Cross Kill

Twenty-two

Napper rapped the cast-iron doorknocker and waited. Josie shared the house with another single mother, a lawyer, but he wasn’t worried about encountering the lawyer today. A misplaced social conscience kept her in the Fitzroy Legal Aid office on Friday afternoons, telling street scum how to avoid fines and jail terms, while Josie minded the kids. Napper knocked again. It was a renovated terrace house, the door Deep Brunswick Green like every other door in Fitzroy.

‘What are you doing here?’ Then, immediately, ‘Get back inside, Roxanne. What are you doing here?’

Napper had time to see his daughter’s face, avid then sulky, before Josie barred the way and had closed the door. She stood on the welcome mat, glaring at him.

‘Just a civilised word, Josie, that’s all I want.’

‘Civilised? If you were civilised there’d be no need for a court order. I’m going inside, I have nothing to say to you.’

Always the same, a shrill note of complaint, the face pinched and bitter. Disgusted, Napper said, ‘Look, I’ve been a bit strapped for cash lately.’

‘What about me? You think I’m made of money?’

As far as Napper was concerned, his hard-earned income put eighty-dollar jeans on his daughter, it put his ex-wife through some wanker’s diploma up at the uni, and all he got out of it was an endless hassle. But this was a push-pull game of old grudges and suspicion that they were playing, almost unconsciously, so he said mildly, ‘I just want a fairer settlement, that’s all. The court didn’t take everything into consideration.’

‘Like what? That you like to spend a hundred dollars a week on beer and vodka? That you like to visit brothels?’

Napper flushed. ‘I’m forced to live in poverty-’

Josie shrugged.

‘-while you slack around up at the uni, contributing nothing to the care of our daughter.’

Josie said, ‘I don’t believe this. The system was supposed to protect me from crap like this.’

She moved to go into the house then, but Napper spun her around by the shoulder and screamed into her face: ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’

She wrenched away. ‘You’re just scum. I’m reporting this, hassling me like this, perving on Roxanne at the pool. It makes me wonder if you did things to her when you were still living with us.’

Napper couldn’t find the words he needed so he stepped away from her. A pain began behind his eyes, one of his split-open headaches. He put his fingers to his temples, opened and closed his mouth, and finally said, ‘You’re tearing me apart.’

‘You’re tearing yourself apart,’ his ex-wife said, holding the door close to her trunk, edging into the house. ‘You want to go to court again? Nine thousand dollars, that’s what you owe me.’

‘Make that seven and a half thousand,’ Napper said, throwing Malan’s cash at her feet, ‘plus another fifteen hundred tomorrow.’

She didn’t move to pick up the money. She didn’t do anything, didn’t say thank you. Napper slammed the wrought-iron gate and got out of there, his head pounding. He kept Panadol in the glove-box of the ute. He slid across the seat to open it and his boots knocked off another patch of the floor above the exhaust pipe before he remembered the rust spot. He tossed three Panadol into his throat and chased them down with saliva but he could feel them stuck there, so he got out again, walked to the milk bar on the corner, swallowed a can of Fanta.

6.30 pm. He had ninety minutes to kill before the night shift so he drove to Tina’s, window down in case he was gassing himself with exhaust fumes. He didn’t get much joy with Tina, either. She handed him a lot of shit about the hours he worked, their times off never coinciding, and it all boiled up and he slapped her, just the once, to shut her up. She started bawling, said she hated him, and went out slamming the door.

Anything for a bit of peace. Napper hunted around in her fridge, found a couple of the Cascade lagers she liked, and settled in her recliner with the remote control in his lap.

First up on Channel Seven was the death of Clare Ng, aged ten, killed by a car bomb in Richmond earlier that day. At first attributed to a petrol or gas leak, police now believed that a device had been planted in the boot of the Ng family’s late model Mercedes, parked in an alley behind the restaurant owned by her father, a prominent local businessman tipped to be the next mayor of Richmond. According to a police spokesperson, Clare may have activated the bomb when she opened the boot of the car.

There was more. The outgoing mayor was outraged. Clare was well liked at school. The family was popular. Police hadn’t ruled out elements in the Vietnamese community.

What was she doing opening the boot? Napper wondered. He pictured the lid flying up, smacking her in the face. Then he pictured it happening to his own daughter, and the beer and the Panadol and the Fanta began to churn and heave in his stomach. He put his head in his hands, rocked a little.

The sport and the weather passed, then canned laughter and ads for things that made no sense to Napper. He went to the kitchen, poured away his beer, washed Tina’s dishes for her. He microwaved a TV dinner from her freezer, spooned Nescafe into a mug of water, microwaved that. The night ahead was long and he needed a clear head.

It was 8.10 when Napper got to the station. The bombing had the place stirred up, the boss saying next time it could be on their patch, so watch it, keep your eyes and ears open.

At twenty past eight a WPC came by his desk. ‘You all right, sir?’

‘What do you mean, am I all right?’

She shrugged. ‘You look a bit rough around the edges, that’s all. By the way, someone’s been trying to ring you.’

‘Who?’

‘Won’t give his name. Says he’ll keep trying.’

Malan.

Napper left the station and went to a pay phone. ‘Listen, never call me at work.’

‘You fucked up,’ Malan said.

‘How was I to know the kid would open the boot?’

‘Her tennis racquet was in there,’ Malan said. ‘Why did you make the charge so big? Why didn’t you put it somewhere else on the car? They say it blew the back of the car off.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘Counterproductive,’ Malan said. ‘Eddie Ng will get the sympathy vote now. Instead of throwing doubts and fears into him, he’ll ride high on this. He’s got people rallying around him already.’

Napper didn’t have time to listen to this crap. During the past hour or so he’d managed to get his nerve back. He’d put the death of the child into perspective, the image of the metal smacking her down. ‘You can’t be sure of that,’ he said. ‘Look, you contracted me to do a job and I did it. I’ll be around later to pick up the other half.’

‘You must be joking. If you come anywhere near me again I’ll talk. Even if it means I have to go down with you.’

That left Napper standing on Swan Street with a dead phone against his ear.