Ghost Child (8 page)

‘No, Lisa, there wasn’t. Jacob’s
clothes
were dry. His clothes were dry, but his hair was wet. How do you explain that? How did Jacob’s hair get wet?’

I waited. It was time for Lisa to admit one of the
incontrovertible
facts of the case: Jacob’s hair was wet
because they’d put him in the bathtub, or doused him with water to try to bring him around. There was no other explanation. Jacob wasn’t marked. It wasn’t as if they were trying to wash away any blood, but for some reason, Jacob
had
been doused in water at some point before the ambulance arrived. Presumably he’d also been dressed in clean, dry clothes.

Now, if Lisa had been a smart crook, an experienced crook, she could have handled that fact. She would have said, ‘Yeah, all right, we put him in the bath. He was so weak, or so hot, when we carried him home that we needed to cool him down.’ That would be plausible. That’s something you or I might do. But Lisa’s instinct, her habit of a lifetime, was to
lie,
to lie about
everything
, and so she did.

I said, ‘Did you put Jacob in the bath?’

She was on automatic pilot now. The automatic, knee-jerk, lie-to-the-cops pilot. She said, ‘No.’

I said, ‘Lisa, when I’m done here, I’m going to speak to Harley. We are also talking to Peter. Do you think either of them will tell us that actually, yes, you did put Jacob in the bath?’

She was worried. They probably hadn’t gone over that detail. They probably had no story to cover that. Peter might say anything. The kid would certainly own up to it, and why not? It seemed an easy enough question for a child: did Mummy put Jacob in the bath? Sure she did.

So, Lisa now had a choice: she could either speak up and save herself, and give up Peter, or she could carry on with the charade. I was thinking, ‘Give him up, you stupid woman. He’s an arsehole.’ From the moment I’d seen him in Lisa’s house, not with his arms around her but reclined on the Jason, tapping away at a cigarette, I’d thought, ‘You’ve got nothing to lose by losing him.’ I was hoping she’d see things the way I saw them. She had a shallow, sexual bond with this guy. They were living together because it suited his animal instincts: he was getting a root. She was probably thinking, ‘Yeah, but I want to have a guy around, someone to party with; to drink UDL and smoke bongs and help keep the kids under control.’ But that wasn’t love. That wasn’t even the basis for any loyalty.
Give him up
.

I said, ‘Lisa, did Peter do something to Jacob?’

I said it in the voice I use when I’m trying to get a woman to crack. I like to think of it as my compassionate voice. It goes: confess to me! Own up now, say, ‘Okay, Jacob
wasn’t
bashed by a stranger. Peter kicked the shit out of my kid and the reason I’m covering up for him is because I’m bloody terrified!’

I said, ‘Lisa, we know that Jacob has been injured before.’

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she went through what I call the motions. She pushed back her chair. She dragged her decorated fingernails through the front of her hair and then threw her head back. She got to her
feet and found she wanted to be sitting again, so sat down. I let her go; it was just stress playing out.

‘I want to see a lawyer,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna get him to ask you why you aren’t out
there
trying to find out who did this, why you’re in
here
, hasslin’
me
.’

So, she wasn’t ready. Not yet.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s call a halt to proceedings for a moment. For the benefit of the tape, we are suspending the interview.’

I prepared to leave the room. Lisa was wide-eyed. She said, ‘Where you goin’?’

I said, ‘I want to give you a bit of time to think.’

‘In case you forgot, I got a funeral to plan.’

‘I understand that. There will be time. There will be an autopsy. I’m really urging you to use this time to think hard about how you want us to proceed.’

I left her alone – not strictly true, since a uniformed officer would have remained in the room – but essentially alone, to plan her next move. I walked down the corridor toward the staff canteen. I had the feeling, or maybe I’d been told, that Harley would be there. Now, as a rule, the courts don’t let cops like me interview little kids. You’ve got to have a specialist and the whole thing has to be strictly regulated. Kids have a tendency to tell adults what they think they want to hear and, besides that, who knows what goes on in the brain of a three-year-old? They can sense trouble as well as the older kids, and they’re keen to dodge it, like anyone is. Their
Achilles heel – if you want to call it that – is that they don’t self-censor. They aren’t cautious. The other thing is, if they’re conditioned to lie – and a lot of kids we deal with are conditioned to lie – you can catch them out pretty quick. Their made-up stories have a fantastic quality. They keep adding details, stuff that doesn’t fit, and the whole thing soon unravels, and you think, ‘Bingo!’ And then the counsellors come in and say it’s all inadmissible because you tried to trick the kid or something.

