Black Teeth (37 page)

baby in a pusher. They remind me of the family I saw at the court a week ago. Dads disappear—the lucky ones get to witness their child's first steps—then Mum unpacks the stroller and just gets on with it.

I'm flicking too hard at the lacker band. Turn to my phone for a distraction.

Severe psoriatic arthritis means that Blake's skin is inflamed and topped with silvery scales like he's turning into The Fly. I have to prepare myself for that. Along with it comes permanent, disabling joint pain, especially in the fingers and toes, as well as a ‘loss of skeletal architecture'. Which also sounds like The Fly.

‘SCLC extensive stage' is more straightforward: small cell lung cancer, the aggressive kind of lung cancer. Extensive stage means it's spread somewhere like the lymph nodes. It's inoperable, the survival rate is minuscule and most people don't make it twelve months past diagnosis. Chemotherapy is rarely effective, probably isn't an option if Blake is losing skeletal—

‘You looking for me?' A man is seated beside me on the bench, has slumped there without me noticing.

I try to speak but my throat catches and I don't manage any words before he clarifies: ‘I'm Frank.'

He's my age, wears a dusty jacket and jeans, messy hair the way some men choose not to care, a beard that's also unkempt but which seems at least to be deliberate. A crucifix hangs around his neck, matches the silver in his eyes.

He shakes my hand with a dry, callused paw. Frank works for a living; a tradesman or labourer with time off to visit his dying dad. I wonder if he tells his boss what kind of hospice this is.

‘Frank. My name is…'

I realise I don't have a cover story. All this time to kill and I didn't come up with one.

‘Um…My name is Jason Ginaff.'

63

The blood thuds up the back of my neck and brute forces my brain, so hard and quick that my skull impacts the spot on the wall so many heads have impacted before. Franklyn looks me over like a farmer looks over a broken-down tractor, his lip hoisted in a sneer not of disdain but merely bafflement.

‘Um…' I say. He can see me thwacking away at the lacker band around my wrist but that's not going to stop me doing it. ‘I wanted to visit your…Desmond Blake.'

‘Right.'

Nothing from him except that sneer.

‘I need to see him today…It's important.'

‘How come?'

‘Cheryl Alamein.'

Franklyn's eyes freeze over and at first it seems that he
must
recognise that name. His body goes rigid and he grasps at the back of his chair. Then I realise what it is that's freaking him out.

‘You were in Severington?'

I should have remembered to wash the black teeth off. For now I cover them with my left hand, keep flicking the rubber band and my heart shoots another warning shot across my brain.

‘No,' I say. ‘Just…it's a long story.'

‘Yeah. I've been hearing a few of those lately.'

Flinty eyes in a sun-damaged face. I peer back and they don't falter.

‘So…like…what? What have you been…heard?'

That Des killed his mother. He would have heard that. But the toughness in his voice, the shaking of his head…It's like he doesn't want to be impugned by what I've come to say.

‘Listen, I just met the guy, okay? Two weeks back the chaplain here calls me up out of friggin' nowhere, says my dad's in here and didn't have long.' He raises his hands in surrender. ‘So I just met the guy. I don't know anything. I just come along and, you know…This is all new.'

‘Did he tell you about Cheryl Alamein?'

‘I don't…' He's confused by how to answer. A long sigh. ‘I don't know what he told me.'

The band snaps loud against my wrist. He seems to decide not to wonder about it. Meanwhile I'm pulling air into my lungs by the metric fuckload, fighting the urge to flee.

‘Um…He's awake? He…He can talk?'

‘Not really anymore.'

‘Can I see him?'

But Franklyn is already winding up. His sneer turns apologetic. ‘I'm sorry. I don't think people should be, like…'

‘But…Can I…'

‘He can't really talk anymore. That's why there's this stipulation thing. The psoriasis is everywhere now. I mean, it's spread and it's infected. It's all over his body. I mean, you don't want to know. And he can't even really open his mouth.'

With no sound at all, the lacker band breaks. The absence of the snapping sensation or any registration on the pain scale sends another pump of blood upstairs and I think I'm going to faint, blink hard to

wipe the green flashbangs from my eyes. I shake my head, tip back and forth but it doesn't clear. With my lids squeezed shut and while I'm poking them with my fingers I realise Franklyn's still talking.

‘…A test. Like, friggin' biblical.' A bitter laugh, water in his eyes. ‘You grow up hating the guy because he's not around. Then all of a sudden here he is, and you have to watch him die in more pain than you thought was possible.'

I'm guessing he doesn't have a lot of people to pour this out to. He's taking the opportunity, despite how obvious it must be that he's chosen the wrong person.

