Brunswick street blues, p.18
Brunswick Street Blues, page 18
I flipped through to the end, surprised by the neatness of his handwriting. It was old-fashioned but very even, almost like copperplate. Unfortunately, none of it made much sense. It was just lists of number plates, with no times or dates.
‘Can you read my writing, love?’
‘You’ve got beautiful writing, Morrie.’
‘The brothers used to whack our knuckles with a ruler if we made a smudge. Course a whack on the knuckles was the least of our worries with that sadistic pack of bastards.’
‘You’ve done a great job at getting the number plates, but unfortunately, I don’t know what one I’m looking for. I just need to know whether a truck or van pulled up.’
Morrie’s face lit up with one of his wide smiles. ‘Why didn’t you say? I remember one van, clear as day!’
‘Why’s that?’ Mitchell asked.
‘Because two people come out and put a dead body in the back of it!’
Obviously I hadn’t been asking the right questions. ‘How do you know?’
‘Two people come out carrying it, wrapped up in plastic. Looked like men but I supposed one could have been a woman—they were wearing overalls so it was hard to tell. Overalls and face masks like they’d been painting ceilings, ya know?’
I stared at him, wondering if somehow he knew what we were trying to find out and he was playing a practical joke. ‘You didn’t think of reporting it to anyone?’
‘Bless you, child. Who’d listen to me?’ He laughed with delight at the thought, then broke off to cough up a blob of mucus.
Mitchell was still scanning the notebook. ‘What’s the number plate of that old bomb Mavis is driving? That was pretty whiffy.’
‘IEZ 820,’ I said without even thinking. ‘Is it in there anywhere?’
He ran his finger down the columns. ‘And we have a winner!’
‘Maybe Mavis was involved in moving the mayor’s body,’ I said. ‘She said she’d stolen the Kombi, but I don’t know where from.’
‘This story just gets weirder and weirder,’ Mitchell said as he handed Morrie back his notebook. ‘Many thanks, Morrie.’
I gave him our six-pack of beer as well and we bid him farewell.
‘Baz grew you up right, love,’ said Morrie as he shoved the six-pack under his coat. ‘You’ll get your reward in heaven.’
* * *
We bought a replacement six-pack and were halfway home when my mobile phone rang. The caller ID revealed it was Sue, so I felt safe to answer.
‘Brick. I need some help. I was parked near the housing commission flats in Flemington and someone’s let my tyres down.’
I really didn’t want to go driving in the council car any more than I could help it, we were already pushing our luck, but I also couldn’t abandon Sue. ‘Can’t Shane come and get you?’
‘No. He’s at his best mate’s bucks night. There was going to be a stripper and everything, so he’ll be too drunk to drive by now. Plus I don’t want him to know I left the kids with our neighbour’s sixteen-year-old and her pot-smoking boyfriend.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. I’m with Mitchell, but I’m sure he won’t mind.’
‘Won’t mind what?’ asked Mitchell.
‘Sue’s got two flat tyres. She needs a lift,’ I said. ‘We’ll be right there, Sue. We’re not far away.’
‘Just not a word about what Morrie just told us. I don’t want any information leaks before I’m ready to go public.’
‘Fine,’ I said. Ungrateful bastard, after all the help Sue had given him. I sent Sue a text saying we were on our way.
Sue’s station wagon was easy enough to locate.
‘Hi,’ she said as we pulled up, shooting a winning smile at Mitchell. I wondered if this was all a ruse so she could see him again. ‘Thanks for coming and getting me. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important. It was probably just kids mucking around, but it’s got me a little spooked.’
‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked.
‘I got a lead from Joe, that parking inspector you introduced me to,’ she said. ‘He reckons there was a witness to Otto’s accident—a dishwasher who was having a smoko in an alleyway at the time. But he was too scared to go to the police because he wasn’t supposed to be working on his visa. I think he lives at these flats, but I’ve been door-knocking and I’ve had no joy. It’d probably help if I spoke Arabic. Why we learned French in school I have no idea. Completely bloody useless language.’
