Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (2 page)

‘Yuck,’ she said. ‘I had toast.’

‘Lucy,’ he said. ‘Do you know how much that stuff costs? That’s the most lavish main course here. My boss sent it home with me especially for you to try. You know my customers pay shitloads for that dish.’

‘Take it back there then,’ she said. ‘Bring me home the cash.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘Listen, did Chris come home after school?’ At sixteen, Christopher was still as angry as he’d been at five, when Troy was awarded legal custody of him, but he was a hell of a lot harder to control. Troy thought back to when, at the age of nineteen – just a little older than Chris was now – he’d been appointed legal guardian of his then four-year-old sister and five-year-old brother.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Lucy. ‘He could have got here first and gone right out again.’

Is his bag there? Troy wanted to ask, but didn’t. He knew it wouldn’t have been and he didn’t want his little sister to have to lie to cover for her brother. Again. ‘Well, don’t go anywhere, Luce, and don’t open the door to anyone.’

‘What am I, five?’ she said.

‘Your brother should be there with you.’

‘Well, come home then,’ she said.

‘Ha, ha,’ he said. ‘You know I mean Chris. Anyway, I gotta go, Luce. I love you.’

‘Mmm-hmm. Good luck tonight. Are things going okay?’ she asked.

‘Ah ... I’ll fill you in at breakfast.’

Troy rubbed his right hand with his left, trying to soothe the pain in the two fingers that no longer existed. Phantom limb pain, the doctors had told him. Probably never go away. Fucking ridiculous. His hand had a mind of its own? Sometimes when the burning woke him, moaning, he wanted to scream at it – they’re gone, you fuckwit!

The shotgun blast had vaporised his fingers in an instant, and his hand couldn’t get over it.

‘You can’t blame everything on a bad childhood,’ Jill Jackson said, and wished she hadn’t. Under the desk, she forced her fingernails into the soft pads of her sweaty palms. The pain registered, but didn’t distract her from her anger. She felt heat at her throat and tried to take a deeper breath. She could sense the eyes of the other cops at the Australian Institute of Police Management.

‘No, Detective Jackson, you cannot. But your statement puts you on one side of a very complicated and interesting debate.’ Associate Professor Gamble made a sweeping gesture with his arm; his thinning grey curls fizzed about his head as he strode towards her seat. He seemed oblivious to her discomfort. ‘Let’s follow your line, then.’

No, please, let’s not, thought Jill. She’d been surprised to find herself looking forward to the psych lectures in her Master of Criminal Intelligence degree. Right now, though, she would rather stick her pen in her eye.

‘Let’s take one of our own, shall we?’ said Gamble. ‘Good old Aussie boy, Peter Dupas,’ the professor went on. ‘He first tried to murder his next-door neighbour at age fifteen. Over the next twenty years he raped at least six women and murdered at least four others, almost certainly more. Given that he was in gaol for twenty out of his forty years – until he was locked up for life, that is – that’s pretty good going. Well, so to speak,’ he said, when a female class member made a grunt of disapproval. ‘And he liked to slice the bodies,’ Gamble went on. ‘Particularly the breasts. He’d cut them right off. He broke into the morgue and got to corpses that way too.’

A male snigger came from the back of the room. The sound did not help with Jill’s efforts to keep her anger in check. Any other day she’d understand the laughter – all cops used black humour to cope with stuff civilians could afford to be squeamish about. But this lecture had already brought memories of her own rape to life – and with them, the urge to fight or run. Nine times out of ten, she chose the former.

‘Now, we know that most serial killers like Dupas have a history of abuse in their childhoods,’ Gamble went on. ‘The thing here, though, is there’s no real evidence of abuse in the Dupas case. So, how
did
Dupas become this creature?
Why
did he commit these crimes?’ Gamble stared at Jill.

‘Because he’s a sick fuck,’ she said.

More stifled laughter.

‘Just because there’s no evidence of childhood abuse doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ Nicki Coors said; she sat just a desk away from Jill. Jill realised that Nicki had made the outraged snort she’d heard earlier.

Gamble smiled delightedly and clapped his hands once. Loud. Jill flinched. ‘And now we have our opponents on either side of the debate,’ he said. ‘Detective Jackson here says that psychopaths are born that way, while Officer Coors contends they must be created.’

‘Actually, I’d rather not–’ Jill began.

