Faceless, p.10
Faceless, page 10
‘Why are you here?’ she asked. She was never one for small talk.
‘He called you ma’am. Have you had a promotion?’
‘Detective sergeant, but mostly they call me that because they’re scared of me, and I like to keep it that way. You didn’t answer my question. We haven’t seen you for – what? Over two years? Suddenly you’re here, hollering and making a ruckus like a school kid. What do you want?’
He found her eyes then. ‘I need your help.’
‘You look like you need a lot more than my help.’ Again, he winced at the harsh judgement. ‘You been living rough all this time?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Why?’
Such a simple question, but one that sent a cascade of images tumbling through his head, images that provoked emotions that made him reel, and he had to grasp on to the edge of the bench to prevent himself falling. She’d seen it, too; she always was one of the sharpest observers he knew. He heard her sigh, sensed the change in her demeanour. When she spoke again, her voice was cautious, softer.
‘Jesus, you’re in a bad way. Helena said you’d walked away from everything, said you had fallen, but I had no idea it was this bad for you.’
He hadn’t expected her sympathy, and he certainly hadn’t expected to hear she’d been talking to his wife. His ex-wife, he reminded himself. Again he felt the choking in his throat, and vertiginous spin of memory and emotion playing centrifuge in his head. If this kept up he would unravel completely, and then he’d be no good to anyone, least of all Billy. He focused his mind on her.
‘I need help to find a friend who is missing.’
‘They said you kept harping on about some missing girl. You know front desk could have helped you with that.’ Like they would take him seriously. At least the young constable in the park had tried, but in reality Max had no credibility, and he knew it.
‘Yeah, but I thought you’d listen to me.’ The only place the front desk had helped him to was the cells.
‘What can you tell me, then, that you couldn’t tell them.’ Her voice had gone back to the businesslike version, with a hint of the old antagonism.
‘She’s a street kid. Her name’s Billy. She’s been missing three nights. I don’t know that much about her personal details, only that it is completely uncharacteristic of her to disappear. We kind of looked out for each other.’
‘Were you fucking her?’ Direct as always.
‘No.’ He paused, then added, ‘She’s only eighteen.’ He chanced a look Meredith’s way, and saw the look of pity and comprehension in her eyes. And that was why he knew she was the only one to help, that he needed her. ‘What can I tell you? She is Fijian, family somewhere in Auckland but didn’t have anything to do with her, turned the odd trick for cash.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Bit of weed, otherwise clean.’
‘Family wouldn’t have staged an intervention?’
‘Not likely, and if by some chance they had picked her up she’d have left a note or something. No, she’s just gone, and she’s in trouble.’ He knew it, with absolute certainty. Every instinct in his body screamed it so.
‘That’s not a hell of a lot to go on.’
‘I’ve got this.’ He reached his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out the folded piece of A4 paper. He stood up to give it to her, but she waved it away.
‘What is it? Tell me, I’m not touching it.’ She knew how to twist the knife.
‘K Road pimp caught her on camera as she was catching a john. It’s dark and the picture’s grainy, but you can make out a couple of numbers from the plate.’
She was staring at him again, and he recognised the look. He shifted position and tried to sit up straighter, like the teacher was looking. She was calculating something. What exactly? He hoped it was in his favour, in Billy’s favour.
‘Max, I’m going to be upfront with you.’ A twinge of fear and apprehension relayed around his stomach. ‘You’re a mess. You stink – fuck, you stink – and you’re a bum.’ Each word pained like repeated punches to the kidneys. ‘I think I know you well enough to be dead sure you wouldn’t have come here unless you absolutely believed this girl was in danger, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there. But,’ the look she gave him settled like a cold brick in his guts, ‘I’m not doing anything for you until you do something for yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You go, clean yourself up, shower, for God’s sake, then come back here and we’ll talk.’
‘But the clock’s ticking – she’s been gone three days. You know what the score is, you know time is everything. Can’t you at least take this,’ he held out the page, ‘at least start looking into it.’
