The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne (18 page)

I gaped at what was, presumably, the place where Jonno lived. There were buildings in Baghdad that had received multiple doses of laser-guided missiles and were in better shape. Kiffo and I walked up to the door, kicking aside empty beer bottles. I grabbed him by the arm.

“Who is this guy, Kiffo?”

“Someone, all right?” he said, not altogether helpfully. “Someone we need. Just let me do the talking, Calma. Jonno can be a bit funny with people he don't know.”

I had a bad feeling about this. Something told me that Jonno was not going to be the kind of guy you'd want to have a conversation with about the current state of Australian ballet or the latest contenders for the Booker Prize. This impression was confirmed when Jonno finally came to the door after Kiffo's repeated hammerings.

The first thing I noticed was the T-shirt. It was torn and badly stained, as if Jonno had a problem finding his mouth
with the soup spoon. But the shape of the T-shirt attracted more attention. It was all lumpy and disfigured, like someone had poured eighty pounds of builders’ rubble into it. Jonno, clearly, was a bodybuilder. He had all those revolting veins that stand out on the biceps like relief maps of river systems. His muscles caused him to stand with his arms splayed. He looked overinflated.

Not content with muscles of alarming proportions, Jonno had decorated them with a bewildering variety of tattoos. A snake curled up his left arm and disappeared behind his neck. A dragon breathed fire up his right. In the few spaces left by these creatures, there was a series of vicious portraits of native Australian fauna, none known for being cute or cuddly. No koala to be seen, unless it was a bit of fluff disappearing down the jaws of a great white shark.

It was difficult to tear my gaze away from his body, but I felt that it was probably wise to do so. Jonno didn't seem the kind of guy you could stare at without inviting trouble. I let my eyes wander up to his face and then wished I hadn't. He had one of those long bush beards you could hide a wallaby in. The facial hair might have been some attempt to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. His dome glistened in the sunlight. It was a curious effect, as if his head had been put on upside down.

The thing was, I had seen Jonno somewhere before. God, you're not likely to forget something that looked like that in a hurry
(Crimestoppers? The Children's Illustrated Book of Psychopaths?).
But I couldn't place him. I decided to let my
unconscious mind work on the problem for a while and smiled in my most engaging fashion. I couldn't help thinking that at any moment he was liable to rip my arm off and beat me to death with the soggy end.

Fortunately, I never found out if this was his intention because Kiffo broke the threatening silence.

“Wassup, Jonno, you ugly bastard!” he said.

This did not strike me immediately as the safest opening conversational gambit with someone who was clearly an ax murderer, or at least in serious training for it. However, it soon became clear that I was unaware of the correct social protocol in this situation because Jonno appeared to take no offense. Instead, he smiled, revealing two chipped front teeth and an awful lot of blackness surrounding them.

“Wassup, Kiffo, you arsehole!” he replied.

I wondered if I was expected to join in the general exchange of insults but decided to keep quiet, as Kiffo had instructed.

“Need a word, mate,” Kiffo said.

“No worries,” Jonno replied. “Come in.”

Look, if it's all the same to you, I'd sooner skip the description of the inside of Jonno's house. To be honest, I've blotted most of it out, the way some people do when they've been victims of a particularly unpleasant and traumatic
experience. All I want to say is that the outside of the place looked warm and comforting in comparison. Still, to be fair, Jonno was a perfect host. No sooner were we inside the door than he pressed a couple of bottles of beer into our hands and got himself another. It took all my strength to unscrew the bottle top. Jonno ripped his off with his teeth, providing an obvious explanation for the deficiencies of his dental work. Now, I can't stand beer, but I couldn't take the risk of spurning Jonno's hospitality. So I nursed mine carefully as I perched on the edge of a sagging sofa, trying to keep the minimum of buttock in contact with the minimum of material.

Kiffo, as he had promised, did the talking.

“Now, Jonno. Me and Calma here want some information about a woman, the Pitbull. She's a teacher at our school. She's giving us trouble. We need to know who she meets in the middle of the night and what they talk about. We think she might be a dealer.”

Jonno frowned.

“A dealer? Be news to me. I know all of ‘em in this area. Always possible, I s'pose. Someone new in the territory. So that's it, is it? A straight tail job?”

“Yup. As much information as you can get, soon as possible.”

“And the address of this pain?”

Kiffo gave it to him, but he didn't write it down or anything. Maybe that was a skill he had yet to acquire. He just nodded.

“And what's the rate?”

“You tell me, Jonno.”

“Well, I dunno. Let me think.”

This should be interesting, I thought. A bit like watching a dog ride a bike. You're not surprised it's doing the job badly, you're just surprised it can do it at all. The silence stretched.

“I'll want one of those new DVD players,” he said finally. “You know the kind—remote control. Japanese job.”

“Right,” said Kiffo.

“And a good selection of DVDs. Let's call it twenty. And none of that romantic comedy crap. Thrillers or horror.”

“Right,” said Kiffo.

“Plus a decent stereo system. Nicam. Surround sound. Japanese job.”

“Right,” said Kiffo.

“And a case—no, make it two, of Fosters.”

Japanese job? I thought.

“Right,” said Kiffo. “The beer you can have up front. I'll drop it round tomorrow. The rest when you get the information.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Jonno. “And how do I know you'll come up with the goods, eh? What's my guarantee?”

“Well,” said Kiffo, “I know if I double-cross you, you'll come after me with a baseball bat. And you've got more muscles in your big toe than I've got in my whole body. And you'd never give up till you'd found me, even if I ran to Tassie.”

