Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (9 page)

‘Don’t you leave me, Bec. You promised.’

Watching the girls from the public school, Haley Browne tried to hitch the skirt of her private-school uniform a little higher. How was she supposed to compete with that? A rangy, auburn-haired girl in a school tunic that barely covered her knickers chased her plumper, dark-haired friend across the food hall. Brown-limbed, kohl-eyed, lip-gloss-smeared, and working push-up bras and bed-hair, they were being watched by half the males in Westfield Eastgardens – a fact of which they seemed very much aware. Although they were probably in Year Ten just as she was, Haley felt the public-school girls were as different from her as she was from Lindsay Lohan.

‘I’m not going anywhere, Hale,’ said Rebecca Smart, Haley’s best friend since Year Three. ‘Hey! Put your hat back on, you idiot. You’ll get suspended if anyone reports you.’

Haley loosened her ponytail a little, dragging a few tendrils onto her shining face. ‘Oh, Rebecca! I told you we should have brought some clothes to change into. How am I supposed to compete with them?’ She sighed.

‘Right,’ said Rebecca, ‘so we were supposed to change out of our uniforms to talk to him, and then put them back on before we get home?
And
hope and pray that no one who knows us sees us in those clothes and tells our parents or the school. Anyway, he said he’d meet
you
here, didn’t he?’ she asked. ‘Not them. He wants to talk to
you.
He’s going to ask you out, I swear–’

‘Oh, fuck, Bec. It’s him! Don’t look, don’t look! Come on, let’s go. It’s not too late to go.’

‘Shh, calm down,’ said Rebecca, laughing. ‘Just be cool. You’re gorgeous. He’s ... oh my God,
he’s
gorgeous! And he’s got that guy who was with him last time. The cute one.’

‘I swear to God, Bec, I’m gonna spew.’

Rebecca laughed again, throwing back her head. Her school-issue straw boater flew off and scuttled across the floor of the plaza. The shorter of the two youths walking towards them scooped it up.

‘Thanks – quick, give it to me,’ said Rebecca to the boy. He wore the male version of the uniform of the two girls across the food court. Rebecca noticed that the girls had stopped running and were watching them.

‘You look better without it,’ he said to her. ‘It hides your pretty face.’

Where was a freezer when you needed it? Rebecca felt her cheeks burning. ‘You’d better give that back. If I get caught without it, I’m gonna get busted.’

‘Your friend doesn’t have hers on,’ said the boy.

The taller boy spoke for the first time. ‘She definitely shouldn’t wear anything to hide that face.’ He took a step closer to Haley and stared down at her, his mussed-up, dirty-blond fringe hanging in his eyes. He reached forward, and with a finger, tucked the errant hair behind her ear.

‘Hey!’ said Haley.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said.

‘Which is going to be a problem when you’re putting my number into your phone,’ he said.

Haley pulled out her iPhone.

‘Fuck, sweet phone,’ said the darker-haired boy.

‘I’m Connor,’ his taller friend said, and recited a number. Haley thumbed it in.

Later, when she was finally able to speak of these events, Haley would tell people that, in the next split-second, she thought the world had ended. Depending to whom she was speaking, she would add that she wished it had.

It began with a crash and screaming. Haley screamed first from the shock of the noise. And then the pain had set in. She didn’t stop screaming until the ambulance officers had sedated her with morphine.

From a shattered bottle, dropped from two floors above, concentrated nitric acid splashed upwards and outwards in a seventy-centimetre arc. The acid sprayed from the glass in an explosion of droplets, and every millimetre of flesh they landed upon received full-thickness burns.

Rebecca Smart was hit by three droplets – one on the back of her hand, one on her calf and one on her knee. After falling to the ground, screaming, she leapt up and sprinted to the nearby Donut King, where she was ushered in by staff. She climbed onto the sink and ran the wounds under water, sobbing.

Connor Stalls was struck by a whip-like line of acid that shot up his calf, instantly dissolving the skin it touched, and eating down through layers of flesh.

