The Innocents (21 page)

35

The young policeman had not spoken. He had walked alongside when they reached the courthouse with its police station huddled beside like a poor relative. He had opened the door in what might have been a welcoming gesture but Oleksander saw it for what it was. A movement that did not allow him to step backwards, or turn to flee. To do so would have those welcoming open arms close around him like a vice.

They didn't pause at the desk; instead Oleksander found himself being steered straight through to the back of the station.

There seemed to be many rooms. All small.

All cramped.

All private.

It was tempting to look into those rooms and their shadows but it was what would be expected of him. Rooms with half-open doors in a place like this were intended for discomfort. You are an intruder in this place of law, they mocked, where things are known but not fully revealed.

He was shown into a room so small it was more fit for brooms than people, and he was left to sit facing a sad-looking desk that was shoved up hard against the wall.

‘Wait here,' the constable said. And was gone.

Oleksander waited.

Many things passed through his mind and none of them presented any reason why he might be asked to sit here, in this hard chair, in this impossibly small room. Questions that he might have to answer could have been asked at ‘Charmaine'. The answers that he had to give he could give as freely there, and it might be that he was thought to have seen more and know more about Deirdre since she had spent so many afternoons at the house.

It did not make sense at all.

Perhaps, and his heart shuddered slightly, perhaps it is to do with his papers. His immigration.

‘There will be no problem,' the man had said. He had come to the hostel.

It was not for Oleksander that he'd come. He was visiting

another. An artist. An old artist. Oleksander was nobody important. Ukrainian only, with no money. One of the line of refugees creeping, hiding, staggering and begging their way to get free of this newest threat. For others the war was finished, for them a new regime, a new communism, meant more war and more training to kill more people who resisted. It was only more pain and loss.

There were many like this man who had come to talk with the artist. Many who saw ways to help.

And some who saw ways to get rich.

Oleksander had listened. ‘We can do this with the papers. You need only to bring the–' And here the man had rubbed his fingers together. ‘You have it?'

The old artist didn't raise his head. He simply raised his hand. A salute. An acceptance.

It was another hour before Oleksander had been able to satisfy his curiosity.

‘What will they do?'

‘They will get me to America,' the old man had said. ‘I will not die in this country that has taken all from me.'

Oleksander had stayed close. He wanted to see the way to America and how such a thing would happen.

The man had come back and left the papers. He had traded a small icon for them. Tiny. Perfect. Stolen, the artist had said, from pigs who could not see the pearl cast before them.

But he did not die in America.

Others had come, men made treacherous by having to share their country with these staggering refugees. He was such an old man and frail, weakened by wars that he was unable, any longer, to fight. It is possible he was not meant to die but they had hit out and left him to bleed when he had refused to offer them other rewards. Perhaps they too did not recognise a pearl when it was thrown before them.

But Oleksander had found him.

And knew where he had hidden his papers.

‘You are Oleksander Mykola Shevchenko?'

‘Yes.' Oleksander had stood as the two men walked in. He would have moved his chair to make more room but the chair was as hard against the wall as it would go. ‘That is my name.'

It is my name.

It was not my name when I left the train in Paris. Here I walked to the gates and held the papers and walked with my sight set in the distance as if I had no reason to expect that I would be delayed.

They did not care. Those people at the station. They nodded and I walked on.

And on.

And when it was safe I left the papers with the name of an old Jewish artist in a bin by the side of the road. My only regret. He deserved better.

‘You got something there with your name on?'

Oleksander took the letters from his wallet that said who he was. Another paper. Another stamp. Another country.

The man who had spoken handed the documents to the other who had not. Who did not.

‘You want to tell us your address, Mr, uh, Shevchenko?'

They know the address. It is part of the game. I will not play.

‘It is as it is written. Perhaps you cannot read?'

‘I need your address, Mr Shevchenko.'

Not Gestapo. Or soldiers who could not read or write. Just men twisted to fit the same mould.

‘What is it that you need to know from me?'

