Animal Kingdom (16 page)

Norris was sitting on a chair, balancing his feet on the edge of the bed and holding a glass of water.

Was this it? The beginning of the bad cop bit? Was that why they'd brought him here after all? To bash the truth out of him? They wouldn't need to bash too hard: he'd pretty well had it with the lot of them.

‘You want a sip of my drink?' Norris said, but what he meant was
You want to suck shit, you low-life?

J didn't say anything; he just looked at him and wondered where Leckie was.

‘What's the matter?' the man said. ‘Are you scared?'

Yeah, he was scared.

‘Are you scared of me?'

J noticed the guy's service pistol lying on the bedside table by his head, close enough for J to reach out and grab it if he wanted. That was heavy-duty. This prick was threatening to kill him and say there'd been a tussle over the gun.

Norris watched him closely, as he worked it out. ‘That can't feel too fuckin' good,' he said, sipping the water.

Was he going to shoot him?

J wasn't sure, but he was relieved when Leckie came in with some takeaway breakfast from the local Macca's. J couldn't read what was going on. Maybe it was a set-up, like he'd thought, and Leckie was in on it too. Or maybe the other guy just wanted to freak him out for the hell of it, because he was a Cody, and all Codys were scum.

In any case, J was glad when Leckie asked him to follow him outside.

You couldn't say it was a nice day. Sort of grey and overcast, with a dirty, gusting wind smelling of rain blowing up from the south-west.

They sat on a couple of rusting garden chairs next to some straggly plants that needed watering.

J felt like shit. He hadn't slept well: he'd been dreaming of people bursting through the door the whole night; he was still upset about what he'd said to Nicky; here he was in a motel that smelled of disinfectant, with a couple of coppers saying he needed protection. He still wasn't sure who from.

Who was going to hurt him? The Smash and Grab Squad? The Kill and Destroy Squad? Who wanted him shut up and silent?

It was a shit position to be in, and J didn't know how he was going to get out.

‘You know what the bush is about?' Leckie asked, opening up.

J didn't know what he was getting at, but he was listening.

‘It's about massive trees that've been standing there for thousands of years and bugs that'll be dead before the minute's out.'

Yeah, trees and bugs. Just the sort of shit that makes you want to stay away from the bush.

‘It's big trees and pissy little bugs,' Leckie continued, sounding sincere.

J had never even seen the bush. He'd seen pictures of it, knew about it, sort of, from Science, seen it on the TV when it caught fire. But he'd never actually been there. Why would you? There's nothing there.

‘And everything knows its place in the scheme of things,' Leckie continued, sounding like he was David Attenborough or some shit, giving a history of moths or some fucking thing. Elephant shit in the Serengeti. ‘Everything … everything sits in the order somewhere.'

J knew where he sat in the order of things. At the bottom. Somewhere under the toads and snakes. Between the cops and the crims.

‘Things survive because they're strong and everything reaches an understanding.'

J didn't know where this was going. Why Leckie was crapping on about trees and bugs. What was it with people? Why couldn't they just say what they meant? J knew Leckie had him sussed, knew he had him by the balls. If he went home, Pope'd lay into him, and if he didn't that would be even worse. He could just see them all sitting around the dining room table, wondering what he was telling Leckie now, Ezra trying to find out where he was.

‘But not everything survives because it's strong,' Leckie was saying. ‘Some creatures are weak.'

He was looking at J, of course, who else? But J knew that. He wasn't strong. He'd wanted to be. Ever since he'd worked out how precarious it all was, this life, the life he'd had with his mother. Even if she hadn't been a drug addict, they were still living on the edge, a single mum with a little kid; but the way she was, he'd had to pick her up lots of times, literally pick her up off the floor. He'd wanted to be strong, to be able to lift her and protect her from all the terrible things in the world she was running away from. Because that's what she'd say sometimes. She was running away from her demons; J had never really understood what she'd meant, but he'd started to now. How this family got inside your head, so it didn't matter what you did; you still felt afraid.