The spray completely missed Connor’s friend, Trey Doncaster, who dragged Connor, screaming, to the McDonald’s counter, where staff used the sink hoses to spray water onto the jellied line on Connor’s leg.

Jason Dunstan, shopping for dinner for his pregnant wife, desperately wanted to help the last girl left on the ground, but when he saw what was happening to her legs he couldn’t move. He shouted for help, and Alexander Compton, who was grabbing a late lunch before his night classes at uni, came running. Alexander took a look at the girl on the ground and vomited onto his shoes. It took Mrs Anita Singh, sixty-four, to start dragging the writhing girl by her school blazer, before several other shoppers assisted and pulled her over to the McDonald’s.

The jets of water weren’t enough to stop the third-degree burns that ate through Haley Browne’s calves. What she didn’t know then was that, for the next month, under the direction of the best burns team in the country, she would endure daily dressing changes of the open wounds, while granulation tissue was prepared for surgery and split-thickness skin grafts were harvested from her anterior and lateral thighs.

It was probably best for Haley’s sanity that she also didn’t know that, for the rest of her life, beetroot-coloured gouges extending across an area as big as a dinner plate would mar her once-perfect legs.

‘Mummy, what’s wrong with that lady?’

‘Bindi Graham, I’ve told you not to say things like that.’ Sybil Graham ushered her five-year-old daughter to a seat away from the two women huddled together by a pylon. She gave the older woman an apologetic glance, then curled her arm around little Bindi. Bindi’s white-blonde hair was the same shade as the hair of the younger woman, who was wrapped in a blanket. A matted tangle of her hair hid the young woman’s face and eyes, but Sybil was certain she must be the older woman’s daughter. Only a mother would watch over her with such a look of heartbreak and helplessness.

I wonder what happened to her? Sybil thought. Probably drugs, or maybe mental illness. So sad. She rubbed her daughter’s sunny knee next to her own, trying not to stare at the women. Bindi’s little red shoes swung backwards and forwards above the grime of the floor of Central Station.

The station walls around them grumbled and yawned as the next train pulled in. Sybil checked the timetable in front of her. The Melbourne XPT. Two trains to go. She watched the older woman release the handle on the wheel-bound suitcase next to her daughter, hooking her other hand into the crook of the girl’s arm, over the blanket. ‘This is our train, darling,’ she heard the lady say. ‘Come on, Jill.’ When the doors of the CountryLink train wheezed open, the woman guided her daughter inside, dragging the suitcase along behind her.

‘Poor woman,’ said Sybil.

‘What’s wrong with her, Mummy?’ whispered Bindi. Jill curled up on the seat closest to the window on the train, staring blankly around the private cubicle. She watched her mother slide the doors closed, then she pressed her forehead to the glass of the window. Miranda Kerr smiled back at her, the Australian supermodel just barely wearing a bra and knickers. Jill recognised the poster as the same as the one at the bus stop at Coogee.

‘Are you all right there, darling?’

Jill supposed she should answer her mum. But what would she say?
Are you all right, darling?
The sentence didn’t seem to make sense. The constant shooshing noise in her head made everything sound garbled.

The train began moving and Jill blinked in the dying sunlight. Through the shooshing noise, she heard her mother’s phone ring. ‘Hi, Cass,’ she heard her mother say, quietly. ‘No, she’s still the same.’

Jill listened to the stops and starts of her mother’s conversation. Like Morse code.

‘It takes about ten hours to get to Melbourne, then another train ride and the final leg by taxi.’

Stop.

‘No, she wouldn’t get on a plane.’

Stop.

‘We’ll be all right, darling. Don’t worry. If you could just keep your father busy for a couple of days...’

Stop.

‘No, I’ll fly back, once we’ve settled her in.’

What with the shooshing and the bumping of the train, her mum’s whispers over the phone to her sister, and the trees and buildings flicking past in the last of the afternoon sun, Jill was beginning to feel sleepy. She tried to remember how many nights had gone by without sleep now. Two? Three? Was there some kind of record out there?

She leaned back into the headrest and closed her eyes.