I figured it would be all right to have an informal chat, though. Harley had a social worker with him. I’d make like I was gathering information about the attacker, and nothing to use in court.

The moment I entered the canteen, the counsellor said, ‘This isn’t official, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m just up for a chat.’

Harley was like every three-year-old you’ve ever seen. He was moving around the unfamiliar room, examining coffee cups and reaching for the sugar spoon so he could stick it in his mouth.

I said, ‘Harley, can you sit here?’ I held a chair out for him. He wandered over, climbed up on it and sat down, his feet swinging.

I said, ‘Harley, we need to ask you about what happened yesterday.’

He didn’t say anything. I continued, ‘Harley, your mum has told us that a man bashed you and your brother.’

‘Jacob was bashed by a man,’ he said, happily enough. He wasn’t being flippant – what does a three-year-old know of flippant? – he was merely uninterested. He’d answered these questions before. He couldn’t see why it was important. He was looking at the ceiling, looking at the walls, wondering when he might be able to get up and resume exploring the room.

I said, ‘Harley, did somebody hurt Jacob?’

He said, ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Jacob got bashed by a man.’

He inched forward in the plastic chair, moving on his buttocks, the way kids do, shuffling until his feet touched the floor. Then, before I could stop him, he was out of the chair and making his way toward some new object of interest. Technically, I wasn’t allowed to touch him, but I couldn’t help myself. I rose and ruffled his hair – I swear, it was irresistible, that hair – and left the room.

I saw no value in tracking down Hayley. How old was she? Eighteen months? She couldn’t even talk. But I did want to give Lisa more time to come to her senses. So, rather than go back to the interview room, I tracked down Lauren. After all, she was six years old. If something
had
happened in the house on DeCastella Drive, as opposed to in the school, she would have to know about it.

Almost by accident, I found her in the corridor. She
was in the company of another counsellor. What can I say about how she appeared? I’ve thought about that so many times. Was she distraught? I don’t think she was, not then, anyway. She was quite interested in what was going on around her. The events of the previous day – the police and the ambulance – would have been pretty exciting, and now she was being treated the way kids are treated when there’s a tragedy of some kind: she was being spoiled. She’d been offered a Happy Meal from McDonald’s and now she and the social worker were off to the Coke machine. She was being allowed to handle the change. Probably, she’d be allowed to feed the coin slot, choose her drink, press the buttons, and make the can fall. If she was anything like any other kid in the world, she would have been thinking, ‘Wait until I tell Jake. Oh wait, Jake’s gone. Do I want Coke, or something else?’

In saying that, I don’t mean to imply that she was a callous child. Let me stress that, actually: I don’t believe for a minute that Lauren Cashman, or Cameron, or whatever she now calls herself, was a callous or uncaring child. In my experience, you can tell a six-year-old that their
parent
has died and they’ll go straight back to the TV, and look at it blankly. Ten minutes later, they’ll be giggling or fighting with a sibling over what to watch.

It will come for them – the grief, I mean – but it takes
years
, not hours.

Anyway, what happened in the corridor shocked us
all. I was standing there, and Lauren was maybe two metres away, coming toward me. She was shaking the change in her hand, in step with the social worker, and then, suddenly, out of the blue, her mother was there. Now, let me assure you, that wasn’t supposed to happen. We were trying hard to keep them apart. They may well have been mother and daughter, and they may well have needed to be together right then, but the mum was linked to a serious crime, and there was no way we were going to let them collude, not once it became clear that the story was bogus.

Anyway, for some reason they let Lisa out of the interview room at the same minute that Lauren was being escorted down the hall, and they ran right into each other.

Now, in the twenty years since then, I’ve thought a lot about what should have happened in that moment. Had Lisa’s account been true – if Jacob truly had been set upon by a stranger – then mother and daughter would have run toward each other, surely? Lisa would have bolted down the hall and taken her surviving child in her arms, and they would have sobbed together, grieved together, held each other up. Lauren would have run to her mother, confused and afraid, and seeking comfort.

What actually happened was the opposite. They stepped
back
. They looked startled to see each other. Lisa, in particular, got a fright. And then, get this, Lisa
hissed
. She raised her voice and said, ‘I hope you’re not telling any lies in there, Lauren.’