‘Not until you clean up.’
‘But it will take too long.’ His voice sounded pleading, feeble.
‘Then you’d better hurry.’ Hers was concrete.
‘Well how the hell am I supposed to do that? Don’t you think I would have by now if it was that simple?’
‘We all make our own choices, Max.’
‘You think I had a choice?’
‘You always have a choice. Personal responsibility. You elected to opt out of life, that was your decision. And before you protest,’ she held her hand up, physically and verbally halting his riposte, ‘I know you had the worst burden to bear, and I would never want to go through what you all went through; but still, it was your choice.’
She wasn’t going to budge. He knew it, and he knew the only way he was going to get any help for Billy was to do as she said. Fuck, she could be a heartless bitch.
‘How the hell am I supposed to clean up? This is all I have.’ He stood there, a picture of decrepitude.
‘Go find an op shop, get some new clothes, for Christ’s sake bin those ones, go shower, shave, then you can come back.’
‘Easier said than done. I haven’t got any money, and where the hell can I go for a shower? Are you offering your place?’
‘Hah,’ she said with a snort. ‘Get real. Use your imagination.’ Imagination could only get you so far. Who was going to admit him anywhere, looking and smelling like this?
‘I’ll need money.’
She sighed, and then reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a billfold. ‘If I find out you’ve spent this on booze or fags, it’s over. I’ll make sure no one listens to your concerns about this girl – at any station around town, not just here, you understand? And that’s a promise. It’s all up to you.’ She handed over a twenty-dollar note.
‘I’ll need more than that,’ Max said. Even his mathematical ability and dated grasp of economics knew twenty bucks would get him nowhere.
‘Too bad, it’s all the cash I’ve got, and I’m sure as hell not giving you my credit card. I’m not some charitable trust. Make do.’
Max looked at the note, folded it and then stashed it in his pocket.
‘A thank-you would be nice.’
Max mumbled a ‘thanks’, but couldn’t look her in the eye.
‘Hey, McDonald,’ she yelled down the corridor. The young constable hurriedly walked down towards them. Max wondered how much he’d listened in on their conversation.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Let the former detective here out of the cells and see him on his way. If he turns up at the station again looking like this, don’t let him in. If he’s cleaned up, give me a call.’ She turned her attention back to Max, a grim look on her face. ‘Take care, Max,’ she said. ‘You know the score. It’s all up to you now.’ With that she turned and walked away.
Meredith
She hadn’t even made it out of the watchhouse from sorting out the mess made by those clowns this morning before she was accosted by people asking scurrilous questions. And here was yet another one walking down the corridor towards her, probably on the way down to the cells to have a look for himself and have a poke at the prisoner so he could make his pathetic excuse for an ego feel a bit better. The look on his face alone gave her a premonition of the coming conversation. The echoey click of her heels slowed as he blocked the way, forcing her to stop and pay him attention.
‘Peters.’
‘Johnson.’ As far as she was concerned he lived up to his name.
‘Have you seen him? Is he as big a bum as they say?’ His voice sounded eager, conspiratorial, as if willing her to buy into the latest tabloid sensation.
‘And are you as big a gossip as they say?’
The detective shrugged the insult off, intent on other things. He’d clearly missed the warning tone in her voice.
‘Seriously, they were saying Grimes reeked of piss and shit, looked like a skeleton who hadn’t had a bath for a year. Is he really that pathetic?’
Meredith’s face twitched at his throwaway choice of word, and she felt the itch under her skin intensify, the acerbic knot in her stomach tighten.
‘How the mighty fall, eh? Who would have thought that—’
‘Shut it, Johnson.’ She didn’t give him the opportunity to finish his sentence. She pulled herself up to her full height, poised slightly on her toes, so that she looked down on the smarmy, smug face before her. ‘And what is it to you? That is none of your fucking business. And if I find out you have been down there to stare or jeer at him I will have you hauled before the disciplinary panel faster than you can blink. Jesus Christ, the poor bugger’s had enough to cope with without having the likes of you rubbernecking. I thought you were supposed to have been his fucking friend.’
