Goodwood (31 page)

All Roy knew was Derek was up there at Woody's at least three times a week last winter, talking shit to Rosie, trying to impress her, getting pissed off when she wasn't impressed. And Rosie dismissed him with her signals, without being able to dismiss the boss's son with her words. Roy saw now that he should've said something. He should've said, ‘Back off, son. She's not keen on you.' But he didn't. He didn't say anything at all.

On the Wednesday before Rosie went missing, she closed as usual and night fell quickly and cold. Roy was sitting at home when he realised he'd left his order book at the shop that morning, and he needed to fill it all out that night, which was one of the many chores he busied himself with after Doe had gone to bed.

The Murrays' sunken house was not a far walk to the shops, but the air was icy so Roy hopped in his car to go get his book. Doe was making dinner and Derek was, well, where was Derek? Roy didn't know. Maybe he was out drinking with one of his stupid mates, or out drinking alone. Roy knew Derek wasn't popular, and Roy knew Derek liked to drink.

Roy pulled into the car park behind Woody's and felt something when he saw Derek's car. It wasn't a terrible feeling exactly; it was more like apprehension. He felt ill at ease. There it was, Derek's filthy Kingswood, pulled up at a hurried angle and parked badly. All the shops in that stretch were closed for the day, and the backs of them, which faced the car park, were all dark—except for the stark light bulb above the back door of Woody's, which burned white and illuminated the dumpster bins and brickwork.

Roy got out of his car and went towards the back door, which was slightly ajar and held fast with the plastic doorstop, like it always was when the shop was open, for extra ventilation so the meat smoke wouldn't stick too much to the lino and the paintwork. Roy thought it strange that Rosie would
still be there, but only strange by about half an hour, and maybe she'd been held up with the cleaning and closing up.

When he pushed open the door he heard muffled sounds of grunting. His own son's grunting. And he heard a small cry from a girl—from Rosie—and he saw them in the dim hallway that led back towards the dark shop. And Derek had Rosie's arms pinned hard against the wall behind her, and his jeans were lowered so his underwear was showing, and Rosie was gasping, struggling, clenching her teeth. Just as Roy entered the doorway he heard the sound of spitting, and Rosie spat a spray of spittle across Derek's face as he said, ‘You want it, hey, angel?', smiling, in a voice so vile that Roy could not recognise in it the sound of his own son.

Derek didn't notice Roy coming in.

He looked mystified by what had happened to his face and how it came to be crowded with spit, and then he looked enraged.

‘You fucken
bitch
,' said Derek, and Rosie lifted her knee and made contact with his groin and Derek went backwards towards the wall close behind him.

‘
Fuuuuck
,' Rosie screamed—truly animal—with shudders of crying and shaking, and she looked up to see Roy standing in the doorway with his stupid keys in his hand.

She was clothed. Roy looked to see if she was clothed, and she was clothed. Her eyes were wild and smudged with eyeliner, and her face began to crumple as she looked at Roy,
and walked towards Roy, and pushed past Roy, and went into the car park; and the sounds of her crying echoed just slightly around the bitumen and the backs of the buildings; and the sounds of her boots went fast and distant; and she was gone.

Roy stood in the doorway and looked at Derek, who was involuntarily sitting now, doubled over on the tiles against the wall, gasping; and Derek said, ‘What a fucken
bitch
,' and spat onto the tiles of the shop that Roy had grown and fostered and loved and dedicated himself to.

Roy looked at his son, Derek, who he had grown and fostered and loved and dedicated himself to. He could smell a brewery in the hallway. Above the meat smoke and fat and onions all he could smell was the beer mats that lay on the counter at the Wicko, and the bottoms of a hundred schooner glasses, and the end of a spent keg.

Derek got up and put himself back in his jeans, and zipped, and smiled at his dad. ‘She was into it,' he said, and his teeth looked revolting in his mouth; and the air was filled with his stench; and Roy didn't know who on earth this vile person was that he was looking at.

•

Backflip and I had left the house to walk to the clearing that Monday morning. We walked along Cedar Street in the clear day, right past Woody's, and I saw that the roller door was up but the glass door was closed, which was very unusual. I looked
in as we went past and there was white-haired Roy Murray slumped on the back booth table, and Mack looking on at him blankly. I stopped for a moment and gazed in, thought better of myself for prying, and continued on down towards the oval.