Lauren didn’t bat an eyelid. In a voice just like her mother’s, a lazy, husky, adult drawl, she said, ‘I ain’t said
nothin
’.’

She was speaking the truth. Lauren
hadn’t
told us what happened on DeCastella Drive, not yet, anyway. Her mother hadn’t told us anything, either. And yet, the look they gave each other, it was like:
Can I trust you?

We didn’t know it, not then, but they had an agreement. How it was reached, I can’t tell you. Maybe, in the moments before the ambulance arrived, Lisa sat her little girl down and spoke to her calmly, saying, ‘This is what we are going to do …’

Maybe the opposite is true. Maybe she took her by the shoulders and shook her until her eyes rattled and said, ‘If you so much as whisper a word about this …’

I don’t know how it happened or even, really, whose idea it was. What I do know is that they entered into a pact, and sealed it, before any of us arrived. They concocted the story about the attack. They went over the details, as best they could, and as far as I can tell, they all agreed, ‘If we stick to this, nothing can happen to any of us.’

It didn’t last, though. One of them reneged.

I must admit I was surprised when the police told me that Jacob Cashman’s mother wanted to have the funeral for her young son at my church, St John’s Anglican Church, on the Barrett Estate. It wasn’t so much that she wanted a
church
service that surprised me. It’s quite normal for people to seek out the priest when it comes time to bury someone, even on an estate where nobody under the age of seventy goes to church. No, what surprised me was that Mrs Cashman wanted an Anglican service for her son. I’d been following the case in the newspapers, and I knew for certain that the Cashman family had never set foot in my church. I’d also assumed that they were Catholic. The boy’s name – Jacob – seemed to suggest it. In my experience, when you’re dealing with a family that has named their
child Jacob – or, for that matter, Joseph or Sarah or Rebecca – you’re normally dealing with Catholics, but no, the police told me that the mother said they were Church of England, and so the Anglican Church was where the funeral would be.

I don’t kid myself that Lisa Cashman was making any kind of political or theological statement in saying that she was Church of England. I don’t imagine that she had any idea about the Reformation or the history of schism in the Christian churches. No, Church of England is simply what so many Anglo-Saxon Australian families that aren’t Catholic claim to be, when pushed on the question of religion. Come to that, I don’t believe that Lisa Cashman knew, not in any spiritual sense, that she had endowed Jacob with a truly Christian name. It’s entirely possible – quite common, actually – to find people who have no idea that Jake is a short form of Jacob, and that Jacob comes from the Bible. Parents these days present their children to be christened because they want to have a nice party with some formalities, they want to celebrate the baby and have photographs taken. It’s become something of a sad joke in the Church, though, that they don’t actually know why they are doing it. They don’t understand that a child when baptised is entering into a life of Christ. They don’t understand the significance of the names they give their children. At a conference on faith, I heard about a baby girl who the parents wanted to call Jezebel. Thank heavens, their
priest managed to talk them out of it. ‘But it’s so pretty!’ they said.

There is no point complaining, I suppose. Just as there’s no point complaining about the church building we had on Barrett. There might well have been a time – indeed, there was a time – when the tallest building in any Australian town would have been the church. A time when the steeple would have risen higher than any other structure on the landscape, when the church would have provided a focal point for the community. Those days are gone. Churches now are dwarfed by office blocks. On new estates – places like Barrett – well, they’re often out on the industrial estate. If we hadn’t taken the lease, the building might have ended up a branch headquarters for Medicare. St John’s was visible to no one but the staff at Barrett Glass who had to walk past to get a sandwich from the milk bar next door. It was neither the biggest nor the most impressive structure on the estate – that would be the shopping centre – and from one Sunday to the next, the pews – the plastic chairs – were mostly empty. There was no shame in Barrett in skipping church. In fact, young people felt quite embarrassed if they did want to go to church. It was daggy. That’s what the kids told me, ‘Church is daggy.’ Their parents thought the same. They filled their lives with work and sport and barbecues, and if they ever did feel empty, they’d buy some new possessions. If they yearned for a spiritual experience, they’d get out
the Tarot cards or scented candles, or have a séance. They would not turn to Christ.