She pushed her way past the now-gawping detective, bumping him off balance, and strode away – strode away before she lost it completely and did something she’d regret. Arseholes like that were the very reason she played her cards close to her chest when it came to anything even remotely personal. The rubberneckers were no better than the paparazzi and their fascination with the scandalous and scurrilous. It was unprofessional, and it was contemptible. Her fist banged against the wall with the rhythm of her strides, and the clack of her heels echoed up the stairwell; the hollow sound seemed to emphasise how repellent company would be right now, so she veered off towards the women’s bathroom. A quick check of the cubicles confirmed it could provide the solitude she needed. She moved over to the basin and placed her hands on either side of the smooth porcelain, feeling the refreshing shock of its cold on her palms, and she rocked backward and forward on the balls of her feet, trying to calm the emotion that bubbled up within her. When she looked up at herself in the mirror she wasn’t surprised to see the redness in her eyes and tears welling. She blew the breath out from between pursed lips and tried to steady the cramp of nausea in her stomach.
How could he have sunk so low? She had known she would bump into him again someday; New Zealand was too small a country, Auckland too small a city not to eventually rub shoulders with the past – but nothing could have prepared her for this. It was difficult to comprehend, and a part of her wondered if she’d got it wrong, if it wasn’t actually Max Grimes down there, but some miscreant who’d stolen his identity and was trying to con them into thinking he was a broken-down version of Max, for his own gain.
But as was often the case in life, the truth was harsh. Max had fallen and he’d fallen hard. Part of her could understand why, but a larger part of her was both livid and saddened, and also felt a smear of guilt. No, she wouldn’t allow herself to feel that. He’d made his own choices, and she wasn’t going to carry the burden of his poor decisions any more than she’d already had to. He did that to himself.
She stood upright, wiped under her eyes, taking care not to smudge her eyeliner and mascara, blew her nose on a paper towel, and checked to ensure all signs of emotion had gone. One thing she knew for certain: it must have taken immense courage for him to come back here, to face her. It would have been the step of absolute last resort. He must have been consumed by fear for the girl’s safety to crawl back to this place.
Would he do as she said – would he clean himself up and come back? Or had that been too much to ask? Regardless, she would make a few phone calls, ring the City Mission, the Salvation Army, the hospital, the morgue.
‘Jesus, Max,’ she uttered to the mirror.
Billy
I’ve got to get that water, what is left of her dehydrated logic keeps chanting: Get the water, get the water. It has stopped leaking, so she knows there is at least half the bottle left where it is lying on its side, out of reach. She also knows approximately where it is, the direction from where that heartbreaking dripping, glugging sound came is emblazoned in her brain. Her mind works through the possibilities. Her right hand is secured to the pipe. She gives it a small tug and winces as the plastic band digs into abraded skin. She has a flash of an idea, and then chides herself for not thinking of it earlier. She reaches forward with her left hand and undoes the shoelace on her left sneaker. She slips it off and places it alongside the wall. She undoes the right and places it next to its mate. She leaves her socks on, a token barrier against the cold. The uncoordinated fingers of her left hand fumble against the button on her jeans; with a twist it comes free and she pulls down the zipper. This is where she pauses, steeling herself for what is to come, because the wet, reeking fabric of her jeans is sodden with her own urine, her own shit, and her skin has been marinating in this festering sludge of excrement. She gets to her feet as best she can, riding with the spin of her head, breathing deeply to push away the need to fall back down, then slowly reaches across her body and begins the side-to-side wriggle of fabric over her hips. The fresh wave of released stench hits her, and she screws up her face and persists, grimaces with the sting of damp denim scraping across the macerated flesh of her inner thighs, and feels relief when the jeans drop the rest of the way to the ground. She shuffles her feet out of them, and then, dry-retching at the smell, she holds them by the hems and gently casts them out, a reeking denim net arcing through the blackness in search of life-giving water. She is rewarded with the scrape of plastic over concrete, the victory swelling in her heart as she pulls them in and the scraping sound nears. She casts out again, and again, each time hearing that bottle inching closer and closer, until she reaches out with her hand and her fingers nudge plastic, they grasp for it and, with a mewling noise like an excited kitten, she pulls it in to her chest. But she remembers what happened the last time she clutched the bottle and she won’t let such greed and stupidity happen again. She raises the bottle to her lips, cringes at the slight whiff and trace of taste transferred from the jeans, and takes the tiniest of sips. With a groan of ecstasy she rolls the moisture slowly around her mouth before she dares to swallow.
