Devil's Food (10 page)

‘I’ll just sit here in this splendid light and get on with my Lady and the Unicorn,’ she told me. ‘No, dear, not into the bag,’ she said, closing it firmly. ‘Too many spiky things. Now, here’s a nice cotton reel, see if you can catch it.’

Tori indulged the kind lady by springing down and batting the cotton reel across the rug. I conveyed Meroe’s instructions and Therese repeated them without fault. She opened the thermos and I smelt coffee.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Therese assured me. ‘Jacqui can’t stand the smell of coffee so it’s a chance to have a nice cup in peace.’

She seemed perfectly at home and in charge, so I went back to the shop, where Daniel and Jason were managing the morning-tea rush creditably. So beautifully were they impressing the customers and giving change that I had time to go to Cafe Delicious and devour a whole serving of moussaka. I was starving. Daniel followed me, and then Jason, and then it was time to pull down the shutters. Jason had asked after the girls and been reassured. He went off to buy his CD with a spring in his step.

Timbo pulled up in his car. Braybrook might be squalid, perhaps, but I would prefer a little honest squalor to this careless poisoning of two young girls.

The man who was not yet a murderer contemplated the work before him and picked up his large knife. He sat, perhaps, a little too long, cleaning the blade, listening to the whetting stone glide grittily over the iron.

CHAPTER SIX

I told Daniel all about it on the way. I was still furious when I had got to the end. Daniel had more experience than me with human stupidity and cruelty, but even he was shaking his head. ‘Appalling,’ he said. ‘But what amazes me is that they would just gulp down any stew of weeds — no proper packaging, even.’

‘You’ve underestimated the lengths to which the girls will go to avoid being fat. It is similar to the lengths to which people went to avoid catching the Black Death. It’s turning into an obsession in the twenty-first century and frankly I can’t see that I am going to enjoy the next few years.’

‘Not even with me and the cats?’ he asked, his mouth quirking at the corner. This required a kiss, so I kissed it.

‘It’s like footbinding or infibulation or wasp waists that needed the removal of a few unimportant ribs. Star always said that the female sex was fatally flawed. The Goddess cursed us with vanity and so we could never rule the world while we were willing to spend half our energy worrying about how we looked.’

‘It does seem like a waste of energy,’ Daniel commented. ‘As to whether it was the Goddess, there I defer to Meroe. Though nothing else but some sort of curse could explain platform shoes.’

‘True,’ I agreed. I leaned back into his shoulder.

Timbo, a large, cuddly young man who drove for Daniel when he needed a car, eased the vehicle around a corner with tender care. I understand that the robbers who employed Timbo in the bad old days all went to jail on their own merits, not through any fault of his getaway car driving. Daniel had helped him get his licence back and in consequence he worshipped Daniel and the road he drove on. One could not imagine Timbo without a car. It would be like imagining him without feet. He was a great help, as I hate driving and Daniel has no licence through some sort of principle (which I will get to the bottom of eventually). Also, though a sweet, gentle soul, Timbo was a large-framed lad and most of the local villains knew him as an acceptably loyal offsider. Or so Daniel said.

We were rolling along Ballarat Road. I had only ever noticed Braybrook as a place which had a rather huge old pub with two statues of footballers outside, on the way to Ballarat. Daniel made a gesture of respect at the statues.

‘Ted Whitten and Dougie,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘That is Dougie Hawkins,’ he said, as Timbo hung a left hand turn down a side street. ‘And I don’t want to hear a disparaging word about football in this conversation should the subject arise. Football really matters to you if you don’t have anything else,’ he added. ‘These places have lost their industries, their reason for existing. Sunshine was called Sunshine after the Sunshine Harvesters.’

‘The Harvester Judgment,’ I said, taken right back to my law lectures. ‘Equal pay for equal work … that was just up the road?’

‘Yes, but all the factories are gone now,’ Daniel told me. ‘These places were built to house the workers in those factories and now there is no work. Braybrook was mainly Housing Commission, inhabited by English migrants, with the overflow from slum clearance in Richmond and Collingwood. None of them had any stake in the area.’

