Rocking Horse Road (10 page)

One of the few things that Bill Harbidge did
manage to do that summer, apart from changing the
channel on the television, was contact an old mate
of his who had left the police and gone to work in
security. A couple of weeks later a brown envelope
turned up in the letter box. It was Jase who found
it and, curious, opened it. The photographs inside
showed Jase's mother and the butcher doing everyday
things. A couple were taken in the supermarket. Jase's
mother is pushing a trolley in one shot while the
butcher reaches up to take down a tin of something
or other from a high shelf. In another she is sorting
through a bin of apples. In another picture his mother
appears to be weeding the garden in front of a small
blue-and-white house, with a big tree by the gate.
In yet another, the butcher and Jase's mother are
sitting on a picnic rug on the grass, eating fish'n'chips.
At first Jase could not tell why his mother looked
so different. She almost seemed to him to be a
different woman. It took him a while to realise that
it was because in almost every photograph she was
smiling.

January of '81 rolled over into February. By the
time school went back, during the second week of the
month, it had not rained beyond a light drizzle. The
days were not as hot as in the two preceding months
but, even so, the classrooms' top windows regularly
had to be cranked open to let in a breeze. The smell
of the rotting sea-lettuce was still strong although
the bloom seemed to have passed its peak by then.
Teachers took to bringing cans of air-freshener to class
and spraying it in clouds over our heads. It worked
for a while, but then the smell of the sea lettuce always
crept back in.

We slumped at our desks in our grey shirts, unable
to focus. The papers reported, in fewer and fewer
column inches, that the police were following 'several
lines of enquiry' into the identity of the Christmas
Killer. We sensed the reporters' growing apathy. The
number of detectives on the case had been scaled back.
It was obvious they had made no real progress. Our
own interviews and endless talk had circled around
and around the same spots, leading us nowhere. The
lack of forward movement made us torpid.

Looking out from our classrooms we could see a
few scattered pine trees growing over in the dunes.
The prevailing easterly gave the pines the low, sweptback
look of the African trees we had seen on
Our
World
. If we squinted, it was easy to imagine giraffes
rocking slowly backwards and forwards against the
blue horizon. Or the flick of a leopard's tail up in the
lower branches.

For the first time we were beginning to think
that Lucy's murder would never be solved, that our
summer had been wasted. There was nothing new to
be seen at the dairy and our supplies of money were
exhausted. With our return to school Lucy's murder
seemed to belong to a different era. Our teachers tried
to instil in us a belief in the importance of the sixth form
year but, as the tiny droplets of artificial lavender and
rose rained down upon us, we were unable to muster
any enthusiasm.

The only thing we were excited about in those days
was the upcoming tour. It was almost certain now
that the South Africans were coming. The Boks! For
the first time in sixteen years the All Blacks' biggest
rivals would play in New Zealand and we were over
the moon.

For half the year, rugby was what our families
talked about over dinner, what we watched together
on the television, the spice in our lives. When the All
Blacks toured we woke in the middle of the night to see
the games. Still in our pyjamas, wrapped in blankets
on the couch, with our fathers and brothers pushing
in next to us, our voices lifting together, we urged Our
Boys on from the dark side of the world.

Although the Boks weren't going to arrive in the
country until July, the papers and the radio were full
of talk about the tour. Most of it was political stuff and
held no interest for us, although our fathers would
watch the television coverage and mutter about
'stirrers' and 'commies'. All we knew was that the
Springboks were the only team in the world that had
beaten the All Blacks more than they had lost. There
had been thirty-four test matches between the two
countries and we had won only thirteen of them. The
Boks had won the last two series — in 1970 and '76 —
three games to one. And now they were coming back.
Now was our chance to even things up.

Although the weather was still hot we sought
comfort in discussions of our winter religion. We
talked about the selections at length. Who was going
to make the All Blacks this season? Who was going to
be in the Boks' touring squad? We speculated about
the test venues. There would definitely be a test match
at Lancaster Park, and we were confident that most
of us would get to go. Over dinner our fathers told
us stories about the big New Zealand versus South
Africa clashes of the past. We hung on every word as
they discussed heroes of the 1956 tour. Not many of
us were used to our fathers talking for so long or with
such animation.

All of us played rugby, with varying degrees of
skill and success. Jim Turner was the best, by virtue of
his size more than anything. At sixteen he was already
six foot one and weighed eighty-five kilos. Jim had
been selected to play at lock for provincial rep teams
every year without fail since the age of ten. He was the
only person ever to play for the school first XV while
still in the fourth form.

Matt Templeton's father was head of the history
department at our school and he also coached the first
XV. He had played rugby at provincial level, where he
had earned a reputation as an enforcer. He was a big
man made bigger by his ginger beard and a huntaway
voice. During the winter months, on Tuesdays and
Thursdays after school, Mr Templeton could often
be heard at full volume, yelling at his players as they
trained: shuttles and sit-ups, passing and kicking,
the intricacies of the rolling maul and the dragged-down
scrum. Jim Turner's name often featured in
these motivational lectures. Mr Templeton had been
overheard on the sideline telling Mr Turner that his
son lacked 'the killer instinct' that would elevate him
to the elite levels of the game. He said someone needed
to light a fire under Jim's arse.

It was Alan Penny, though, who knew the
most rugby lore. He fed us the statistics about the
Springboks: he could recite the scores from test
matches going back twenty years. The names of the
great players rolled off his tongue and he could recall
even the most obscure rules. This was ironic, because
in the course of an actual game Al was next to useless.
He played for the school's Under Sixteen B team, but
even then was often relegated to reserve. When he
did get on the field he ran along the left wing, at the
peripheries of the game, without purpose or intent.
He was often at odds with the angle of the ball, or
sometimes even the entire direction of play. Al gave
the impression that he was someone out for a jog who
had unexpectedly found himself in the middle of a
rugby match. When the ball was inadvertently passed
to him, Al's fingers were made of butter. Nevertheless,
as our clippings about Lucy began to yellow and curl,
Al gathered together all the information he could
about the impending Springbok tour.