‘But
they
survive because they've been protected by the strong for one reason or another.'

But that was the world, wasn't it? The weak and the strong, all of us hiding out, trying to stop ourselves from getting crushed, starting out strong and brave, but ending up the way he'd seen so many people, broken and defeated. The world was a war that no-one ever won, from what J had seen. Sometimes it might feel like you're winning, but you're not. Everyone is finally laid low.

‘
You
may think, because of the circles that you move in or whatever, that you're one of the strong creatures. But you're not,' Leckie said, and J knew it was true. Listening to him, J had started to like him. He knew what he was trying to do: he was trying to get J onto his side, trying to get him to start telling him what really happened. And J was tempted, for sure. And not because he was frightened; he was angry, angry with his uncles for what they'd done and that they'd wound him into it. He was angry, for sure, but he wasn't sure he was he angry enough to become a dog, a police informer. ‘You're one of the weak ones,' Leckie continued, ‘and that's nothing against you. You're just weak … you're just weak because you're young.'

J wondered. Was he weak because he was young? He'd seen plenty of weak bastards a lot older than him; it wasn't just being young. And as he looked at Leckie, the thought dawned on him that it was not knowing who you were that made you weak. Leckie knew who he was; he was confident, assured, he was doing the right thing to his way of thinking. When Leckie walked into a room, he didn't have to try to figure out how to act like an honest man, because he
was
an honest man. But J wasn't. J was living a lie: that's what he realised, and that's where all this shit was coming from, all the fear and anxiety. What was that he'd read one time?
A brave man dies once, a coward many times.
He was a coward, that's what he was.

‘But you've survived because you've been protected by the strong,' Leckie said, drawing towards his conclusion. ‘But they're not strong any more.'

No, no, they weren't. Two of them were dead and the rest were on the run.

‘And they're certainly not able to protect you.'

Leckie was right, and he was even more right than he realised.

‘Now, I know that they're saying to you that talking to me is betraying the family,' Leckie added, ‘but they've betrayed you. Don't be confused about that. I think you know. And I think you know that I can help you. But I can't keep offering. You've got to decide. You've got to work out where you fit.'

J had never known where he fitted, had never felt really wanted by anyone. J knew Leckie wanted him, or wanted to protect him, but he only wanted those things for the same reason people had wanted to protect him his entire life: because they wanted something out of him. Leckie didn't really care about him; he was a policeman trying to crack a case—that was fair enough, and J might have even taken him up on it, but what was he actually offering? Was he saying he'd protect him from his family forever? How would he do that? Leckie was only one policeman who wanted to help him, but J knew not all of the cops felt the same way. Far from it, when a Cody was concerned. J was glad to be with him now, for sure, because that meant Norris wouldn't shoot him. But Leckie wasn't going to be with him for the rest of his life. J didn't know what to think.

‘I don't know why you're telling me all this,' he said at last.

‘Yes, you do,' Leckie answered, confident he'd made a good case for why the police were J's only hope.

But that wasn't the way J saw it, not now, after he'd listened to Leckie and thought about it.

What J saw were police on the take, and police stealing drugs to deal with criminals. What J saw were police who could kill with impunity because they had uniforms on. J wasn't sure where Leckie fitted in to all that, but he'd had a direct experience of his offsider, and he wasn't buying it. He almost had, and a part of him wished he could. J felt that Leckie was a kind man, like Baz, someone you'd like to have as a friend if you could. But that wasn't what he was offering. What he was offering was something he couldn't deliver. At least, that's the way J saw it.

And Leckie knew it, too. He could see it in J's eyes. He could hear it in his voice. J had made his decision. It was the wrong decision, of that Leckie was sure, and J was bound to regret it.

But before he wiped him completely, Leckie was going to give him one last chance. ‘We found your fingerprints on the car,' he said.

J had been waiting for this. ‘You couldn't have,' he said, ‘because I didn't have anything to do with it.'