‘Not an auspicious beginning,’ I commented.

‘Most of Braybrook is perfectly decent and ladies speak very well of Spotlight as a place to buy sewing materials,’ said Daniel. ‘In fact, Therese Webb has given us a commission for the way home.’

‘I must have mentioned that I was coming here,’ I said, though I didn’t recall doing so.

‘But every suburb has its bad streets,’ continued Daniel. ‘Giving one of those streets as your address is tantamount to a plea of guilty.’

‘And that’s where we are going?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sorry about this, ketschele, but you get to do the traditional female thing on this visit.’

‘Keep quiet?’

‘Talk to the women and children,’ he told me, smiling. ‘Now, before we get there, take most of the money out of your purse, and leave your phone and any other valuables in the car. Timbo will mind the car.’

‘They’re going to rob us?’ I asked uneasily, doing as he said and leaving only a folded twenty dollar note and a handful of change in my purse.

‘Not directly,’ he said. ‘But the kids tend to rifle visitors. Here we are. All right to be left, Timbo?’

‘All right,’ said Timbo in his soft voice. ‘You give me a yell, Corinna, and I’ll come running,’ he added, which was nice of him.

The house had originally been smart. In its time. About 1950, perhaps. It had a bright red roof and the walls had been white; it would have had the jaunty charm of a toadstool. It was made, however, of concrete sheeting, which cannot be repaired if it gets damaged. There were multiple holes, covered with tacked-on plyboard which had been painted over and was now curling and peeling. One window was broken. The other had a sheet of cardboard Blu-Tacked on the inside. It was already sodden and folding. Next to a dead geranium was a disembowelled lawnmower, an engine block, a couple of leaking black garbage bags and a deflated paddling pool.

There was a soul-chilling snarl. Out from a hidden corner a dog erupted. I jumped. The animal strained at its chain, its matted fur cloaking its insane eyes as it bayed and pawed and choked. It seemed to be made of flashing teeth. I do not like dogs.

Daniel threw something in an underarm toss which would have been the pride of Trevor Chappell and the raging fury vanished as if it had never been there. All I heard was the dragging of its chain and a wolfing noise. I raised an eyebrow.

‘They call it housebreaker’s sausage,’ he said, grinning. ‘Oatmeal and chopped offal cooked with Valium. The Valium was a later idea. I believe that the original recipe included opium, which isn’t easy to get in these parlous times. Won’t hurt the poor hound. Looks like it could do with a decent meal. Hello! Anyone home?’

‘Who wants to know?’ asked a voice from behind a small crack of opening door.

‘It’s me,’ said Daniel. ‘Daniel from the Soup Run. Sister Mary wants to know how Sharelle is. I brought a lady to see her.’

‘She from Human Services?’ growled the voice. I hoped I wasn’t from Human Services.

‘No, have a heart, what do you think?’ said Daniel. ‘Now either let us in or I’ll have to go back to Sister Mary and tell her it was a wasted visit. No pressure. I’ve just got Timbo waiting.’

‘Okay, okay,’ grumbled the voice.

When the door opened, screaming on its hinges, I saw that the house was of a simple design. Four rooms off a central hall and a large kitchen and bathroom at the back. The gaping back door revealed a yard with one withered sapling, three dogs on chains, several children and a pram with a wailing baby. No grass. No flowers. Nothing but discoloured washing flapping in never-drying festoons.

I was overcome with a strange mixture of annoyance and pity and shook myself. I needed to find my father. That was why I was here. And this was the address he had given the police when they arrested him for lying down in front of a tram. These people knew something and I was required to treat them with respect. If only they didn’t reek of poverty and dirt and hopelessness and dog shit and pot smoke. If only someone would change that baby and feed those dogs and fix this door.

‘She’s in there,’ said the man. He was not prepossessing. He might have been attractive once, before the hamburgers, pizza and beer diet had distorted his waist and added all those chins to his unshaven face. Then again, who had just been railing against the view that fat equalled ugly?