The first man, the one who spoke, looked at his friend. He took the documents and folded them but kept them in his hand.

‘We'll get to that,' he said and propped himself on the edge of the table. ‘You got good English? You speaka da language okay?'

The not-speaking one smiled. Almost.

Clever.

They will not alarm me. This a free country and there is no laws here to hold me for things that I have not done.

‘I will leave now. I do not know why I have to come here. You have not told me. I have done nothing wrong. So ... excuse me.'

‘Sit down please, Mr Shevchenko.'

The chair was pulled out a little and his way to the doorway blocked. The other man who had not spoken placed his arm on Oleksander's shoulder. ‘It's all right, Mr Shevchenko. We need your help.' He moved back to sit on the edge of the table. ‘I'm Senior Detective Constable Reid and this is Detective Constable Simpson. We work for the CIB and we're up from Saleby to try and work out what happened to the little Trumble girl.'

‘You comprendez?'

He was a pig, this one. The other, not much better. A clever one, perhaps, but a liar at best. He did not care any more than his subordinate and would, if he thought it would gain more, be as ignorant.

‘What can you tell us about Melissa Missinger?'

Melissa?

‘Missie.' Simpson flapped his hands in front of Oleksander. ‘You with us in there? What d'you know about the little girl? She lives in the same house. You know, small, about so big...' His hand was raised.

‘Of course I know Missie.' Perhaps they are thinking Missie is involved? Perhaps they are thinking the little one is pushed into the river? By Missie? ‘She is a fine little girl. She would do nothing wrong.'

‘How'd you know that?' Simpson leaned back. ‘You spend a bit of time there asking for her to do something wrong?'

Reid was still perched on the desk. ‘Do you spend much time with Missie, Mr Shevchenko?'

A few nights while I smoke. How much is much time? ‘No.'

Simpson opened a file of papers that he had. A handful of letters were opened onto the desk. And a drawing of Missie when she was playing in the yard. And another when she had been sitting reading, her head bent forward, her finger in her mouth as she concentrated and her feet neatly crossed. He remembered the day; it was raining and soft light came through the window behind her. He had observed her as she sat in the front room and he in the dining room, unobserved. Alone. Later, in his imagination he let her see him, let her look up and, in that instant before she recognised that she was being watched, drew the mystery place that still veiled her gaze.

He had done the same with the laundry girl. She was his exorcism of Anichka and so he'd drawn her as Anichka had left him on those times before she never, ever returned. A backward glance, her arm modestly covering the swell of her breast but revealing the beauty of its ripeness, her eyes somewhere between apology and pleasure. And her hair, each brushstroke trying to hold the musk scent of it, a dark curtain against her back.

‘You want to tell us again about how much time you spent with Missie? And Kitty Hancock? Her old man's gonna be none too pleased when we show him what you've been getting up to with his little girl.'

‘She is not a little girl.'

Simpson pounced. ‘'Spect you'd know a lot about little girls, Shevchenko, by looking at this lot!'

‘She does the laundry. She is a young woman.'

‘Kitty Hancock might do the laundry but she is not old enough to be screwing around with the likes of you! She's a schoolgirl...'

‘I did not know this. It is not important to me...' It might have been important if there was ever time to meet her and to ask her about her life and her smile and the laughter that he heard drifting up from the backyard on the days she worked there. And in these times girls were at school until they were young women. The war in this country did that – the war in every country did that – if they were lucky and did not die they could go back to their study. And their lives. ‘I do not know Kitty Hancock.'

‘Tell us about Missie.' Reid angled himself a little closer. ‘See, I reckon you know a bit more about little Missie Missinger than you're letting on.' He held up one of Missie's letters. ‘What's this down here, this bit on the end: “secrets”?'

These men were suggesting something wrong. Something so wrong it tasted of bad meat in his mouth. He tried to find a way to say this but words were powerless against the conviction that he could feel was carried in their hearts.

