The Boy Under the Table (9 page)

As the man’s voice changed from aggression to fear Tina felt her stomach loosen. He wasn’t so tough. He looked big and scary but he was just like anyone else. Not many people could stand up to a poker in the face.

The desire to hurt the man rose up and bubbled in her throat. She wanted to hurt him for what he had done to the boy and for what he had made her do.

Tina stared down at the man. Her body was fizzing with the power to end this man’s life. She felt her strength as she let the poker hover just above his head. The man had not said anything about the boy. He thought she was after his money and maybe she would just take it. It could buy her a few more meals and maybe a book or two. She could take his money but she would take the boy as well. The man did not see the possibility that she was only here for the boy. He deserved to die just for that. For thinking that the child had no worth to anyone other than himself to do god knows what with. She lifted the poker again and looked at his frightened, bloody face. He was still a man, still a person.

She sighed. It would be better to just leave. If she saved the kid she could take him to the police and then they could deal with the man. The police might not believe her but they would believe the boy. There is some shit that kids just don’t make up.

She stepped back to put the poker down when the man grabbed for her ankle and pulled her off her feet.

Stupid girl
, thought Tina as she hit her head against the fireplace. She kicked out at him hard, connecting with his nose and making him curl up in pain again.

He let go of her ankle and Tina scrambled, hitting her back on a corner of the brick fireplace. The pain sliced through her body.

The man was on his knees, getting up. He looked around the room and his eyes focused on a desk on the opposite side of the room.

The gun
, thought Tina.

She took a step forward and grabbed the poker again. This time she would not let go. She swung the poker down onto the back of the man’s head. She swung it like it was a golf club and a hammer and a cricket bat. She swung it like a girl, like a boy, like a monster. She swung it and she knew what it would do and she was glad.

The man dropped back onto the floor again.

This time he went quiet. Blood was everywhere but Tina swung the poker again and again and then again.

Her face felt wet and she thought it must be spatters of blood but then she realised she was crying. She swung the poker again hitting the body, the man’s body, with a soft dull thud.

She could almost feel his death enter the room.

It was a ringing silence that stopped time.

He went wherever he was going. Down probably.

Suddenly she was alone.

Tina is a sweet, lovely student. She is generous and kind to all her friends and we are delighted with her progress this term
.

Tina stopped swinging the poker and leaned against the fireplace to catch her breath. Sweat poured down her face and neck. Killing someone was hard work. She saw some movement and looked up. The possibility that someone else was in the house clenched her stomach.

The boy was standing in the lounge room holding the knife. He had sawed the rope from his neck.

His eyes were black holes. His whistling breath filled the silence.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked. His voice was rough and low as though he hadn’t spoken for a long time.

Tina nodded and for a moment she and the boy just stared at each other.

She is generous and kind to all her friends
.

Tina took a deep breath and then she stepped towards the boy. He stumbled backwards, but stopped moving when she held out the poker. Half of it was covered in blood. In the dim light there was no colour, just a wet sheen.

Tina didn’t know if the boy would take it, didn’t know if it was fair to offer it. There was no need to include the boy in what she had done. But, if she had been the boy she would have wanted to feel the poker in her hand. If she had been the one tied up under the table she would have
needed
to feel the poker in her hand. So she held it out to the boy and for a moment they just stared at each other. Then the boy nodded slightly and stepped forward and took the poker out of her hand. He looked too weak even to hold the thing, but once he had his hand around it he swung it backwards and connected with the man’s body with all the strength he had left.

The poker went up and down three times before the boy collapsed on the floor. He was not crying. His face was a blank mask and Tina did not want to know what he was thinking.

They shared a look and Tina nodded.

‘Let’s get you out of here,’ she said.

The boy nodded.

Tina took the poker. Mark would get rid of it for her.

Before they went out the window she wiped down the sill with one of the tea towels from the kitchen. The wallet was tempting but the more time she spent in the house the more exposed she became.

