vision mirror. I’d found it on Pipeline when I’d bit off more than I could chew and thought I was a goner. She reached up and touched the grass skirt. ‘Your lucky charm,’ she said. ‘I need one of those.’ She took it off the mirror and examined the doll’s face up close. It was pretty basic looking – painted lips and eyes, a bit like a crude version of Barbie.

‘Take it,’ I said. She stared at it a moment longer then sighed and shook her head. ‘It’s not the same.’ She hung the doll back up. ‘It won’t give me luck.’

I decided now was as good a time as any to broach the subject. ‘Anne Fellows reckons she can help us,’ I said.

The Ford hit a pothole and we bounced up and down with the truck’s dodgy suspension. I had my hand on the gearstick and crunched her into first as we went up a hill.

‘You remember Anne? She knows about this sort of stuff. The law. Investigations. Pressing charges. She talks to young people. Like you.’

She frowned. ‘Charges! I already told Camille: I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to press charges.’ Her expression was hard and determined.

‘But . . . why?’

‘Can’t we just forget about it?’

‘Rach, it’s out of our hands.’

She let out a grunt of intense irritation.

‘Don’t you want to get this guy for what he’s done?’

Her phone beeped. She picked it up and started angrily pressing the screen and then threw it back down on the seat. ‘It’s just really hard to talk about it, okay?’

We stopped at the lights.

‘Okay, babe. Okay.’

She covered her face with her hands. The nails were bitten and chipped, painted dark purple.

I caught my eyes in the mirror; I felt like an arsehole: was I pushing too hard?

There was a time when she told me everything. When I knew all the crazy stuff that went on in her world. Like when she busted out her first reo; when she was upset that Mr Brown had a paw pad removed; when she’d cried on my chest after getting a black eye in the school playground. But lately we barely spoke to each other. And now here was this teacher. It sent a chill up my spine – like when she snaked in the line-up for fun. She’d circle around the back of the guys in an S-shape and sneak in to be the first one to shoot off. The blokes were well pissed off, but never said anything because she was a chick and young and, I guess, my kid, so she got away with it, gliding off with a grin on her mug. It was bad form and I told her so. She didn’t seem to care.

Finally, she lifted her head up, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’

Had she really given in? Wow, I felt a tad light-headed – that was easy. Too easy.

‘But promise me you’ll drop the cop thing?’

I kept my eye on the road.

‘Wolfe?’

‘Sure.’

*

Camille stood by the sink, rinsing out a dish. Rach marched in. They locked eyes. Cam looked worried. Rach fiddled with the necklace she wore. It was made from leather with a pendant of the yin-and-yang symbol. Loads of the boys wore them or had it inked on their body. I wondered if it had been a gift from Clippo; it seemed like the clichéd thing a surfer would give a girl.

‘What’s happened?’ Cam asked.

‘Rach wants to talk,’ I said.

Cam peeled off her rubber gloves and filled the kettle with water.

We sat down at the kitchen table and Cam placed mugs in front of us. Rach’s hands circled hers. She hung her head meekly and yet when her eyes flicked up and caught ours there seemed to be the smallest trace of defiance, or maybe pride, but then maybe I was just looking too hard, because then her shoulders shrank as if she wanted to curl into a ball and hide.