‘This is not to be discussed.' His mind was filling faster than he could track with thoughts so hideous it needed a conscious place to keep them away. Anger, red flooding anger swam in front of him as he considered this: needing to defend himself from such immoral accusations. He stood unarmed against this attack, making so many others pale by comparison.

He moved to the door, breathing hard through his nose, sounding like a bull he'd seen once that had been taunted until it was in a blind fury. Simpson was quick and moved his leg across to bar the way. It was the red rag.

Reid had stood also and they might not have been so prime a target for his anger except for their touch. Simpson's arm, a casual touch, intended to stop him.

Or goad him further.

It did not stop him and Simpson was on the floor, his face surprised and already bleeding from the savagery that had landed him there. Rage swam in waves, each rising and breaking and deafening all sound.

Oleksander wanted to stop but he wept from his soul against this final injustice. He may have found his hidden tears, that place he'd abandoned as empty and barren, if it hadn't been for a blow that blackened his world.

As he sank into unconsciousness, fighting to stay alert, he almost grieved for that empty place. At least, in a final sigh as he let blackness fill him, he'd felt something other than emptiness.

Anger was real.

36

The aloneness that Missie felt was total. And complete.

The days before Zilla were another life away, and now, even though everyone at school seemed interested in her because of Deirdre, she was distanced from the others like never before.

Deirdre was everywhere. The netball court and invitations to join in carried no joy or excitement. It was hard to imagine that they ever had. And days inside when lessons ground on and on and on were flat and meaningless. Singing times, recorder times, mini-concert times blended into the same grey place as tables and maths and long division.

Zilla didn't come back to school.

Dot Evans said she'd heard they were all going to leave town.

‘It's a sad old cloud to have any sort of silver lining, this one is, but it looks like Bev Trumble is going back up to Melbourne with her old man.'

Missie's mum went on ironing. The thud of the iron was the only sound to be heard for a few minutes.

‘Not much here for them any more, I expect,' she finally said. ‘And you know what else, Dot? I don't think there's too much here for me any more either.'

In the dark on the stairs, Missie felt her eyes widen and her hands clenched little bits of skirt together. Leave here?

‘You're just upset about that bloke upstairs. You weren't to know, lovey, although I did try to tell you that they're different ... these foreign blokes.'

Her mother had warned her about listening in but she crept down a step anyway. She knew Oleksander was not coming back and she knew policemen had come to take everything out of his room, which didn't seem fair because nobody should be allowed to touch things that didn't belong to them. Not even if they were going to keep them until it was all sorted out.

‘Well, you won't have to tell me again.'

‘You weren't to know, Marcie. God in heaven, it was a shock to all of us when they found those pictures he'd done. Must have been bloody terrible for you having to look at them. Especially with your own Missie in them and all.'

Pictures?

Missie tried hard to remember the day they'd rattled on his door. She couldn't recall any pictures and Zilla hadn't said anything except that there'd been rudey-nudey ones. And Missie was pretty sure that if she'd been in them Zilla would have busted herself to tell.

‘It wasn't the pictures, Dot. They were just drawings of her when she was playing around out in the yard. I don't know, dancing or some such thing. He was watching her, that's what got me. Standing up there, sneaking around behind a curtain watching her.'

The iron slammed onto the table. Whatever it was ironing was going to be good and flat, that was for sure.

And Missie remembered. She knew the day he'd drawn her. ‘Heart of My Heart', that's what she'd been singing. And tap dancing on the crates. She'd felt him up there and could even remember turning around to check.

‘There were letters too,' Dot said. ‘Gracie Mell told me she saw them when she was over at the cop shop cleaning. Just left there, they were, on that detective bloke's desk for anyone to see.' The chair scraped back, and Missie could easily imagine Dot making herself more comfortable. ‘Kid's handwriting, she said. Bloody disgusting if you ask me. He should be strung up by his balls ... if they can find them.'

The iron thumped onto the table again. A steady, muffled thump, and Missie stood to climb back up the stairs.