Leckie was watching him, watching him closely. It had been his last card, bar one. It had been worth playing, but J had called him.

‘Okay, we're going home,' he said, standing. And the way he said it, and the little smile that flickered across his face as he said it, revealed the game.

It had been
good cop, bad cop
all along.

J had thought they might have found his fingerprints, even if Pope had burned the car, but he'd decided to tough it out, and it looked like his gamble had paid off. The only card Leckie had left to play was to send him back home.

Well, it might have been a game, but J had no choice but to play it, and the stakes were a lot higher for him than they were for Leckie. J wished it could have been different, but it was what it was.

He was on his own.

The cops made J get out of the car back on the highway. They weren't going to take a piece of shit like him home.

J didn't mind. It was better than having to explain what he was doing riding around in the back of a car with a couple of cops if anyone saw them. Hitching a ride to a railway station, J made his way home, finding Smurf and Pope in the kitchen, cheerlessly eating breakfast.

‘Hi, sweetie,' Smurf said with a kind of forced brightness. ‘Where you been?'

‘Just at Nicky's house,' J answered.

‘Oh, yeah?' Pope said, looking up from his toast. ‘How is she?'

‘Yeah, she's okay,' J said, passing on into his room.

Watching him go, a little part of Pope's mind clicked over and he knew what he had to do.

J had a lot to think about, a lot to think through. If the cops were as useless as they seemed, the only other alternative was to take off.

He knew he could do it, but he knew it was going to be hard. Pope had friends everywhere. Not the sorts of friends you'd like to drop in unexpected, but what passed for friends in these circles, and they were people who could be very persistent. So it was going to be a big ask to stay out of sight.

Once he ran, he would be gone. The cops would be after him, and so would Pope. He'd already seen what the cops would do to you if you ran, and he didn't expect Pope to be much different. He'd just put the word out, and J would be dead as soon as they caught up with him; he had no illusions about that.

But staying here in the house wasn't an option, either. They were already suspicious of him, he knew that; Leckie knew it, too, and was stirring it up to force him into his corner. J couldn't imagine how he'd even be able to sleep in the place now.

He needed to be somewhere Pope couldn't get him, but he couldn't think how or where. He didn't want to involve Nicky or her family any more than he had, which was a lot more than he wanted to. And he didn't have many other friends.

Maybe just go. Change his name and head north. Up to the fishing boats or prawn trawlers. Or else to the mines out west. He could get a job in a mine, make some money. Sooner or later things would settle down and he'd get back in touch with Nicky and see if she wanted to join him. Get married. Why not? Why couldn't they do it? It was a new life, but this one was finished anyhow. He had to get out.

Just then he heard Pope on the phone in the other room. ‘He's here,' he was saying. ‘He's just walked in.'

Who was he talking to?

‘Fuck, calm down, Darren,' he heard Pope say.

J didn't know what Darren's problem was. They were all such drama queens. Sometimes J thought that the only reason they did the shit they did was because they loved the excitement.

He had to get out of the house: he couldn't stand the fear any more, this constant, gnawing fear of who knew what and how much they knew and what they were going to do about it, just there all the time, like a cloud, an atmosphere of fear and suspicion hanging over him.

You'd think there'd be some pleasure in being a criminal, but there's not; it's just fear and looking over your shoulder the whole time. And finally the thing that fucks you up is yourself. You end up not trusting anyone, because you know how untrustworthy
you
are; you don't believe a single word anyone's telling you, because you know how easy it is to lie, till you don't believe anything at all and can't tell the difference between truth and lies and you're as helpless as a baby lying in the middle of the road with a truck heading straight for it.

That's how the Codys were now. That's how they'd always been. His mother had tried to get away from it, too; she had changed her name and tried to set up a new life in another place, but somehow she'd never been able to. Somehow people had always found out who she was: a Cody. Maybe it ground her down, and eventually she just gave up.