When we got to the river, it flowed brown with the silt and white with the sky. The lack of rain had caused it to shrink its sides. Where it once was wide and cavernous, now it was not even enough for Backflip to properly swim, not unless she was all the way in the centre.

It'd been ages since I'd been there. Not since Mack and I had gone looking for the plastic horse and found it to be missing.

Backflip ran ahead towards the willow and up along the alluvial bank to sniff, and to check if there were cows in the paddock to bark at. I stopped dead still when I saw there was someone sitting in the tree.

For a minute, it was Ethan. Tall, blond Ethan, who had come there to look at the cows. He seemed to be sitting in the tree and meditating on them, watching the river run. What would we talk about? We hadn't been alone since the night in my garden.

But as I got closer, it wasn't Ethan. I knew the shape of the shoulders and the colour of the flanno and the rough golden hair. It was Davo Carlstrom sitting up there on the branch, his feet dangling over the water. Even there at the clearing the river was lower than I'd ever seen it. His legs were long and
he was nowhere near touching the current. The river itself seemed sunken into the sand, like the earth had opened its thirsty mouth and drunk it.

Unfortunately, Davo was facing my direction. If he'd had his back to me, I could've turned around without him knowing, but he was looking right at me and I was just a solitary figure on a long riverbank and Backflip had started barking at the cows and there was no way around hearing it.

Even from where I stood, far away, I could see his heavy sadness. He was stooped in it with his whole body, like a weeping willow, and just below was the trunk where all the initials were and Rosie had carved hers next to his.

I yelled to Backflip, embarrassed, and she barked and strutted about with her back up, and barked again before galloping towards me looking triumphant.

Davo held up one hand.

The handsome, rebellious, older boy—who I had perhaps not said even one word to in my life—held up his hand to me. I saw that he was holding a brown paper bag with a bottle in it. He held up his hand, with the bottle. So I held up one hand too, and the two of us stood facing each other, a long way apart, with our hands up.

After a while I took mine down, and he took his down, and with an unfamiliar feeling of solidarity I turned and walked back towards town and left him to be by himself in the tree.

39

Mack went straight from Woody's, with Roy, to see Derek Murray. The two men did not speak on the short drive in Mack's police car. They arrived at the weatherboard house where Doe Murray sat on the brown couch and looked like she'd seen two apparitions when the men entered.

Roy said gently, ‘Don't worry, angel, Mack's just here to have a chat with Derek,' and Doe Murray did not acknowledge Mack at all as he headed towards the closed door with the plastic STOP sign on it.

Mack knocked. Derek didn't answer. Computerised sounds of kicks and punches came from inside the room. Derek was beating the shit out of someone on his screen and Mack could hear the damp blows over and over again.

He knocked once more. Derek snarled, ‘Fuck off, Doe,' and Mack couldn't stop himself from thrusting the door open
so hard that it slammed against the wall behind and shook the entire sunken house to its very frame.

Derek went white when he saw Mack, livid, in the doorway and his father, Roy, standing right behind him, as grave as a deep hole. Unlike Roy—who had flushed as red as blood back at Woody's—Derek quickly drained of everything. He was all milk in his snowy Y-fronts. A ghost boy, blank and unpleasant.

Derek shot up from his swivel chair and then popped back down again on the edge of his bed, trying to appear unmoved. Mack stared at him. He put on his poker face. He narrowed his eyes and tried the same technique as he had with Roy. But unlike Roy, Derek didn't have a heavy conscience. There was no burden of guilt on his sloped and pallid shoulders.

Mack sat down on the swivel chair and requested that Derek cover up his chalky body in more than just underwear. Derek pulled on a T-shirt and dusty jeans.

He was uncooperative at first. Unresponsive. He looked at the ground and smiled. He ran his tongue slowly along his top teeth. Derek insisted he'd done nothing wrong. He said his dad had seen two people who were totally into it. He said Rosie looked at him just right.