She tried to wipe everything she had touched. She took the tea towel with her. She grabbed her coat, which the boy had left lying on the floor, and looked quickly around the kitchen for evidence of what had happened in the house. Everything was still in its place. Only the broken pieces of rope under the table told a different story.

She helped the boy climb through the window, whispering that Mark would catch him.

Mark was awake and waiting and he did catch the boy. He had not let Tina down.

It occurred to her that the boy had no idea if she was there to help or if she had some other terrible motivation.

His unquestioning acceptance and willingness to go with her made it clear he thought that whatever he was going to could not possibly be more terrible than where he had been.

Pete

Pete forced himself to call only once a week now. He knew they would call him if they found anything, anything at all, but he called them anyway. He needed to know they were still thinking of Lockie.

They had one of the juniors talk to him these days. She was barely out of the Academy but they had struck up a kind of friendship. Lisa was never too busy.

‘Nothing yet, Pete, I’m afraid,’ she would say.

‘I know, but I thought—you know . . .’

‘Yeah, I know. But, Pete, you have to believe me when I say that Lockie is still on our radar. We haven’t closed the case. It’s still on the top of our lists.’

Everyone called him Lockie now, like they knew him. It was a technique used by the police so that the victim became real, even after years on the job. He had become Lockie to everyone on about day four.

‘So there’s been no word, even dead ends?’

Lisa sighed. ‘Pete, you and I both know that if anything ever happens—bad news or good—we’ll call you.’

‘I know, it’s just . . . the parents are friends, close friends.’

‘Yeah, you’ve said. We’re dealing with another missing child at the moment. Six-year-old girl. Cute mop of curls with green eyes, name of Kelly.’

Pete knew what Lisa was doing. In the kindest way possible she was letting him know that Lockie wasn’t the only kid in trouble. He wasn’t the only child who was now part of some nightmarish reality that no kid should ever have to contemplate. She was changing the subject before he worked himself up, asking questions that had no answers. She was playing to his instinct as a cop, to the cop’s desire get the whole story. Lisa would go far. She had the touch.

Pete obligingly took the bait. ‘You are?’

‘Yeah, but no link I’m afraid. The parents say she was taken from her bed.’

‘They say that, do they?’

‘That’s what they claim.’

‘So you like them for it?’

‘Well, I shouldn’t say, but you’re one of us so, yeah, we do. DOCS have known about the family for years. Personally, I think the mother will turn on the stepfather.’

‘Nice people!’

‘Oh, you know. They did their kid in so, yeah, the best kind of people. I have to go now, Pete. Stay in touch, okay?

‘Okay. Thanks, Lisa.’

He wouldn’t tell Margie about the missing girl. Margie took every child-abuse case really badly. She took them as a personal affront. The way she saw it, God had decided she couldn’t have kids but gave them where they were not wanted.

He had been part of the police force for forty years and he had never dealt with a missing child before. Kids went missing in his town but only when they were older, and then they were always found. They would have run away to the city or passed out on a couch at a friend’s farm. He wasn’t stupid, he knew this sort of stuff went on. He knew there were people for whom children were things to be used and abused. They weren’t spared the horrors of bad parenting in a small town. There had been that family a year ago who had been the only topic of conversation at the pub for a while. Eventually the kids were taken away and the parents moved on. But stealing another person’s child was not something he’d ever come across. He knew about it from stories in the newspaper and American cop shows. His colleagues from the city kept the horror stories filed away in their heads. On nights when the day had been too long and a few drinks loosened their tongues they took out the stories, hoping that they could release them into the air and be free from the distressing details.

Pete always listened when he was up for a visit and shook his head at what men and women could do to those who were meant to be precious and protected. He never discussed the stories with Margie. She flew into a rage whenever she heard about some mother who had allowed her boyfriend to batter her child. ‘It’s not fair,’ she would wail and Pete’s heart would break.

