I looked out the window, down through that arthritic, leafless tree, and I played last night over in my mind, trying to work out if I could have done something to save the man. There were minutes when I had listened to the argument as it became more and more ferocious and I could have called out to let them know that I was there. But I hadn’t. And then his shadow fell past the window and it was too late.
It was unusually dark outside. Last night the moon had painted the clouds silver at the edges, but tonight they were thick and black. Magic lay on the floor at my feet, snoring loudly. I prodded her in the ribs with my big toe. She didn’t wake. Funniest dog in the world. Worst watchdog. Although she did bark that one time, which was good. She was the best friend I had right now.
‘…missing journalist…’
The newsreader’s voice came into focus and I spun towards the TV. I knew it was my dad. That’s why he wasn’t home. Something had happened to him. The man had done something to him and it was my fault. Why hadn’t I followed him?
The screen cut to a photo of a man with dark curly hair, brown eyes, a narrow face, high cheekbones and glasses. Not my dad.
‘The thirty-seven-year-old ABC news journalist was last seen by staff on Thursday evening around 7.30 pm in Chippendale.’
That was the next suburb from here. I took a shot of the TV screen on my phone just before the man’s face disappeared.
‘Anyone with information on John Merrin’s whereabouts should contact Crime Stoppers on the number at the bottom of your screen.’
I opened the photo on my phone and zoomed in as far as I could. I stared into his pixelated eyes. Was that the man who fell?
John Merrin.
Merrin.
I knew his face. I could picture him reporting. He was older than this picture now, I was pretty sure. Mum watched only ABC. John Merrin. Not just a journalist. He was a crime reporter. I had seen him reporting on a bank hold-up – or was it one of those stories where someone had rammed their ute into an ATM and tried to drive away with it? Something like that. They’d said it was part of the bigger crime wave. Young men, new technology, police unable to stop them, like in ‘Outwitted’, the story Harry had written for the Herald. Commandment number eight:
Is the crime part of something bigger?
If it was him, that meant a crime reporter had been pushed from a balcony right above my father’s apartment. What are the chances? There might only be ten proper crime reporters in the entire city. Coincidence or something else? Did Harry know this was going to happen? Was he involved in it?
Goosebumps made a skirmish line from my neck down the right side of my body. I tried to remember what Merrin’s voice was like, if it matched the voice I heard upstairs last night. In the photo his glasses were bronze-brown metal, like the arm that I had found in the yard.
I carefully lowered my leg to the floor, grabbed my crutches and retreated from the window. I realised how dark it was in the room aside from the flickering TV. I muted the sports report and listened. The lift rattled and shuddered up or down the shaft. Up, I thought. I hoped and feared that it was my father.
I love you.
The last thing he’d said to me. Sure, he muttered it through a door but he had never said it before – not on the phone the time I had called him at the Herald when I was nine, not in the letter he didn’t send me or any time this week. The note with the pile of comics he had sent years ago read ‘For Sam’. That was it. Very touching and heartfelt and it must have taken him hours to write but it wasn’t ‘love’. I wondered if he had said it when I was in my mother’s belly.
He had definitely said it this morning before he left.
I love you.
Why?
Because he knew that he might not come back?
Because he knew he was going out to do something dangerous, something to do with the crime? That’s why he didn’t want me to go with him. That’s why he said ‘I love you’. But did that mean that he was involved in the crime? Or just that he was investigating it?
Maybe it meant neither, or nothing at all. Earlier in the week, late one night, I had asked Harry about his second commandment:
Make contacts. You have to know crime fighters as well as criminals. You need sources of good information on underworld dealings.
I’d asked him what it was like being friends with criminals and cops. He had sat thinking for a moment, then said, ‘They’re not that different.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bad guys do the wrong thing with the same conviction that good guys do the right thing. Bad guys never think they’re doing the wrong thing. There’s always some justification for their actions. No one wakes up in the morning saying, “I’m going to do evil today”. Everyone’s doing what they think is right, even if other people don’t understand their logic.’
‘And you’re right in the middle,’ I had said.
‘That’s right.’ And then something interrupted us. We were watching TV or the jug boiled. Something broke the moment and the conversation was left hanging.
My phone pinged, shaking me out of the memory.
Goodnight. If you’re still
awake. Which you shouldn’t
be because it’s 9.35 ;)
See you in the morning.
I can’t believe you’ll be 13!
I remember the day you
were born.
Night
I thought for a moment, then I sent another message.
I love you
Wow. You haven’t said
that in ages. I love you
too.
I sat on the couch, staring at the words on the phone. I wanted to say something, to tell her that Harry wasn’t back, that I was scared, that maybe she was right about me, right about Harry, right about everything.
Tell her.
It didn’t make sense to keep this from her. I wanted to tell the police, so why not tell Mum? She would know what to do. She would come get me.
I need to tell you something
I typed the words but didn’t hit ‘send’. Not yet. I reread the message and wondered exactly what I would tell her. Would I admit that I had messed this up, too? I had done so many stupid things at home and school to make her stressed and embarrassed. I was almost thirteen years old and I couldn’t be trusted to stay home by myself for a week while my mum was at work. It was pathetic. I didn’t want to be the ‘me’ that I had been before I came to Harry’s. I wanted to be someone new, someone better and more mature, who could make good decisions.
Make good choices, I heard Mum say.
I still had time to set things straight, to take action without my mother having to rescue me.
I deleted the words.
TWENTY-TWO
COP
It was 9.47 pm. This was the last time I would travel in this lift. The information I had gathered rattled around my tired mind as the doors of 2A and 2B disappeared from view through the narrow lift window. I would tell the police what I had heard last night and what I’d seen on the ground. I would present them with my physical evidence and photos.
The rhythmic squeak of the lift whispered go back, go back, go back inside. I tried to ignore it.