The trees and buildings still seemed to flicker past behind her eyelids; the rhythm like a big animal loping through the forest, flat-footed, hunting. Hunting her.

She snapped her eyes open before the screaming could set in.

When he heard the key in the front door, Troy decided that he would not fight with Chris tonight. It wasn’t yet seven, and despite the fact that Chris was supposed to be home at four, at least he was home. And Troy acknowledged that his brother knew he was not at work today and so would be here with Lucy. Not that that had been a consideration for Chris in the past. Troy adjusted his attitude and prepared to greet his brother as he opened the door.

But when he saw Chris, he immediately asked, ‘Where’d you get the iPod?’

‘It’s a friend’s,’ said Chris. He wore another new hoodie, white iPod speaker lines bright under the shadow of the hood. He pulled them out, letting them hang.

‘Your friend doesn’t need his iPod?’

‘He’s got two.’

‘How was school?’ asked Troy.

‘Whatever.’

‘You need help with your homework?’

‘I’m thinking of quitting.’

Troy groaned. ‘What would you do?’

‘I want to be a DJ,’ said Chris.

‘You need money for that. To get the equipment.’

Chris came over to the table, dropping his backpack by his feet. He sat down. Troy figured it was about a year since Chris had sat with him this way.

‘I was thinking you could help me get set up,’ said Chris. ‘Like, with a loan. And then when I was making money, I could pay you back.’

‘That shit’s expensive, isn’t it?’ asked Troy.

Chris bent to his bag, unzipped it and pulled out a glossy black flier. ‘This place has some sick shit – like, at clearance prices,’ he said. ‘I made a list.’ He pulled a folded piece of paper from a pocket near the knee of his jeans. ‘I don’t need everything right away. I’ll only need a mixer, turntables, speakers and a mike to start off with.’

‘How much?’ asked Troy, flicking through the catalogue. He couldn’t figure out what any of the electrical-looking boxes were. And there were no prices.

‘Between two and three.’

‘Hundred or thousand?’

‘Aw, come on man. Thousand.’

‘So you want to borrow between two and three thousand dollars?’

Chris tilted his head and looked up at him from under his hood.

‘And
you want to leave school?’ said Troy.

Chris nodded, once.

Troy blew out a sigh and leaned back in his chair. ‘Do you even know how to use any of this shit?’ He tossed the flier onto the table.

‘Yeah, man. I’m fucking good, too. Jayden’s got a mixer and turntables, and I can fuck that shit up,’ said Chris.

‘That Jayden’s a little prick,’ said Troy.

This time Chris sighed. ‘Oh, man. He’s all right.’

‘So why don’t you use his stuff?’ asked Troy. ‘Go in this together?’

‘His shit is shit.’

‘His shit is shit?’

Chris smiled. ‘You know, man. It’s all old and shit. It won’t get me a gig in a club.’

‘And how would you get a gig in a club? How would you even get into a club? You’re only sixteen.’

‘There’ll be parties first. I’ll get some money together and get a van.’

‘You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you, Chris?’ asked Troy.

‘Always,’ said Chris.

Troy clapped his hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘Tell you what, bro,’ he said. ‘Give me a couple of days to think about it. I’ve got a lot happening right now.’

‘When can you tell me?’ asked Chris. ‘It’s just that I was thinking of asking Mum for the loan if you said no.’

Troy’s face darkened, and then he laughed. ‘You little scamming fuck,’ he said. ‘You know I don’t want you going round there, so you drop that on me?’ Chris wore a small smile. ‘Tell you what,’ Troy said. ‘Give me till the end of the week – I’ll have a look into this equipment, understand this DJ thing a bit better, and in the meantime you keep going to school.’

‘Till Friday?’ asked Chris.

‘Friday,’ said Troy.

This time Chris’s smile split his face, and he reached forward and grasped Troy in a brief hug. ‘Thanks, bro,’ he said.