‘Father McLeod says it's not a sin to wish him a quick death. He said it's okay to pray for mercy. Whatever the mercy is.'

‘But…How long?'

‘Oncologist reckons days. But he'll suffer like this for as long as he has to.'

I'm pinching my eyes so I can't tell what this is supposed to mean. Can't see whatever has come over Franklyn now. It's in his voice when he says:

‘He's got a lot to do penance for.'

I manage to blink my eyes open despite how my brain is an ocean and I'm drowning in it.

‘Apart from his mother?'

Franklyn stares at the lino.

‘Sounds like you know.'

‘
Cheryl Alamein
,' I say again. I have to grind it through my teeth because it's hard to breathe.

‘It'll all come out. Once he passes.'

‘What?
What
will?'

The broken band that held to my skin by way of static

electricity loses its grip on my wrist hair and falls to the floor.

‘He wrote it all down,' Franklyn says. ‘When it happened. He wrote it down and gave it to his lawyer.'

‘Wrote
what
down?'

‘Sorry, mate.' He plants his hands on his knees and stands up, moans like an old man. ‘Even if I knew the details, I'm not allowed to tell. And he can't now. He's done all the confessing he'll ever do.'

‘Listen…' I can somehow
feel
the green lights in my eyes. ‘Listen. I know…I mean…'

‘This lawyer bloke, he goes to the cops once Dad passes. And that's, like, any day now. That's the deal they made. Dad wrote down what happened. The bloke's keeping it till Dad dies.'

‘But
why
?' I say. ‘Why did he do it?'

My eyes close tight against the heat in my head and I don't see his reaction.

He says, ‘I don't friggin' know.' His voice is further away. He's walking away.

‘Just…Just…' I lean out, almost fall off the chair. Heads turn. I call out to Franklyn, just a blur in my vision. ‘How did the vase… How did the vase get in the workshop?'

‘What?'

‘The vase. How was…How did it get into the…

I mean…How did it get into Piers's workshop?'

It's entirely obvious to Franklyn that he's in conversation with a freak. He says, ‘Sorry,' and turns and walks away. At the reception desk he points to the security door and says something breathy, wants to be let in. With a long stare at me, the officer obliges, hits the button and the door opens wide.

I peer after him at what I can glimpse…

Is it a man hunched in a cot? His face so flaky and ravaged with disease that it's impossible to determine his age? Is he sitting up, awaiting his son, a red bandana around his head, making the nurses laugh with his handwritten placards? Or is he setting out a game of draughts with trembling, palsied digits, the black teeth still visible through the crusty scales on his right hand?

Maybe. I'm not sure. The door shuts. Franklyn is gone.

The wind strikes my face like a punishment when I reach the outdoors. I run to the car and get inside and for a minute my hands are too cold to turn the ignition. Though also, they're too shaky. I need brain clarity, take a moment to breathe. Tell myself I'm not going to pass out. Watch gang-gangs screech in circles overhead.

I follow Heidelberg Road past Fairfield Park and over the train tracks into Clifton Hill. Then I turn right onto Alexandra Parade.

I realise that I've pulled over. I'm in Carlton again. There's a Big Thirst bottle shop dominating Rathdowne, one of the ones the size of a submarine hangar. Automatic doors open and close, sober pedestrians come and go and I watch. The engine is running.

A car horn from somewhere. The ticking of a Don't Walk light.

And what I think is this:

I'm going to buy some wine.

64

Her phone is closed so probably she thinks she's going to surprise me, sitting at my terminals, backlit by the streetlights and silent. I trigger the lights, put the wine on the kitchen counter, my keys and gloves too and without looking I say, ‘Hello, Gemma,' because I am a gaping chadwick. No response while I fire up the heater so now I look. Her eyes are half-closed in a way I'd never seen until she turned out to be somebody else. Now she seems to do it all the time. That pointy tongue wets her lips to speak but then she doesn't.

‘You want a wine?'

Licks her lips again.

‘Yep.'

I break the seal on the bottle, don't sniff at the vapours, just pour straight into tumblers from the dish rack and take them over.

‘You keep coming in here uninvited I'm going to call the police.'

She drinks thirstily. Doesn't seem to taste it.

‘You're no more likely to call the police on me than me on you.'

I offer a mock toast and drink. Like paint. Maybe I was supposed to let it breathe. My thought is to sit on the floor again but it seems wise to keep a distance; I stroll back to the counter and lean there. ‘I saw Rudy this morning.'

‘I thought as much.' She kills her wine, puts the glass on the carpet. ‘When you didn't answer your phone.'

‘You wouldn't have liked what I had to say.'

‘I only got him the policy he wanted, that you were keeping from him.'