‘We’d better give you a lift then,’ said Mitchell. ‘I assume you don’t have two spares.’
‘I don’t even have one at the moment,’ said Sue, climbing in the back seat.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Monday came and I found myself awake before dawn as usual. My nightmares were getting worse and worse, and with each passing day I was becoming more and more scared that I was never going to see Baz again.
The kitchen was quiet as I made a cup of tea, but I could hear the shower running so I assumed Mitchell was up. His laptop was on the counter and I could see that he’d been searching a newspaper archive. I navigated the mouse to the search field and typed ‘Delilah Russell’—the name on the birth certificate that we’d found in Baz’s safe. Nothing came up.
Then I went back to the search field and typed ‘abandoned’, ‘baby’, ‘Melbourne’, and set the date field to 1975–85. As the search icon flickered, I considered slamming the laptop shut and walking away, but it was hardly secret information. I could have gone to a library at any time in my life and done a similar search.
The search results loaded and I clicked on the top result, BABY FOUND OUTSIDE BETTING SHOP, but then found my hands were shaking so much I could barely scroll to the story.
Police are seeking the parents of a baby found on Saturday night outside a betting shop in Brick Lane in Melbourne’s city centre. The baby girl is thought to be about two months old.
‘She’s obviously been cared for,’ said an officer. ‘She was not malnourished or mistreated. We hope that the mother will come forward and claim the child.’
In the meantime, the child has been taken into the care of the authorities.
If this child was me, then Baz had been telling me the truth. I’d sometimes wondered whether he’d told me I was abandoned because my parents were serial killers—or worse—although I don’t know what’s worse than a serial killer. Port Adelaide supporters, maybe?
I went to make a cup of tea and was staring at the kettle when Head-butt the cat came by and banged his head violently into my leg. I looked down at him and he appeared to wag his tail.
‘Are you sure you’re not really a hound dog?’ I asked as I gave in and put down some food. ‘What if I said I ain’t gonna feed you no more?’
The cat let me stroke him for a bit and then bashed his head into the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard. I opened the door and he disappeared without a backward glance.
* * *
When the clock ticked around to nine, I called in sick to work. I didn’t want to risk being run down by a luxury German car, and I also feared that Selena might be lurking in the bushes outside council, waiting to run at me with a microphone and a camera as fast as her high heels would permit.
I didn’t know exactly why Selena had taken such an instant dislike to me back in Year 4. Was it simple racism due to her assumption that I was Black like Baz? Or was it an innate bully sense that I was just the weakest lamb in the flock, with my stutter and lazy eye? Well, I wasn’t that little lost lamb anymore and I wasn’t going to be her victim again.
It was several minutes before anyone in the office answered the phone. Being a Monday followed by a public holiday Tuesday, a plague had evidently passed through most of council—and probably most of Melbourne. Finally Brucie picked up.
‘On the sickie bandwagon, are you?’ Brucie sounded more tired than usual.
‘What are you doing in at work?’ I asked.
‘Apparently my status as gatekeeper to Gail isn’t as secure as I’d previously thought. I don’t want to give Eve any excuse to say I’m not meeting my job description.’
A thought struck me. ‘Shit. The office car. Has Eve noticed it’s missing?’
‘Not yet, but don’t worry, I can come and get it,’ said Brucie. ‘If Eve has noticed, I’ll tell her it was getting serviced. Give me your address and I’ll be there in ten.’
I wondered how far I could trust Brucie. He loved gossip and might want to name drop if he thought I was shacked up with a semi-famous journo—particularly if he felt the need to deflect heat from Eve.
‘You can trust me.’ He’d read my mind and it made me feel bad. I was probably headed for a sacking anyway, but until then I needed all the friends at council I could get.
When Brucie arrived, I could see there was something he wanted to tell me and braced myself for more bad news. ‘This is strictly confidential,’ he said as I hustled him into the hallway, ‘but I know I can trust you, Brick. I’ve been doing a bit of work on the side. Viral marketing. Have you heard of it?’