After four years of working nights, these unscheduled days off had left Troy out of step with his usual routine. Ordinarily, he’d watch a mid-morning news bulletin before getting ready for work, but today he’d used the morning to shop and the afternoon to clean the apartment. He got antsy every time he stopped working. And he wasn’t in the mood for company, either. He didn’t want to distract himself by socialising. He felt as though he had a weight on his head and shoulders, pushing him down. Everything felt wrong, and yet nothing tangible was happening. He waited, knowing something was coming, feeling that the events of the last few days were not the past, but the beginning of something. He waited, and while he waited he tried to stay busy. But at ten-thirty, four beers in and the kids in their rooms, there was nothing left to clean, no one he wanted to ring and nowhere he wanted to be. He switched on the television.

Troy missed the coffee table putting his beer down when he saw the first news item. The bottle fell to the rug and fizzed, unheeded.

Scott Hutchinson was dead. Murdered! What the fuck is going on here? Troy watched, his hands clasped, leaning forwards on the edge of the couch, as reporters fleshed out what they had learned since the detective was killed on Saturday. A computer-generated recreation of the events showed a blank-faced simulation of a person throwing a petrol bomb into Hutchinson’s car. Someone had set him on fire!

How could this fucking be? Miriam Caine, burned to death on Thursday, and the cop investigating her murder attacked with a petrol bomb on Saturday. Could these things be connected?

The news item ended and Troy fell back against the cushions. He noticed the beer bottle, now empty, and the rug soaking. ‘Aw, fuck,’ he said. He walked into the kitchen; the pressure over his head stooping his shoulders. He reached the sink, aware he’d gone there for a reason but unable to think what it was.

Troy paced, rubbing his hand where his fingers should have been.

Hutchinson had seemed a good bloke. Troy thought about the people out there hurting tonight, lost without him. He wondered whether Scotty had kids, a wife. Troy had tried to keep in touch with Jonno’s wife, after the shooting, but she’d wanted nothing to do with the service then. She hated all of them for taking him from her. He couldn’t blame her.

On his third lap around the kitchen table, Troy stopped at the fridge. He opened it, then remembered. Oh, fuck – the beer. He grabbed a fresh one and a roll of paper towels, then headed back to mop up the spill.

On his knees by the couch, he sighed. He’d never been seriously worried that he’d become a real suspect in the murder at Incendie, but now he felt a guilty sense of relief that Hutchinson’s murder would surely count him out as a suspect. The two deaths had to be related, didn’t they? And if they were connected, then they had a real lunatic out there to catch.

An image of David Caine came to Troy’s mind, and he wondered again why he found him so odd. It wasn’t just the lie about his wife. It was his whole reaction to his mother’s death. If it had happened to someone Troy loved, he’d want to know exactly what had happened and what the police were doing about it. Caine just seemed convinced that it couldn’t have been a murder, and that the police wouldn’t get anywhere anyway. Troy remembered a prosecutor with the DPP who once told him that he knew when to lean on a suspect in court. It’s all in the affect, he’d told Troy. If a person’s affect doesn’t match what they’re saying – if they’re too emotional when they don’t need to be, or not emotional enough, if they’re smiling when they should be worried, or crying too hard, then you lean, he’d said. It seemed to Troy that in almost every interaction they’d had, Caine’s affect had seemed odd.

But he couldn’t see him as a double-murderer. He’d been starting to think that the fucker might have killed his mother – someone did – and murders were usually personal. He had no idea how he could have done it, but then again he had no idea how anyone could have done it. But to take out a cop? Troy couldn’t see it. Caine just struck him as a socially ineffective whinger who resented people with more power than he had. There was a Caine on every street and in every office in Australia. Shit, probably on every street and in every office in every country in the world.

Suddenly Troy froze. Caine couldn’t possibly have killed Scotty. Troy had been over at Caine’s home Saturday, drinking beer with the bloke in his kitchen. Maybe Caine had nothing to do with either death. Maybe the deaths weren’t connected. Who the fuck knew? Troy felt as though a bee had flown into his ear and was putting up a shit-fight to get out again. He pulled himself up onto the lounge, took another slug of beer.

Someone out there knew what was going on, and Troy hoped they found him soon. Death had walked into his world twice in just one week, and all this crap felt too close for comfort.