Mack, for the first time since winter, finally broke. He slammed his fist down on Derek's desk so hard that the joystick fell off and hung by its cord and a mug of water hit the carpet and made a slow dark impression shaped like a rain
cloud. He slammed his fist down again and it made a small trough and the wood splintered. The underside of Mack's hand was nicked with blood. Derek's eyes went wide and his smile went away.

Through clenched teeth, Mack said, ‘Roy, would you leave us alone?'

Roy, who looked disgusted, complied. He closed the door and his footsteps bled away in the hall.

Derek became cooperative and scared. Rosie was a tease, though, Mack had to understand that. What did she expect? She didn't
say
no and she teased him, like, all the time. It wasn't even that serious what happened. But yeah, okay—okay, maybe he'd tried his luck a bit too hard. But she was not
not
into it, hey.

‘A bit too hard?' Mack repeated, incredulous.

A bit too hard.

Mack never went into more detail of his long conversation with Derek Murray. His expression was always too disgusted, and his skin looked fit to crawl right off. When it came to Rosie, Mack could hardly bear it. And he could not bear the pitiful excuse for a young man that Derek was, and his view of the world, which Mack found to be both belligerent and grotesque.

He couldn't even be bothered to take him to the station. He knew he couldn't charge him—not yet. Derek swore blind he didn't know where Rosie was; and he swore blind
he didn't assault her. He certainly didn't rape her, because he hadn't got to have her that way anyhow. He'd just tried his luck a bit too hard maybe, that's all. It was just Roy's word against Derek's. And after it all happened, Derek hadn't set foot in the shop again until after Rosie went missing. And now Rosie
was
missing, and Mack couldn't ask her a thing about it. It was Roy's word against Derek's unpleasant face; and Roy had said, right opposite Mack in the booth that morning, that he couldn't testify against his own and only son.

‘Rosie left town anyway, Mack,' said Roy. ‘Can't we just move on? Please?'

Mack sat in Derek's sweaty swivel chair and wondered what to do as Derek stared at the wet carpet, tonguing his teeth. Mack had grilled and pushed and bored holes with his questions, and Derek just kept on swearing, as if his hand were on a Bible, and as if a Bible would mean anything in his sodden, godless world. He didn't know where Rosie was, and he was home all night when she went missing. Roy said that was true, as far as he could tell. Roy saw Derek go to bed. Derek's window didn't open wide enough for the cat to crawl out. Roy was up late in the lounge room, busying himself while Doe slept. Derek hadn't come out. Mack just shuddered at all of it.

‘So you didn't see her again even one time after you assaulted her?'

‘I didn't fucken
assault
her,' said Derek, again.

Mack had to stop himself from erupting entirely and putting damp kicks and punches into Derek's pasty frame, over and over, until he seeped into the carpet and down into the depths of the sunken house.

Mack took a deep breath and continued, with his calm police voice. ‘You didn't see her again, not one time?'

‘Nah. Or yeah—I saw her one time,' said Derek. His bottom lip trembled.

‘When was that?' asked Mack.

‘The next night.'

Mack waited. Derek licked at his teeth, and then his mouth curled inwards and unexpected whimpers came from somewhere in his throat.

‘I seen her out the back of Woody's from my car. I just went to, like, I dunno, I was just there in my car. And I seen her. She was smoking out the back on that folding chair there. But Bart was with her.'

‘Bart was there?' asked Mack.

‘Yeah, he was there. She was talking to him, all upset,' said Derek, who was properly crying now, grizzly and pathetic.

‘Bart was there listening to her?' asked Mack. ‘What, was he consoling her?'

‘Yeah,' said Derek, sobbing, wiping his eyes with his forearm. ‘He was standing there with her. Consoling her, I guess, yeah.'

•

As I walked back along the riverbank, away from Davo, the rain started. It came in fast and hard. The sky had been blue when I left home. I hadn't considered my raincoat. But as I had neared the riverbank a mass of darkness appeared low beyond the mountain. And then the wind picked up as I turned from Davo and it licked the top of the river like teeth. Choppy waves sprang up as flowers do. Branches flapped like the wings of giant birds. The wall of inky cloud from beyond the mountain coloured the whole sky and covered the sun; and the oval glowed ahead, luminous white. It was the swiftest storm Goodwood had seen in many months.