I’d barely got my head around marketing, let alone viral marketing.
‘It’s the next big thing,’ said Brucie. ‘Newspapers and TV. Forget about it. They’ve only got a few years left in them. People don’t realise it yet, but there’s big bucks to be made from social media like Myspace and Facebook and I’m aiming to get on board. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to retire before I’m thirty.’
At this point, I was just hoping to live to thirty. ‘So how can I help you? I don’t know anything about all that stuff.’
‘I just might need you to cover for me a bit, if business takes off. I still need my job. Major credit card debt. Party lifestyle.’
I remembered the memo I’d found in Eve’s office. ‘I’m happy to help you out if I can, Brucie, but I’m a worried I might get sacked soon. Gail really doesn’t like me.’
‘I knew you’d be cool. And don’t worry. It’s really, really hard to sack people from council. Take Gavin for example. He hasn’t done a shred of work in twelve months.’
‘Is Gavin the one who likes to wear blue shirts, or is that Grant?’
‘Not sure,’ said Brucie, shrugging. ‘Anyway, got to run. Don’t get too hungover while you’re sick, luvvy.’ He pocketed the car key and left again.
I’d barely closed the door when there was another knock. So much for keeping a low profile; suddenly our quiet cul-de-sac was like Bourke Street. I looked through the peephole to see Mavis DuBois. She was still dressed like a homeless person, and when I opened the door she gave a start like a scared stray.
‘Sorry for skipping out on you the other night,’ she said, looking at her feet. ‘I’ve been a little freaked out lately.’
I felt like telling her to bugger off, but that wasn’t charitable. What would Baz do?
‘Do you want to stay with me and Bunny for a few nights?’ I asked finally.
She looked up at me and nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
‘Are you still driving the Kombi?’ I took her arm. ‘Come on, we’d better get it off the street in case it catches the wrong kind of attention.’
I opened the corrugated iron back gate while Mavis returned to the Kombi. Somehow we managed to wedge the van next to the clothesline. It helped that we didn’t care about dings.
I closed the back gate again as Mavis retrieved numerous plastic bags from the van. They looked to be filled with clothes and bedding. Through the glass door at the back of the house I could see that there were various people up and about in the kitchen.
‘Are you ready to face the masses?’ I asked Mavis as I helped with her bags.
She produced two tablets from her pocket and swallowed them without water, then nodded. ‘Valium.’
I resisted the urge to frisk her for more and do the same.
We entered the kitchen to find Mitchell, Bunny and Timmy in the midst of a fry-up. ‘Do you want a bacon and egg …’ Bunny’s voice trailed off as she saw Mavis following me in.
I sat Mavis down on a spare seat and stacked up her plastic bags by the back door.
Mitchell poured her a large coffee. ‘Mavis, we’ve got a few questions about the Kombi you’ve been … er … living in. Where did you get it?’
Mavis looked furtive, or maybe it was just a lack of eye make-up. ‘I found it in a back lane about a block away from the council building. It had one of those stickers on, you know, saying that council was going to tow it. I think it had been dumped. My dad used to collect old cars and fix them up. I used to hang out in his shed with him a lot to keep out of my mum’s way. Kombis are really easy to hotwire.’
‘Did Brick tell you that it may have been used to transport a dead body?’
‘I think I need a shower,’ said Mavis, setting down her coffee carefully. She left the room without further explanation.
‘If you need to leave,’ I called after her, ‘please use the door and not the window, or the paint-sniffing kids from around the corner will climb in and rip off anything they can find.’
Mavis came back into the room carrying a fresh towel. ‘I’m sorry about last time, I won’t do it again.’ Then she delved into one of her plastic bags and pulled out a photo. ‘I took your photo, Brick, I’m sorry,’ she said as she handed it back. It was the photo of me with Nora. ‘I saw it in your room, and it scared me because—Who is this?’ Her voice sounded mildly hysterical.
‘It’s me,’ I answered in as soothing voice as I could muster. ‘It’s me as a kid.’
‘No, I mean the woman. Is she your mum?’
