Vodka Doesn't Freeze (18 page)

In a small courtyard off the kitchen, two teenage boys smoked cigarettes. They blew out insolence with their smoke. Jill thought she'd at least try to talk to them.

'You guys know Mr Sebastian?'

The oldest boy looked her up and down and whispered something to his mate. They both laughed.

'I asked you a question.' Jill felt hot and tired.

The boys sniggered again, and she had a sudden image of herself slapping the spotty face of the closest boy. She walked back into the kitchen. Honey had the fridge open and was poking around inside. Jill saw loaves of bread, margarine, a catering-sized jar of Vegemite.

'I'm going upstairs,' Jill said, walking from the kitchen.

The muted music of a computer game led her up the stairs. She walked into one of three rooms off the first-floor landing, following the sound. A dark-haired boy who looked about twelve sat on a dirty, pink fabric-covered couch. His eyes were locked on a TV screen, his hands on a game control panel. She sat next to him, watched the game.

'These guys are the worst.'

Jill was surprised to hear him speak.

'They come at you so fast.'

'Shit! Look out for that one,' she warned him.

The muscleman controlled by the boy blasted the flesh-eating zombie just in time. Green brains splattered from its skull; grey limbs flew into the air. Moments later, another zombie shot the muscleman in the head and the boy turned to face her.

'I'm Jill,' she told him.

'Jack.'

'Ha. Jack and Jill.'

A white smile split his brown face, and the sun came out in the small room.

'Jack, I'm a police officer.' She decided to be honest. These kids all knew anyway. They always said it was the shoes cops wore, but Jill felt street kids developed senses others didn't, survival skills, honed living in the urban jungle.

'Got a gun?' They always wanted to know.

She lifted the short jacket she wore over her T-shirt, showed him her revolver.

'Cool. Can I touch it?'

That was always the next question; either that or, 'Have you ever shot anyone?' His brown eyes were young and old.

'Not today.' The answer would do for both questions.

'You lookin' for Jamaal?'

The air was very still in the room; dust motes danced in a sunbeam near the window. A pulse beat in her neck.

'Why would you think that, Jack?'

''Cause you should be.' He put his chin on his chest, fiddled with the joystick.

'You know what? I am looking for Jamaal. Does he come around here much?'

Jack shrugged.

'How do you know him?'

'He told me about this place.'

'Has Jamaal ever hurt you, Jack?'

Eyes down. Nothing.

'Why should we be looking for him?'

'You should know why.'

'Could you come to where I work and tell me more about him?'

'You're crazy.'

She looked up when the light altered in the doorway.

'Hello. May I help you?' came a sharp female voice.

Jill stood. The woman looked about thirty-five maybe, hippie clothing, closed face, no smile.

'Sergeant Jillian Jackson.' Jill held out her hand.

'Do you have an appointment with someone here?' The woman ignored her hand, didn't offer her name.

'Do I need one?'

'Well, adults are not encouraged to drop by unannounced,' said the woman. 'Are you all right, Jack?'

The boy said nothing. Jill asked, 'What about Jamaal Mahmoud? Alejandro Sebastian? Do they drop by unannounced?'

The woman paused a few beats. Looked at a point over Jill's shoulder, then fixed her eyes back on her face.

'I'm afraid I'm the wrong person for you to speak to. If you'll come to the office next door I'll give you my supervisor's card.'

'Simple question, though, really – do those men drop by? What role do they have here at the centre?'

Jack stared at the woman, also waiting for her answer.

'Yes, as I said, Ms Jackson, my supervisor's best placed to answer any questions about the centre. If you'll just follow me?'

'It's
Sergeant
Jackson, actually, and yes I will take that name.'

The woman turned and lead the way out of the room. Jill lingered behind and slipped her work card into Jack's hand.

'Call me any time, about anything. If I'm not there, leave a message and I'll call you the next day. I promise. I'll be back here, Jack, but if you need help, call me.'

When the woman made an officious noise in the hallway outside the door, Jill left the room and followed the wide, bright-orange skirt in front of her.

S
OMEHOW
, M
ERCY SEEMED
to have cut almost everything else from her life. She'd arrive home from the hospital and ignore the flashing light on her answerphone. The birds on her balcony would call for her attention, but now there were fewer than there used to be; she hadn't bothered to fill their water and feeder for weeks. They'd covered the deck with shit in protest. She'd go straight to the fridge and eat standing there, whatever was in front of her. Cold. Sometimes she'd make her way into the lounge room and take off her shoes, head for the bar, but, more often than not, she'd instead just grab her keys again and head out.