‘Let’s consider your diagnosis, Jackson,’ said Gamble. ‘Sick fuck, is, I believe, the disorder you’ve assigned.’ He made three leaps from her desk to reach the whiteboard, and wrote ‘SICK FUCK’. People laughed openly now. Underneath, he wrote ‘Nature’. Jill shrank in her seat.

Professor Gamble trailed his marker across to the other end of the board, creating a horizontal line that stretched its length. On the far right he wrote ‘ABUSED AS A CHILD’, and underneath it, ‘Nurture’.

‘Let the games begin,’ said Gamble. ‘Anyone want to take a stance, argue that one of these positions is correct over the other?’

On the other side of Jill, Michael Westlake stood. Why it was that Jill’s classmates, Toni and Roseanna, continually told her where, when and how they wanted to do this guy was beyond her. Rat-faced and slimy is how she’d have described him, if asked. No one ever did. She just listened to the other girls at lunch and remembered something urgent she had to do whenever she saw him approach. Which was often.

‘Yeah, I’m with Jill,’ he said.

Jill kept her eyes on the lecturer. Not in this lifetime, she told him in her head.

Westlake had the floor. ‘You work in this job a while, you get to see some of these fuckers grow up before your eyes,’ he said. ‘And you can pick ’em, you know? Like you go out to their shitholes in Campbelltown and you can pick the little bastards that you know you’ll be locking up a couple of years later. But it’s not always the whole family. Sometimes their brothers grow up okay.’

‘So these kids are born bad?’ said Professor Gamble.

‘Yep. You can see it,’ said Westlake. He remained standing, owning his opinion. ‘You can see it happen. There’s a hardness about them. You can’t reach ’em, even when they’re, like, five or six.’

Nicki Coors coughed then spoke, her voice flaky, as though it lacked moisture, might crumble at any moment. ‘Or, Westlake,’ she said, ‘maybe the boys you’re talking about were the prettiest in the house.’ She looked to have as good a flush at her throat as Jill could feel at her own. ‘Maybe that kid was specially
chosen
by one or two of his ten or so stepdads? You ever think of that when you’re out there visiting their
shitholes?’

The tension in the room ratcheted up another notch and Jill felt a blanket of calm settle over her. Numbness. About time, she thought. Since the police had brought her home at age twelve, the numbness had kicked in whenever any emotion tripped her threshold. And the threshold was set pretty low. Any really strong feeling, positive or negative, could trigger the anaesthesia. Like when she was a kid and her mum bought three-colour ice-cream. Trip. Numb, right there. Or when her little sister, Cassie, chewed the feet off all her Barbie dolls. Instant fury and then nothing. Jill had grown up that way – with this emotional regulator. But one of the biggest problems – and thrills – of her life had been that the sensor had been on the fritz the last couple of years. Since one of her rapists had been killed.

Well, actually, since she’d kicked him to death.

‘In fact, you’re both right,’ said Professor Gamble, returning to the board and bringing Jill’s awareness back to the room. He used his pen to point at the word ‘Nature’. ‘There’s substantial evidence to show that some children are born with very low levels of emotional reactivity, what some of us might call empathy. And they also don’t react to fear stimuli like they should, they become bored extremely easily, and they’re highly impulsive. As they grow, they seek out experiences that gratify and arouse them, regardless of the cost to others and even to themselves, and punishment and disapproval don’t affect them.’

Gamble put the lid on his whiteboard marker and twisted the pen up behind his back. Jill wondered what the hell he was doing. Was he making some kind of point with this gesture? But when the professor’s arm moved up and down, she realised he was just scratching an itch. He then tapped the same side of the board again. ‘But a child like this who is born into a
loving
home, with consistent discipline, has a better shot at fitting in,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’ll get their thrills playing aggressive sports. Maybe they’ll develop high-powered careers and channel their aggression into ruthless business transactions.’

Gamble stalked to the other end of the board and scribbled an asterix next to the words ‘ABUSED AS A CHILD’. ‘But let’s put the kid from down this end into a house with a paedophile. Or maybe a neglectful, drug-addicted mother, and a violent father. This kid is going to absorb all of that pain. He or she is going to suffer like any other child would, but when they come out the other side they’re going to transform all that into hate, and then find ways to visit that suffering on as many people as they can.’