They were her letters.

They'd asked her about them and she said yes, she'd written them, and tried to explain that it was to make Oleks feel better. He'd given her some swap cards, she said, and the policeman and the man with him had nodded their heads and written it down. Missie longed to say it was to replace the ones she'd stolen out of the dresser but they were policemen after all, and she didn't think they'd take too well to her having stolen cards.

She paused on the middle stair and let her head rest against the cold timber wall.

Oleks was kind to her. That was all.

Kind.

Not any of those other things that seemed to be seeping more and more into the front of her mind. Zilla was wrong. She had to be wrong.

Oleks had never, ever even tried to touch her ... her mind fought away from the image and she felt a rush of heat and shame in spite of herself ... touch her down there. He didn't even hang on when she'd hugged him. And that was her fault. Not his. She was the one who had wrapped her arms around his neck.

Missie marched back down the stairs. Before she could stop herself she was in the middle of the kitchen, breathing the scorched dry smell of ironing and ovens.

‘He never did anything!' she yelled. ‘HE. NEVER. DID. ANYTHING!'

She was gone before she had time to see what happened. She thought she heard Dot suck her breath in so loud she coughed all over the place, and she knew her mother had slapped the iron back onto the hearth and turned to hold onto her.

But she fled.

Out the door and down the street and the wind when she slowed bit through her cardigan and turned her knees blue beneath her skirt.

Still she went on and wasn't going to stop until she found Zilla.

Somehow Zilla would help. She'd know what to do.

She always did.

It seemed so long since Missie had climbed the hill to go and play. Before Deirdre ... well ... before, she seemed to hike up here a lot but then she'd had Zill with her.

And Deirdre.

The wind through the pines that lined the side of the showground seemed to sigh a colder breath at that thought. She never liked those pines, ever. Not even in summer when they were full of stupid cockies chucking down stupid pinecones.

She was running, now. Her feet seemed to have taken off without any instruction from her. Faster, she went, on the far side of those trees and every time the wind caught them they bent closer together like they were whispering about her being the one who'd been there when Deirdre went missing.

She wasn't just missing was she?

She was dead.

And buried.

Now her face was too hot and the wind too cold and her throat hurt from running so hard. It wouldn't stay behind her though. That thought. Every step of the way was reminding her of the stuff they'd all done together. The road by the racecourse. The gates and the little ticket booths where Mary's big brother used to hang out and try and get Zilla to go in with him.

And Deirdre pulling her sleeve and telling her to hurry up and not to be so bloody stupid. Only she didn't say bloody. She said her effing word. Zill never went anyway, but took her time wandering past. Like she wanted to make sure Danny saw her. So she could say ‘g'day Danny' and look at him like this might be the day she'd go with him.

Missie kept going. Past Leonie's and past the house where they'd dared her to run into the backyard because ol' man Miller used to scare the hell out of them. They didn't tell her that he didn't live there any more until she'd come back.

Zill's house was further down and the road took a dip as if in sympathy with its location. Its front verandah had a few boards missing and the brick steps only made it look more rickety. The screen door that always stood open before was latched shut and the lights that were always on in the front room were not on now. The curtains looked sad and too droopy to be lace, only she knew they were. A bit torn, but true lace with longer lacy bits across the top. Arms and legs were always getting tangled in them whenever they'd jumped on the couch or had to duck down so they wouldn't get caught swearing at whoever was going past.

They'd spent one afternoon, back then, before Deirdre, hiding down on the old porch floor with a purse tied to a long, long string. Jimmy Johnson had told them how to do it and even stayed long enough to make sure they had it working right.

‘Put it right out there, see.' And he'd rushed out into the middle of the road when there was nothing coming along. ‘And you watch...'

They'd hidden and Deirdre had been up at the window, the lace curtains flung back behind her head like a bride's veil. She was looking out to tell them when to get ready.

‘Now!' she yelled.

And Jimmy had showed them how to slowly, slowly drag the purse back along the road.