She knew it was a compulsion now. She couldn't rest at night unless she'd been to one of their houses. The feeling of impotence that had been growing like a parasite inside her for years was diminishing. She could reach out and hurt them any time she wanted. The hunters became the hunted.

When she'd left work she hadn't even bothered to go home. She'd brought everything she would need when she left the house that morning.

She pulled into a big all-hours convenience store and bought a jumbo bag of cheese Twisties, some chocolate and Coke. Sometimes she had to wait a few hours before they got home. A queue had formed in the service station. A sign pronounced a record lottery draw this week; the people ahead of her were all stocking up on tickets. Their motivation seemed alien to her.

Looking at two women about her age in the queue ahead of her, she wondered suddenly how the hell it had come to this. How had she ever become so lost? She thought again about going to the police, but images of what had happened to kids, to her, what was happening to someone right now, interrupted her thoughts again. Asleep or awake, her mind was filled with little else.

Last time she'd tried to have dinner with friends it had been a disaster. As soon as their kids were in bed, she'd started in on her second bottle of red and her stories of horror. Trying to tell her friends, to convince them, that their children weren't safe, to teach them what to watch out for, how often to check their kids' rooms for evidence that someone was grooming them for abuse: she wanted to keep them vigilant. When they'd tried to change the subject, she'd become belligerent, loud, unconcerned if the children awoke – they should be hearing this too. When she broke down in mortified but unstoppable sobs, they'd driven her home, and had not called since. Not that she blamed them, and not that she cared, frankly. People didn't understand, and there were other things she needed to do.

Throwing a bulging bag into her passenger seat, Mercy got back into her car, lit a cigarette and drove with purpose into the deepening evening.

T
HE BITE IN THE
pre-dawn breeze stung Jill's ears and woke her fully. The chill told her that summer was nearing its end. Dressed in white shorts and a singlet, her bikini underneath, she realised she'd need a tracksuit for her morning runs soon.

The change from summer to autumn always filled Jill with melancholy. For her, spring and summer represented youth, childhood. Autumn was about endings, the loss of innocence. And, of course, it was the precursor to winter; it was the beginning of winter when she'd been kidnapped. Those three months were the longest of the year, every year, for Jill.

She jogged down the steps of her apartment block and out into the quiet, dark streets of Maroubra. She had been restless last night, thinking about little Jack at the drop-in centre. She hoped he'd call.

She shivered as she crossed the street and lifted her pace, trying to warm up. But the coldness was inside; her mood matched the gunmetal-grey ocean, the surf roiling and messy this morning.

The beach was deserted. Even the gulls weren't playing. There were no surfers; she was alone. Familiar feelings of despair and apprehension rose up inside her with the isolation, and she caught them in her throat before they forced out a sob. She dropped her towel on the sand in her regular spot, put her head down, and ran.

For the first time in a long time, she thought about Joel. Maybe she should get in touch. She smiled wryly, realising she'd just slipped into the same pattern she did every year – when the weather got colder, she got lonely, and for two years in a row she'd spent winters casually dating Joel, only to feel stifled and resentful by summer. It's not fair to do that to him again, she thought.

Each footfall on the hard sand sent some pain through the area around her healing ribs. She tuned it out. Gotta get back to it sometime, she thought; I'll go mad without running. She reached the end of the lap and turned to make her way back to the other end of the beach. Spray from the turbulent surf blew into her eyes, and she wiped her face with her hands. As her vision cleared, she thought she saw someone else on the beach. There. She didn't break stride, continued running back the way she'd come. The hooded figure ran back from the edge of the ocean towards the street. That's weird, she thought, he can't have been down here more than five minutes. Must be too cold for him.

As she approached the place where she'd left her towel, Jill realised that this person, the only other person on the beach this morning, had also picked this very spot to stop. From three long strides away, she could see her towel was disturbed. She always left it folded tightly. She looked up towards the road to try to spot the runner, but it was still grey and misty and she couldn't see anyone. She thought about stopping, but figured that it had probably been a vagrant hoping she'd left her wallet under her towel.

'Been living at the beach too long to do that, dickhead,' she muttered under her breath and kept running.

Jill ran laps until the sun grudgingly rose in the east over the ocean, but the day stayed dull, and there were still few people on the sand when she finally stood dripping over her towel.

'What the fuck?' she said aloud, looking down at the edges of a manila folder protruding from underneath her towel. She stood there a few moments longer, just staring at the folder, and then looked up and down the beach.

A chubby female newsreader who lived a few blocks up from Jill was sparring with a personal trainer, throwing half-arsed punches at his gloves. There were a couple of board riders out beyond the chop, just sitting there, hoping. A middle-aged couple drank takeaway coffee silently, looking out to sea. A dog barked like a mad thing, chasing pigeons and waves, while his owner stood watching, lead in hand. That was about it this morning.