Jill listened to the quiet repositioning of the class around her. She could sense her colleagues’ absorption in the topic. But for her the lecture had lost its heat. The professor’s comments registered only at a cognitive level; she allowed herself to be diverted by watching the way he moved. He appeared ungainly and strangely lithe all at once; it seemed he might spring across a desk or fall flat on his face at any moment.

‘But these examples are the extremes, are they not?’ Gamble continued. ‘Can we have one without the other? Can a child born into a loving family with these biological deficits become a monster, a true psychopath? And can a child born with the full range of human feeling have that obliterated by abuse?’

Gamble tried to stretch around with his hand to scratch his back again, but failed to reach. He capped the marker and scratched. Woops. Jill noticed that he’d capped the wrong end. Sure enough, when he turned, Gamble’s white shirt was scribbled with black ink. The class sniggered. He ploughed on regardless, and they stayed with him. ‘Because if this is the case, how are we to judge such a child?’ He pointed to ‘Nature’ again. ‘Is this child
born
evil? If so, how are we to evaluate the crimes he later commits? Is he not born with a disability – so to speak – an illness for which he is not responsible? Does he not succumb to this illness just as a child born with an inherited predisposition to cancer?’

Jill tuned out. She didn’t need this philosophical shit. As far as she was concerned, you judge a person by their acts. How and why they came to commit atrocities, she didn’t care. The fact that they did was enough. Catch ’em and lock ’em up.

She turned her thoughts tiredly to her earlier overreaction. She’d been feeling so great lately. Best she’d felt in years. The undercover operation she’d completed three months ago had brought down a major meth production syndicate with international links. Thanks to Gabriel Delahunt, her federal cop former partner, she and her boss, Superintendent Lawrence Last, had been credited with the bust. Last had been very grateful. He’d even recommended she begin this master’s degree as a fully paid study vacation.

Jill smiled as she recalled her reaction to Last’s suggestion. ‘Do you think I need retraining? Do you want me out of the way?’

‘Do you think you need to work on your self-esteem?’ he’d responded.

Well, duh.

But the idea had grown on her, and eventually she found herself thrilled with the idea of studying. School for her had been a nightmare. Well, high school was, at least. That ridiculously hot day of the swimming carnival had changed her life forever. Twelve. Truanting. Smoking. Wrong. Of course she’d known that at the time, but no one deserved the kind of punishment she got. Dragged screaming into a car, blindfolded, raped and tortured for three days.

She stabbed her pen into her notepad. Why do I always have to go through this event every time something changes in my life? she wondered. Will it never end? The one experience she ceaselessly tried to erase from her memory popped up every time she tried anything remotely different.

But that was it, you see: different equals dangerous. Jill realised she’d spent the next twenty-two years of her life so carefully planning and orchestrating everything she did that her career had thrived – total dedication to perfection – and her love-life had starved – who could control and predict a man, for God’s sake?

Jill felt the heat at her throat again, but this time it came with a secret smile. She dropped her eyes and traced circles on the desk with her finger, her blonde hair falling forward and hiding her face. Things seemed to be changing in that department too. She gave in to the daydreaming and thought about the outfit she’d change into when the class finished tonight.

What hasn’t Scotty seen me wearing? she wondered.

This is the reason I went into politics in the first place, thought Sheila McIntyre. Standards in Australia are slipping. These people are just plain rude.

Thirty or so early-morning train travellers shared the shelter of the awning with her, but only a couple had taken a flier. Most wouldn’t even acknowledge she’d spoken to them.

‘Now, all I’m asking you to do,’ she tried again, ‘is to fill in one of these forms and post it back to the address inside. We need to let the government know that security at train stations in the west must be upgraded.’

People stared at their shoes or away through the drizzle, searching for the train. A grey-haired woman in a good coat met her eyes.

‘I’m not just a politician,’ Sheila said to her. ‘I’m a mum too. And I just don’t think it’s right that the children catching the train at Riverstone Station aren’t as well-protected as the kids at Strathfield or North Sydney.’ She held out a flier and the woman took it.

‘And what about you, sir?’ she said to a man in labouring clothes nearby. ‘Do you think it’s good enough that there are virtually no security cameras at this station?’ She pulled another flier from the stack. Her confidence boosted, she leaned a little closer. Ugh, his breath!