The second attack happened in broad daylight and
on a weekday — to be accurate, at three forty-five
on Monday the twenty-seventh of February. Tracy
Templeton, Matt's youngest sister and the last of our
history teacher's seven children, was walking home
from school with her best friend Jenny Jones. They
were both eleven and had just moved up to form one
at South Brighton Primary, which went up to form
two. (Ninety percent of the kids went from there to
New Brighton High in form three. Really it was only
the Catholics who got shipped off to town for their
high-school years.) In '81 during the first day of school
Tracy and Jenny had found themselves sitting next to
each other at the back of Mrs Shepherd's class. JJ and
TT was what they started calling each other.

In those days there were no rows of chauffeuring
mothers waiting outside the school gates come three
o'clock; instead the streets around every school in the
city were awash with kids heading home. They took
up the whole footpath with their jostling, uniformed
mêlée. Later, in the side streets, they broke off into
trios or pairs. Sometimes the groups thinned out so
much that they turned into a single kid walking home
alone. Nobody thought anything of it.

The Bridge Street Reserve is an open area as big as
a rugby field, with a kids' playground set back from
the road: a slide and a seesaw and a five-seat metal
horse that rocks backwards and forwards. There's
also the community centre and the bowling club but
they're on the far side. There are bushes and a stand
of cabbage trees that drop long leaves the council
workers have to pick up before they can mow. On the
estuary side is a stand of pine trees that, if you walk
through it, leads down to the water, or the mud if the
tide is out.

Tracy Templeton told the police she and JJ weren't
in the reserve, just walking along the road beside
it, when she heard a noise and looked up to see a
man with a dirty hat jump out at them. Before Tracy
knew what was happening he had hold of her friend.
Whether the guy was targeting Jenny Jones or he
simply grabbed the nearer girl is impossible to say.
Certainly Jenny was the smaller and by disposition
shyer. To a predator lying in wait, Jenny Jones would
have looked the easier of the two to bring down.

Tracy reported that the man at first grabbed Jenny
by the arm but quickly changed his grip so that Jenny's
back was against his chest and his left arm was across
her throat. He wrapped his free arm around Jenny's
waist and started to drag her backwards through the
gap in the bushes. He must have been strong because
he managed to lift her right off the ground, although
he was later described as 'skinny, like a big boy'. Tracy
said her friend was kicking like a non-swimmer who
had got out of her depth.

The guy could have been any age from sixteen
to seventy, Tracy admitted. She told the police that
his hat had a wide brim and was pulled down low
over his face. She got the impression that his hands
and wrists were tanned, 'like a surfer or a Maori or
something like that', which really didn't tell the police
(or us) anything useful. He seemed to be talking into
Jenny's ear. Although she wasn't sure, Tracy thought
he might have been wearing a raincoat.

But you have to hand it to her. Most girls (or even
boys) Tracy's age would have turned and run, hell
for leather. Later they might have justified it as an
attempt to get help, when actually the first impulse
is always one of survival, to get yourself out of there.
But being the youngest of seven kids makes you
resilient, and Tracy Templeton wasn't intimidated by
size. As Matt told us later his little sister had come out
of their mother's womb ready to battle for a fair share
of anything that was going.

As the guy dragged Jenny, one hand now
burrowed under her skirt, Tracy followed them
through the bushes. She didn't try to kick him or bite
him or anything like that; she simply started screaming.
Apparently it was a technique she had used before in
her domestic battles. In our interview two weeks later
we asked for a demonstration and she was happy to
oblige. We were impressed by both Jenny's volume
and pitch.

There are houses on both sides of the reserve and
cars were passing on the road. The guy obviously
thought Tracy's screaming would bring trouble for
him, and sooner rather than later. In one movement
he released his hold, turned and ran off towards the
pine trees and the estuary. Jenny sat down hard on the
ground and Tracy kept screaming until he was out of
sight, just to be sure.

It took a little under half an hour for a police dog
to be brought to the reserve. There was a small crowd
there by that time and a number of rumours swirled
around about what had actually happened. Grant
Webb, on his way home from basketball practice,
reported seeing the police dog sniffing around the
base of the slide where the attacker may have waited
for a while, smoking cigarettes and going over his
plan. According to the official police report, the dog
lost the scent at the edge of the water. The tide was
high and the guy had been bright enough to wade in
and use the estuary to cover his tracks. He may even
have swum across to the other side.

On Rocking Horse Road people were already
twitchy after Lucy's murder. One attack could be put
down to bad luck, a lightning bolt out of a clear sky,
the brakes that fail on the car you're driving home
from the showroom. But two . . . Everyone assumed
that the guy who attacked Jenny was the same person
who had murdered Lucy Asher. After that, Jenny and
Lucy were regularly spoken of in the same sentence.
How often did we hear our mothers say that it was
only luck that stopped little Jenny ending up like
poor Lucy Asher?

The certainty arose that a predator was, if not
actually among us, then waiting close by. People
eyed the long yellow grass of the dunes as though
something crouched there. The darkness of the public
toilets became a cave.

Some of us had sisters, and in later years we all
dated girls from down the Spit. Without exception
they could all recall the new rules and the lectures
from parents after that attack on Jenny Jones. It was
now dogma that they never talked to strangers. 'No,
not even "hello."

'Keep your eyes down.'

'Keep walking.'

'Never
ever
get into a car!'

Such instructions were issued in every home, to
girls as young as three.