It was such as innocent question, but it was like a punch in the stomach. Nora was the closest thing I’d ever had to a mother and the memories I’d recently uncovered had left me dealing with a feeling of deep sadness. ‘No. It’s not my mum. She’s a woman who fostered me when I was little. I was a foster kid. Her name was Nora, but I can’t tell you much else.’ I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice. ‘She liked high heels, jewellery and the Fitzroy Football Club. She was kind to me …’ My voice trailed off and there was silence in the room. Everyone looked from me to Mavis.
‘This is the same woman I saw in the photo of Errol—the photo that sent him crazy,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
I felt sick and dizzy, as if I was about to faint.
‘What happened to Nora?’ Mitchell asked.
‘She died.’ I could no longer control my voice and it cracked.
Mitchell put his hand on my arm. ‘How did she die, Brick?’
I looked down at his hand. It had a pink scar running clear across the top. ‘I don’t know.’
He tightened his grasp. ‘You don’t look like you don’t know.’
‘It’s complicated.’ I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see his hand any longer. ‘I’ve had nightmares my whole life, but lately I’ve started to realise that they might actually be memories.’
‘What happens in the dreams?’ Mitchell relaxed his grasp and his voice sounded gentle for once.
‘A man is hurting Nora and he wants to find me and hurt me too.’ I wrenched myself away, ran into the bathroom and vomited.
I washed my face and then lay down on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. The foster care system wasn’t perfect, I knew that. But it was awful to think I’d been exposed to such violence as a small child. Baz must have known Nora. Did he try and protect her? Is that why he felt he had to protect me too? Who was the man who’d hurt Nora? Was he the reason she died? How did she die? Another wave of nausea hit me.
There was a thrumming in my head. The memories of my life before Baz were starting to seep back into my everyday consciousness. The genie was out of the bottle—and there was no shoving it back in.
I wished Baz was with me. I felt unmoored without him, without the Phoenix. What if I lost both? They’d been the constant in my life as I remembered it—the touchstone—and I didn’t know what my future would look like if they weren’t there.
An hour later, after a powernap with the help of a couple of tablets from Bunny’s bag of magic tricks, I felt almost human again. There was a soft knock on my bedroom door and Mavis slunk into the room.
‘I’m sorry I upset you. I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately and it’s made me a bit paranoid. Here, I bought a frame for your photo.’ She handed me a beautiful silver frame.
‘Thank you. That’s really lovely.’ I forced myself out of bed, holding the frame to my chest. ‘I’m going to make a sandwich. You can have a nap in my bed if you like.’ In reality I couldn’t think of anything worse than eating, but I wanted to do something normal.
Mitchell was still in the kitchen, tapping away at his laptop and drinking coffee. He looked up briefly. ‘All good?’
‘Yes.’ I avoided eye contact. ‘I’m going to make sandwiches.’
‘Whatever gets you through. I could eat a sandwich.’
I inserted the photo of Nora and me in the silver frame, set it on the counter, and then began buttering bread like my life depended on it.
‘So, the premier of Victoria is a pretty high-profile person,’ Mitchell said as I inspected a tomato that looked like it was probably best consumed several days earlier. ‘Has his face ever rung any bells for you? Or triggered any of these bad dreams you mentioned?’
‘It’s hard to say.’ I sawed at the tomato. ‘Obviously I’ve seen his picture in the newspaper and on TV … but you know how it is, men in suits all look a bit similar.’
‘You have trouble distinguishing men in suits?’ Mitchell looked the most amused I’d ever seen him.
‘They look the same!’ I felt defensive for some reason. ‘Am I the only one who tells them apart by their neckties?’
‘I’m not wearing a necktie. Can you recognise me?’
‘Do you even own a suit?’
Mitchell took one of my sandwiches. ‘Getting back to business. While you were having your little lie down, I did some research. I don’t want to give you another turn, but I looked up the newspapers from that time. To give you the brief version: Nora Strange, twenty-nine years old, was found dead in her home. Her estranged husband was arrested a few days later.’