‘What I don’t think is good enough,’ said the man, his eyes jaundiced, his nose bulbous and crimson, ‘is that half my bloody wages every week go to pay for you bludgers to sit on your fat arses and fuck up this country.’

‘Oh ... Well!’ she said.

Someone laughed, and from behind her she heard, ‘Piss off!’

Sheila smoothed at her skirt and stood a little straighter. I got up at five o’clock this morning to come out to these ingrates, she thought. She pursed her lips, thinking about the group of concerned citizens she’d expected to find here waiting to meet her, to support her, having seen her ad last week in their local paper. Well, maybe it serves them right that they have no upgraded amenities out here. She swapped the umbrella in her handbag with the fliers then stepped forward from the awning. She cracked the umbrella and tossed her head a little. I’ll wait for the train out here, she thought.

Standing a little behind her, Carmel Bussa secured the top button of her camel coat. Not so much because she felt cold, although it was chilly in this rain at seven am, even in November. No, Carmel buttoned symbolically – to shut these people out. When her husband had had his stroke, she hadn’t minded that she’d had to go back to work. In fact, she really enjoyed working with the young people in the David Jones Food Hall. Half of them were travellers, backpackers, over here from Europe, working hard to support themselves on the trip of a lifetime. Now, these kids weren’t angels – far from it. The stories they would tell! She could never repeat some of their jokes to her husband – he would have insisted she quit immediately – but sometimes she had to step into the cool-room to stop the laughter, take her glasses off and wipe her eyes. The two gay boys, Sasha and Ferdinand – that was another thing her husband wouldn’t understand – found it hilarious to make her laugh until she cried. Well, she’d admit these kids were crude, but they certainly weren’t rude, and that’s the one thing that really wore Carmel down. The rude people who caught this train.

Every morning she shared the train with these people around her. She understood that people were sleepy and probably didn’t feel up to talking so early in the morning. That was fine with her. She had a good book with her every day, maybe a magazine when her daughter had finished with it. But she could not understand the rudeness. The night before her first day at work, she’d been hardly able to sleep and had arrived so early for the 7.10 train that she’d watched three trains go by. Her daughter had warned her – whatever you do, Mum, don’t catch the 6.50. It makes every stop to Town Hall. The next had been a flyer, the 7.04. Her eyes had blurred with tears in the draught created as it flew by. Finally, she’d spotted the 7.10 approaching. She’d felt a little thrill – her first day in a new job, and she hadn’t been on a train for years. Smiling, she’d stepped forward as the train pulled in and had been pushed, elbowed and shoved out of the way by the very same people standing around her now. One woman in a tunic had stepped hard on Carmel’s foot and charged straight past her. By the time she’d limped through the doors, breathless, every seat had been taken. She’d stood all the way to the city, listening to these people snoring and farting, and grunting into their mobiles.

So Carmel felt for the politician standing in the rain in front of her. She wasn’t surprised to see that others had now joined her, unconcerned by the drizzle and the annoying woman with the fliers. With the 7.04 fast approaching, they all wanted pole-position to get a seat on the next train, the 7.10. Carmel had given up on hoping for a seat – although she was on her feet all day in the deli, she couldn’t bring herself to battle this mob every morning. She watched them surging their way closer to the edge of the platform, the politician lady caught up in the wave.

And then a whir of fabric. A shriek. What? What just happened?

The 7.04 screamed past, leaving a pink-tinged mist in its wake. But the screaming didn’t stop. Carmel moved through the people ahead of her, certain she needed to get to the edge of the platform, but with no idea why. She hunched up the collar on her camel coat, although she felt nothing at all right now, not the rain on her cheeks, not even her feet as they took her towards the edge.

Carmel didn’t even feel herself sobbing as she stood at the edge of the platform, staring down at the wet-purple mince and creamy globs on the track. She didn’t feel it when someone pulled her backwards. She’d been determined to try to get down there. Someone had to cover that up. Like a fresh Christmas ham in the deli, Sheila McIntyre’s jointed groin and whole leg shined slickly in the gravel. Apart from a sensible walking shoe, which was still on her foot, nothing else in the mess resembled anything human.

With two people losing their breakfast over the edge, no one noticed a man in a khaki parka spit down onto what was left of Sheila McIntyre. No one paid any attention as he walked away from the scene, turning his face away from the sole CCTV camera as he exited Riverstone Station.

As he left, he raised his hand for the camera in a single-digit salute.