Max
A complex mix of emotions engulfed him as he walked out the front door of the police station. Elation: he’d done it, he’d pushed himself past that immense mental barrier and made himself heard, made Billy’s plight heard. There was relief that Meredith had deigned to speak to him; and with it he felt shame, a gnawing cavernous shame that transformed into a gut-wrenching guilt, grasping and clawing up from the deepest reaches of his soul. Now wasn’t the time to examine the reasons for the guilt – that would be a Pandora’s box of epic proportions. Now he had the more immediate physical issues to contend with. He had to get cleaned up, and fast. Meredith was not one for idle threats, and if she said she would black-mark him, she would. She hadn’t earned her reputation as being a bitch in heels by backing down over anything.
The question was, how to go about it? Twenty bucks wasn’t going to get him far. The charity-run op shop for clothes, that was the easiest option; but where the hell was he going to get a shower? There were public swimming pools, but where was the closest one to here? He’d have to walk all the way to the Point Erin Pool, or Parnell Baths, or Newmarket. The problem was he’d have to pay to get in – that’s if they’d even let him in. Chances were the staff would get all worried about the creepy homeless man around all those good people, all those mothers with children. They’d decide that because he looked like nothing on earth, he must be a paedophile. All their white, middle-class stereotypes and discriminations would come into play against him, whereas in reality they should have been more worried about the nice, tidy-looking man with the friendly smile. As far as he was concerned his money was as good as anyone else’s, but that was the problem, the money. It would probably cost him, what, eight bucks or so nowadays to get in? And that was too big a chunk out of his precious little cash. He wondered if a backpackers or the YMCA would let him use a shower. Fat chance. When he recalled the apparition he’d seen reflected in the shop window, hell, he knew he wouldn’t let someone looking like that anywhere near his premises if the shoe was on the other foot. The City Mission? Maybe. There was no point standing there in a freeze of indecision. First step would be an op shop, to at least get clothes fit to change into. There was a Red Cross shop in K Road. He’d start there.
Billy
She leans back against the wall, relishing the restorative effects of the water, amazed at how much her clarity has improved with even that little taste. She shakes the bottle in her left hand. About quarter is left. The sound releases an overwhelming urge to lift it to her lips and chug down the remainder, but she resists – she won’t, she can’t. She places it on the ground near where her right hand is tied to the pipe, and then takes several deep breaths before she starts on the next task she has to undertake. Her heart thuds in anticipation of the pain it will bring, but she knows if she is going to have any hope of surviving this, she has to look out for herself in the small ways. Getting her jeans off has only emphasised the point. She can’t stay wet and cold. She won’t die of hypothermia, she won’t. She reaches out and feels along the wall to where she’s managed to hang the jeans. Will they dry before she freezes? She doesn’t know, but she has to try. She has to do something affirmative, something for herself. She starts edging down each side of her soiled underpants, inhales sharply at the sting of shit pulling away from her inflamed skin. She stops, holding her breath, waiting for the pain to ease before again working them down. Finally they fall to the ground with a sodden plop, and she leans her head against the cold wall, panting, working herself up to the next step. She closes her eyes, then reaches down for the disgusting things, carefully moving her fingers along until she finds fabric that is wet but not shit-covered. And then, gritting her teeth in preparation, she begins to wipe her arse.