No-one was anywhere near her towel.

She bent and picked the towel up, leaving the envelope there. She hugged the towel to her body, drying her face, starting to shiver. What the hell was in there?

She wanted to delay the moment when she looked inside. She absolutely hated surprises. She scooped up the folder, flicking it to remove the sand that had settled on top. She walked back towards her unit.

The folder had broken her routine. She didn't stop for the paper, and as she ran up the stairs her nerves jagged. She pulled her key from the small pocket in her shorts, and let herself into her apartment.

She threw the folder onto her breakfast bar and stared at it balefully. She wanted to open it now, but felt she needed her routines more than ever at the moment. It was a shower first, coffee, the newspaper on the balcony. The folder would be her paper this morning. She stripped, and walked naked into her black granite bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, coffee in hand, and dressed in black combat pants and a fitted navy shirt, her blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail, Jill was ready to check out the folder, and she carried it out to the balcony. Suddenly in a hurry, she didn't bother to sit. She dropped the folder onto her outdoor table and flipped open the cover. A photograph, blown up to A4 size, lay before her, but it took a while to understand what it depicted, her brain not at first recognising the tangle of colours and shapes.

When she realised what she was looking at, Jill's coffee cup slipped from her fingers and crashed to the terracotta tiles of her balcony.

The photo showed, close-up, a face so pulverised that its features were almost unrecognisable. One half of the head was caved in completely, so that most of the mouth was lost in a black, red and white gaping hole. One of the eyes was missing; the other was just visible through the blood. It looked like there was a tooth or bone fragment stuck in the blood above the eye. The blood looked wet. Whoever had taken this photo had been there when this violence was inflicted. Jill knew it.

She dropped into a chair and put her head between her knees. The action caused her to notice the spilled coffee seeping into the porous terracotta, and this revived her a little. She went inside to her kitchen and grabbed a sponge and cold water, and came back outside to clean up the mess.

The photo image had seared into her retinas, though, and as she cleaned, she scanned it mentally. Even with that much damage, she knew it was a male. She wondered when it had been taken. And why it was given to her? Was this a warning or a clue? Was it a sick joke? She thought of the crude penis inked onto her locker and knew it could be a prank by another cop – a photo of an accident victim maybe. It could be Elvis-style humour.

Regardless, she had things to do today. She couldn't let this rattle her. She closed the cover of the folder and walked back inside her unit, sliding shut both glass doors as she did so. The sun struggled through the mist outside now, and light washed into the orderliness of her living space, which was in sharp contrast to the mess that still floated in her field of vision. She blinked it away and clicked her TV on, listening to the morning news program as she made herself some toast and Vegemite. She fixed a fresh cup of coffee and took it, black, into her living room, curling up on one of her sofas to eat her breakfast.

The giggling of the announcers on the morning program always annoyed her. She didn't mind the human interest stories and sports reviews that filled the spaces between the half-hourly news broadcasts, but she had no patience for the self-indulgent prattle of the presenters, giving their opinion on every topic. She was relieved to see the 7 a.m. broadcast was about to start.

'Police are today considering the establishment of a special taskforce to investigate a series of brutal deaths that have taken place in Sydney, following the discovery of the fatal stabbing of a man in Leichhardt. The victim has been identified as Wayne Crabbe, a 43-year-old single man, whose body was discovered by neighbours late yesterday afternoon. Mr Horace Green and his wife, Ida, made the gruesome discovery when they went to investigate a terrible smell in the unit next door.'

Jill watched, transfixed, as an elderly man spoke directly at the camera, his arm around his pale and teary wife.

'Haven't seen anything like that since Vietnam. This country is going to hell. If it's not the Triads, it's the Middle Eastern gangs. We're not safe here any more, I tell you. My wife and I have lived on this road for thirty-seven years, but we won't be staying. Australians are going to have to bear arms in their own houses if police don't take back the streets.'

The attractive female broadcaster, serious now, nodding her head to punctuate her remarks, went on to say that the victim's face was so badly beaten that he was unrecognisable and he had been identified by his fingerprints.

For once Jill didn't heed the toast crumbs falling from her shirt when she stood. Another victim, bashed beyond recognition, most likely with a criminal sheet, given that he'd been identified by fingerprint analysis. Jill was ready to bet she knew what this man had been arrested for in the past, and she figured she also knew what had so shaken the elderly couple who'd discovered him.

She grabbed her keys, bag and the folder, and headed out the door.