The three young men lying half asleep on the remains of two sofas and a car seat in the living room were thin as gutter rats. Their loose homie clothes let me see corded arms gloved in tattoos which made them look as though they were netted in dirty green lace. Their eyes were flat and ravenous and they stared in a way that made me feel like the meat course at a butchers’ picnic. Luckily the TV was on and they went back to watching it. I slipped past to a room where I could hear a baby crying, leaving Daniel to his fate.

The room had contained more furniture once. There were faded patches on the wall. Now it had a hospital bed and a pram and a pile of cardboard boxes. There was nowhere to sit. A woman opened her eyes when I came in.

‘Sister sent you?’ she croaked.

Sharelle’s mouth was as dry as a mummy’s. Her scalp bore only a faint fuzz. She was stick thin, her eyes glazed. The room smelt of mortality, though it was clean enough.

‘Nurse comes in every morning,’ she told me. ‘Jog the pram a bit, will you? Nyrie’ll be back soon. I sent her to the shop for her dad’s fags. I’ll have to leave Breehanna with her. I dunno how she’ll manage.’

‘How old is Nyrie?’ I asked.

Sharelle thought about it. ‘Must be ten, maybe eleven. I was real healthy when I had her. Anyway, tell Sister Mary I’m doing good. Blokes leave me alone now I’m so thin. Nurse reckons she’ll be able to get me into palliative soon. Have to be soon,’ she said, shifting in her bed. None of her bones had any covering at all. She must have been in constant pain. I shelved my outrage at the implications of ‘blokes leave me alone now I’m so thin’ for later.

‘Can I get you anything?’ I asked conventionally.

The young/old face wrinkled. ‘Don’t you go into that kitchen,’ she said. ‘Nurse says you’ll get cholera. She’s funny, that nurse. Open the top carton and there’s a thermos. She leaves it for me. I like things hot, now,’ she said. I poured out thin chicken broth and helped her sit up enough to drink it. The baby had settled down into a low, unhappy murmur. I had no idea what to do about it.

‘I’m with Daniel,’ I told Sharelle. ‘I’m looking for a man who gave this address as his own.’

‘To the jacks?’ asked the sick woman, interest fading.

‘Yeah. He’s my father and I am trying to find him.’

‘Fuck, you want to find your father? I spent years running away from mine,’ she told me. ‘Might have been anyone through here lately, love. I been stuck in here. Not even a TV. I asked Nurse for one and she said she’d see.’

‘They wouldn’t let you have the one in the living room?’ I asked.

Sharelle grunted a dry laugh.

The baby stopped whimpering. I looked around. A small girl had whisked her out of her pram and was rocking her expertly in her arms. She was coltish, with skinned knees under a too short school skirt, and she was glaring at me with bright, intelligent eyes. This had to be Nyrie.

‘Hello, Ny,’ murmured Sharelle. ‘Lady wants to know about her father …’

She drifted off. Nyrie kept glaring at me over the baby’s bald head. That heavy child seemed to be half her size. I hadn’t seen anyone like her since Doré did his engravings of London by night.

‘She’s dying,’ Nyrie told me abruptly.

There didn’t seem any point in denying it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sister Mary sent me to ask about her.’

‘We’re all right on our own,’ Nyrie declared. Her voice was flat and unemotional. Only her eyes were as hot as little coals with fear and love and defiance. ‘Me and her and Bree.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But I also have a question and I can pay for an answer.’ This child was like Jason — she did not need, and would not trust, any attempts at guile or persuasion.

‘How much?’ The small face shrank into calculation. She had plaited her dark hair into such tight plaits that they drew her eyebrows out straight at the edges, like wings.

‘Twenty is all I have on me except for some change.’

‘Make it twenty and a dollar coin. He’ll take the dollar off me as soon as you go but I can hide the twenty.’

‘Deal. This man was called Chapman and he was here maybe two weeks ago. Do you remember him?’

I showed her the picture. Her nose wrinkled. She nodded.

‘Gyp brought him in off the street. Said he was mental. Stayed here until he had no more money. Then they threw him out.’