“Yeah,” said Jonno. “You've got a point, mate. I'll take the job. Get me beer by tomorrow. I'll get in touch when I've got some news. All right?”

“Done,” said Kiffo. “Right. We'd best be off, then. I'll see you tomorrow, you ugly bastard.”

“Yeah, catch ya later, arsehole.”

Kiffo flipped his empty bottle of beer through the window, where it exploded on what must have been a small mountain of broken glass. Jonno belched loudly and did the same. Give me credit here! If I had been in some Mongolian outback settlement and everyone was eating sheep's eyeballs or camels’ testicles or something, I would have joined in. Follow the rules of the culture you're in, that's my motto. So I tried. Unfortunately, my beer bottle was still full to the brim, so I sent a small fountain across the room, drenching the sofa and what passed for the carpet.

This might have passed unnoticed. After all, the place was so disgusting that nothing I could do would lower the standard. But my aim wasn't great either. I missed the window by two feet and smashed a small standard lamp in the corner of the room. Jonno and Kiffo glanced at the damage.

“And a lamp,” said Jonno.

“Right,” said Kiffo.

It was only when we were two hundred yards away from Jonno's place that I allowed myself to relax. It felt like all my muscles had gone into involuntary spasm. I also realized that the whole time we had been there, I hadn't said a single word. It's not often you can say that about Calma Harrison! Kiffo, however, was walking along without a care in the world, cigarette clamped between his lips, red hair bobbing above a dense smoke cloud.

“Kiffo,” I said. “Where the hell did you dig him up from?”

“Jonno? He's all right,” said Kiffo nonchalantly.

“All right? All right for what? Neanderthal man? God, you've got some strange friends, Kiffo.”

Kiffo spun on me.

“He's not a friend! If you must know, I hate the bastard. But he's a pro. He'll get the job done. No worries.”

I should have shut up, but that's always a problem with me.

“Well, what was that about getting him stuff? DVD player, stereo. How are you going to manage it?”

Kiffo pulled on the last of his cigarette and flicked the butt into someone's yard.

“Yeah, looks like I'm goin’ to be doin’ a bit of shopping the next couple of days,” he said.

“Using what for cash?”

Kiffo looked at me as if I'd lost my senses.

“Haven't you heard, Calma? Cash is in the past.” He flexed his fingers. “I prefer the interest-free, long-term loan option. Very long-term.”

We parted company not long after that—me to wander around aimlessly until I felt it was safe to go back home, Kiffo to start his shopping spree, I guess. I didn't like to ask any more questions. I didn't want to know. It was getting dark when I turned in to my street. My intention had been to check out the place. If Mum was home I was going to wander around for a while. Luckily, her car wasn't there and the house was in darkness. I let myself in, stuck some frozen lasagne in the microwave and then took it up to my room. At least my
bedroom had a lock on it. I wasn't going to get into any more conversations with Mum. I was still mad at her. Or at least it suited me to be mad at her. I needed the excuse for noncommunication.

As I lay in bed that night, I felt more lonely than I had in my entire life. I thought about the day's events. It had certainly been busy—the Ferret, Giuseppe's, the Pitbull, the police visit, the argument with Mum, and Jonno. No one could say that life was dull. But for all that, I felt desperate. I could take no consolation in the idea that we were making progress in the Pitbull mystery. The threat from the police kept spinning in my head. I was a criminal. And even if I put that down to a mistake or to exaggeration, I certainly couldn't pretend I didn't associate with criminals. My relationship with my mother hadn't exactly been ideal before, but now it seemed to be torn beyond repair.

And overlaid on all that was the knowledge that I was without a real friend, other than Kiffo. Don't get me wrong. I'm not ashamed of him or anything. Far from it. But, as I've said before, there are just some things you can't talk to Kiffo about. Some things I'm not allowed to visit. Not properly. And sometimes, just sometimes, you need a conversational map where the boundaries are open and there's no legends saying, “Here be dragons!”

Let's be honest. My life was a mess.

Doubtless if I had read my stars they would have said something like: “Your life is a mess and you feel that things can't get any worse. Do not worry. By Monday, you will have found that they can.”

I spent Sunday in my room, except for those times when Mum left the house to do the shopping or whatever. Then I'd rush down the stairs, stock up on anything I could find in the fridge and watch some telly. As soon as I heard the car on the gravel outside, I'd take off up the stairs again and lock myself in my bedroom. Once or twice Mum came up and knocked on the door, but I ignored her. Childish, I know, but it seemed like the easiest option. I really wanted her to go to work, but she must have had the day off or just rung in sick or something.

Naturally, I spent a fair amount of time contemplating my
situation. There could be no doubt that I was up to my neck in the brown, smelly stuff. But then I remembered that my grandmother used to say of some people that they could “fall down the dunny and come up smelling of roses.” Maybe it wasn't all over yet. Maybe Calma Harrison could yet emerge from the excrement with an aroma of patchouli. It all depended on what happened with the Pitbull, obviously. If we could expose her, then I could just imagine the reaction.

Yes. A lot was riding on what Jonno could dig up. That was one of the reasons I decided I had to go to school on Monday morning. I sure as hell didn't feel like it. In fact, throughout most of Sunday, the thought of going made me feel physically sick. But on Monday morning, I waited until Mum had left for work and then shot down the stairs, grabbed a quick breakfast and rushed off. It wasn't just the hope of Jonno turning up trumps either. I had had a brilliant idea and I needed to run it by Kiffo.