When I started at St John’s I did make an effort to get people through the doors. I was of the view then – less so now, I don’t mind saying – that if church was daggy, if it was gloomy, then we should make it less intimidating. I put a signboard out the front, next to the wooden cross, and I changed the letters every week, to make the place seem alive and welcoming. Like everybody, I was inspired by the sign that once went up outside a church in Hawthorn: ‘What would you do if Jesus came to Hawthorn?’ Some wag had written, ‘Move Peter Hudson to centre half forward.’ It created much mirth and people flocked to see it. I wanted to show people that church isn’t all about guilt, and that a priest can be a modern person with an interest in football and a sense of humour.

On a very hot day, I’d write, ‘If you think it’s hot here, imagine Hell!’

My favourite, though, was, ‘Looking for a sign from God? Here it is!’

It didn’t work. Attendance at St John’s stayed low, except at Christmas and Easter, or when somebody wanted to get married.

We charged $100 for a wedding, and for a funeral it was $50. For Jacob Cashman’s family, I waived the fees. I could see from the newspaper coverage that this was a family with limited funds, and I knew it would be
a big funeral, with media coverage. I might as well be honest: a big funeral, with journalists and cameras, is as good an opportunity as any to get out the church’s message, so I was on some level pleased when the Cashman funeral came my way.

Police told me that Jacob’s mother wouldn’t be present. I thought that was cruel. I don’t believe any charges had been laid. I thought it was important that she be there, regardless. But the authorities declined on security grounds.

‘She’ll be lynched.’ That’s what the detective told me. ‘They’ll string her up outside the church and tear her to pieces.’

I won’t deny that emotions on the estate were aflame. The story about the man attacking Jacob had shocked people, and their hearts went out to the Cashmans, but then it quickly began to fall apart and people started to gossip and come to their own conclusions, and of course the mother and her boyfriend were ‘assisting police’, as they say, and people were enraged. They were angry that the parents might have done something to the child. Then, too, there were early rumours that there was more to this story than people even realised.

I was conscious of my responsibility to both the community and the Church. I would remind the congregation that God alone judges us. In days to come, when Lisa and her boyfriend were formally charged, newspapers would be filled with comments from people
thirsting for revenge. One mother would say, ‘You don’t bash your kids. They drive you up the wall but you don’t bash ’em,’ and another would say, ‘I just don’t get how you can do that to a little kid. Have you seen the pictures of him? The boy’s an angel.’

Police had given me the portrait of Jacob that had already appeared in the newspaper. A lady in the parish office, one of our volunteers, had it framed, and we stood it upon the coffin. Jacob had very white hair, and he also had a white coffin. A state government department – I don’t recall which one – provided a quick injection of cash to Jacob’s family. They do this for all welfare recipients who need to bury a family member, and since Jacob’s mother had been on the single mother’s pension, she qualified. She had been allowed to choose the colour of the coffin. I was pleased she chose white. Once, in a country town, the parents had requested fire-engine red for a small boy knocked over by farm machinery, but generally I suggest white for children. It lends the ceremony a degree of solemnity, reminds us that we are burying a child.

The police said the boy’s siblings – Hayley, Harley and Lauren – were to be present, and I was conscious of including them in the service. I asked the volunteer we had in the office to seat them on the plastic chairs nearest the altar so I might address them directly.

In retrospect, I didn’t do enough for the children. I was prideful. I was too conscious of the media attention,
and too interested in the impression I might make. The mayor was there, as was the principal from Barrett Primary. I was also too young. This was nearly thirty years ago; I had virtually no experience with small children. It did not even occur to me that the service for Jacob would be well underway before the children realised that Jacob was actually with us, that he was
in that white coffin
at the front of the church, under the photo graph of him.

We make that mistake, don’t we, of assuming that children will understand things that adults automatically comprehend? It’s not that I should have said, ‘Here we are, and there are Jacob’s earthly remains, in that box,’ but I wonder if I could have done something to help Lauren, at least, understand what was going on. Because with children it dawns on them slowly: He’s in there, and he’s
dead
. If we opened the lid he would not sit up as we remember him. He’s dead, and dead’s
forever
.

There was no sign of Jacob’s father. His identity had been determined from documents held by the Department of Social Security. He was named in paperwork demanding that he pay child support, but an attempt to find him before the funeral had failed. Who did turn up, in large numbers, were children from the Barrett Primary School. They wore blue polo shirts, with a crest on the right breast, and white socks and school shoes. Their teachers had supplied them with white balloons and, at first, we let them carry the balloons and even hold them in the church, but then they started to do what kids will
do when armed with balloons – belt each other – so the teachers had to take the balloons away again. We stored them out the back to release later, when Jacob’s coffin was loaded into the hearse.