For a few seconds nothing happened. Then the car stopped.

It was the Greenways and the kids had climbed around to look out the back window. Sally Greenway had leaned out the side window so far Missie was sure she'd topple.

‘Keep watching,' Jimmy said.

The purse moved back a little.

The car started backwards and so did the purse.

The car kept coming and then paused.

They heard Mr Greenway saying he was sure it should've been here somewhere. And the kids yelling no, no ... keep going back. So they did.

They went so far and would probably still be going backwards except Zilla started cacking herself laughing and then Deirdre bobbed up.

Missie didn't.

She was sure Mr Greenway would dob so she stayed down. He laughed though. He said it was a good trick and really, really laughed.

The Greenway kids didn't. They sent lots of up-your-bum signs out the back window.

Now her footsteps sounded heavy and hollow on the porch and there was no bell to ring and no hard wood left on the old flyscreen door to knock at. Maybe she should go around the back but the land fell away steeply and the side path dipped down so far you could see up under the floorboards of the kitchen and she didn't much fancy that cold, shadowed walk without Zilla beside her.

She called out, her voice wobbly and not loud enough to even cross through the screen. She called again and then knocked on the centre strip of the screen door so it rattled about helping to announce her arrival.

The door opened a sliver and Zill crowded herself into the narrow space between it and the corner.

‘What d'you want?'

It wasn't the response she'd expected. She'd been up here with her mother a lot of times since the funeral, more times even than she'd been by herself, and realised now that Zill hadn't really spoken to her in all that time. She'd sat with her mother, or stood beside her, or hung out at the end of the table. Once Missie's mum had suggested they go and find a book to look at together and Mrs Trumble had said no. She'd said it was all right for Zill to stay and so they'd stayed just long enough for her own mother to hand over the casserole and collect the dish she'd left before.

‘Just come to say g'day,' Missie said now. ‘You want to come out for a bit?'

The day was already clouding over into late afternoon and it was freezing now that she'd stopped running. She tugged her cardigan around her.

Zill shook her head but she didn't open the door any further.

‘So what're you doing?' Missie asked, looking back out into the street as if this might offer something interesting to talk about. ‘You coming back to school? Dot Evans reckons you're leaving.'

‘So what?' Zill hissed. ‘It's none of your business anyway.'

Missie didn't know what to say.

It was as if she'd been flung back into those days before Zill arrived.

It didn't feel right. Or seem fair. Not after all this time.

‘I only came up here to see if you wanted to come out for a bit,' she said suddenly. ‘You can just stay there for all I care!' And she turned to leave. ‘I didn't do anything so I don't know what you're blaming me for. None of it's my fault.'

She didn't turn back but she heard the door flung open, and then the screen door and then she felt the shove in the middle of her back that sent her sprawling down the steps.

‘It is your bloody fault!' Zilla spluttered. Words flew out in spit and her face twisted between tears and rage. ‘It is your bloody fault. You never listened when I told you about that perv! You never even listened and if you had he wouldn't have got our Deirdre! So it is your fault and I never, ever want you to come here again!'

Missie scrambled to her feet.

‘He is not a perv! And it's not my fault! You were the one who was supposed to wait and come home with her and you went off with that Lawrence!'

Zilla roared. She flew forward, hands open and fingers clawed ready to scratch and tear at Missie's face. She was stopped by her mother, who grabbed her and held her tightly. She struggled and fought and even tried to bite her way free and was still struggling when tears flooded her eyes and her voice was lost in hoarse, barking sobs.

‘Go home, Missie,' Mrs Trumble said. ‘Zilla's not ready for any friends just yet.'

Missie backed up to the gate and stepped onto the grassy kerb. She wanted Bev Trumble to say Zilla didn't mean it and she'd be feeling better soon and to come back then.

But she didn't say anything. She just nodded for Missie to keep going.

Missie started off slowly. She knew Mrs Trumble was still there watching and she could hear Zilla's quietened, steady crying.