They had tried everything. Who knew why some people got to have as many kids as they wanted and then beat the crap out of them?

‘That’s just the way it goes, son,’ his father would have said. ‘No one said anything about fair.’

They were too old for adoption by the time they gave up on science so Margie adopted everyone else’s kids.

He knew about the darkness inside some people but he never thought he would have to know and think about it because one of the local kids had gone missing. He felt like he had to protect all the kids in town and Margie felt the same way.

He had not known what to do when the news about Lockie’s disappearance came through.

It seemed like the whole town had turned up at the station, frantic for information.

‘Oh god, Pete, is it true? Is Lockie really missing?’

‘Poor Doug and Sarah, they must be beside themselves with worry.’

‘How could it have happened, Pete? Who takes someone’s child?’

‘When will they find him, Pete?’

Pete never had any answers. The only thing anyone knew for sure was that someone had taken Lockie. No one disappeared so completely unless someone made them disappear.

He had gone up to Sydney to help but it wasn’t long before he felt out of his depth. He had arrived with a carload of presents for Lockie and Sammy. Everyone had wanted him to take something once they knew he was going and he had walked into the situation like Father fucking Christmas. Sammy had gone mad for the toys and Doug and Sarah had just watched her, speechless and desperate. They put the toys for Lockie away in a cupboard in the motel room. They still had them now, Pete knew. Trains and books and cowboy hats all stacked up in his room, waiting to be claimed by their owner.

The police up in the city had endless files filled with people who were so malevolent it was almost impossible to believe they were real. People for whom children were toys. When they were broken they were simply replaced.

The internet helped these people connect. Helped them find the pictures to feed the habit, and then it helped them find what they wanted. Everything was available for a price. The fucking animals went online and ordered themselves a child to play with. They went online and found some other sicko who thought the same way they did and all of a sudden they weren’t deranged or evil—they were just part of a special club. Pete could actually feel the blood in his arms heat up just thinking about it.

The city cops brought in a man named Robert who was in charge of searching for the worst sites and tracking the bastards down. Robert had dead eyes and hunched shoulders. Pete didn’t want to believe that Lockie had been taken by one of the men Robert watched. He never said anything to Doug and Sarah. If they had found something he would have told them, but otherwise what good would it do to plant the horrifying images in their minds? They both looked like a good wind would blow them right off the edge. There was a reason the police kept some things quiet.

After a week of looking for Lockie he had returned to a town bewildered by what could happen to a nice family.

Sarah had gone up to the Show to enter the cake competition. She was famous for her cake decorating. The wedding cake with its beautiful icing flowers had been front-page news in the local paper. Lockie had been so excited he had barely been able to get the story out, leaping up and down as he told Pete about his first visit to the Easter Show.

‘And they have rides there, Pete, big ones, not like the small stuff we have here. I’m gonna go on a rollercoaster, a real rollercoaster. Mum says maybe not but Dad says we’ll see—but Sammy can’t go ’cos she’s too little. There’s like a trillion people at the Show and there’s loads of stuff to eat and drink and everything. I’m gonna do everything after the contest. And Dad says Mum should win the prize ’cos her cake is the best. Don’t you think it’s the best, Pete? Mum says we can’t eat it but I don’t like the icing, it’s a bit yuck but Mum makes the best lamingtons. Do you want a lamington, Pete? Will you come to the show with us, Pete? It’s gonna be awesome.’

‘Slow down, mate. I’m sure you’ll have a great time but remember to help your folks with Sammy. You be a good big brother.’

Afterwards Pete had wondered whether, if he had told Lockie to stay with his parents all the time, he would be safe at home telling wonderful tales of his adventure. If he had just said the words, ‘Don’t leave your parents, Lockie, and if they walk away for a minute don’t move,’ would it have made a difference? If he had told him of the dreadful possibilities in the big city would Lockie have waited by the stroller and then screamed if someone came near?