The media was there, too. I made an effort to make them feel welcome. There were some people who looked at them gruffly and I thought, ‘You’re probably the same people who will later go and pick up a copy of the newspaper and see who you can recognise!’

The sermon was one of the more difficult I’ve had to deliver. I tried to focus the mourners on the good that had come from the death of Jacob Cashman. That might sound strange, but I do believe that we must try to find the good in all circumstances, and perhaps also try to understand what God is trying to tell us, or to show us, or expects from us, when a small child dies.

The community had come together to comfort each other. That was something positive. It may not have been immediately apparent – especially not with so many people bristling with indignation – but I do believe that a sudden death provides us with an opportunity to comfort each other.

I reminded the congregation that we were in no position to judge.

I talked about suffering, too. I said that we, as human beings, don’t always understand why God makes us suffer and, in particular, why he makes small children suffer. If you believe as I do that all things that happen
on earth are the result of God’s will, and if you believe that God loves us, then it is difficult to understand why He would allow a small child to suffer, and so we must simply accept that God has a plan, and that we must trust in God.

I heard one or two people snort with derision during that section of the sermon. I imagined them thinking, ‘Is that the best you can do?’ In truth, though, suffering is something to which I’ve turned my mind. People forget: a fair swag of the Bible – Old and New, and all of Job – is concerned with suffering. It’s a common complaint from the lapsed and the agnostic: ‘If God exists, why would He allow this to happen? What could possibly justify the agonising death of a small child?’ The way the media sometimes thrusts this question at me, it’s as if they think such a question has never dawned on the Church.

Let me assure you, it’s something to which I’ve turned my mind, and I do have some thoughts on the matter. Firstly, we in the Christian religion believe that suffering is real. Buddhists might say that suffering is an illusion, but that is not our opinion. Anguish, distress, pain – none of it is imaginary. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered, and his suffering was real. Jacob Cashman suffered, and his suffering was real.

Why, then, do we suffer? The oldest explanation comes from the Gospels: we suffer because of the Fall of Man. We are sinners; therefore, it is not helpful to blame God for our suffering.

Then, too, there is the idea that suffering plays a corrective role, enabling us to more quickly recognise bad behaviour. God allows His children to experience the consequences of their actions. If we ignore God’s teachings, the results are painful. If we sin, we are punished.

I can see how those explanations are not particularly helpful when considering why a child like Jacob must die. It seems absurd that a child of five must pay for a sin committed by Eve in the Garden of Eden. Likewise, it’s impossible to imagine what Jacob might have done – not eaten his lunch? Skipped school one afternoon? – to deserve his fate.

What, then, was the purpose of Jacob’s death? I only know this, and it’s a variation of what I’ve said before: God’s purpose is often not immediately available to us, and when we are perplexed, ultimately we must trust in the God who loves us.

The Bible says, ‘Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope’ (Romans 5:3 – 4). Peter says our suffering is not endless: ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more mourning and crying or pain.’

If, as a priest, you didn’t believe that, you’d go mad.

Jacob’s siblings did not speak at the funeral. I’m not sure they listened, either. I kept one eye on them while I was speaking. Hayley was squirming around the way a toddler will do. The social worker beside her tried to
hold her down, but after a while we all gave up and let her scoot about the floor on all fours, gathering up lint.

Harley was restless. Lauren was mute, except when some friends from the Barrett Primary School came up with some balloons. They were crying, and she began crying too, and they formed a circle and hugged each other.

Quite a few of the children had made cards and signs saying ‘Farewell Jacob’ and ‘We’ll Miss You Jacob’, and there were piles of flowers in aluminium foil crowded around the door.

After the funeral, the volunteer from the parish office took the Cashman children to the unit where I lived. They took off their shoes and we got them some cream biscuits and sat them down on the carpet in front of the TV. The three of them sat quietly until the commercials came on and they started squabbling among themselves. We gave them some crayons and they drew pictures, nothing nightmarish, just normal things: Harley scribbled; Lauren drew stick figures under a rainbow; and Hayley, well, she chewed the crayon and let coloured spittle run down her chin.