Inconsolable (36 page)

She lasted five days doing all this before she drove by the house. She didn't have an exact plan for what she'd do when she got there, but since she was pretty down on the whole concept of spontaneity she figured she'd sit in the car and cry some more, because that was her favourite pastime whenever she was alone.

She didn't expect the big auction poster, and the slash across it that said sold prior was simply in the noise. If there was a light on it wasn't going to be because he was sitting on the stairs reading. If the house was in darkness it didn't mean he might be asleep on his mattress in the foyer. He wasn't there. He didn't own this house anymore.

It robbed her of the breath to cry.

In a way it was useful. There was no hangover, no make good, no what if or action replay with a different outcome on a lineball call. Game over. If she ran on the beach she'd be chasing her own shadow. She wasn't going to be able to find him. He didn't want to be found.

It was another week and two visits to the cave before she believed that.

He hadn't torn the boards down, and it wasn't Drum who'd sprayed obscene graffiti on them. She bought two big bags of oranges and a couple of family blocks of chocolate. She went to Cooper Park first. He wasn't going to be there but the goodies might buy her information.

Enid was there with her trolley, but she'd never heard of Drum. “Not my neighbourhood. He hasn't come around here.”

Foley put a bag of oranges and a block of chocolate in her trolley. “If you were me, where would you look?”

“Why do you need to find him? Sounds to me like he wants to disappear.”

She could tell Enid any old thing or nothing. “He's important to me and I'm worried about him.”

“That won't do you any good.”

It had given her nails bitten to the quick and an incessant sweet tooth. It was making her dull and anxious. “We were good friends, but we had a disagreement and I want to make sure he's all right.”

“You had a fight. Hmm. If he's a decent man he'll be wondering if you're all right. Let him go. He's trouble if he's homeless anyway.”

Foley smiled. “You're no trouble, Enid.” It was hard to imagine the wizened woman as anything but grandmotherly, if you put aside the way she smelled and the trolley.

“Was in my day.” Enid gave her a coy look. “Oh, yes. I was a bad girl. Drank too much. Smoked too much. Slept around. Went with men for money and had a few abortions.” Another look, nothing modest about it. “Have I shocked you?”

“A little.” A hell of a lot, but then Enid might be making up any old thing too.

“Give that fella up. He's no good. You're better off on your own.”

“Do you regret not having a family? Not having a more normal home?” Foley chose those words carefully. Enid was one of the longest-term homeless, one of the few women, and had resisted all attempts to rehouse her.

“Not much. I didn't want to do the things I was supposed to do. Get married, have babies. Cook dinner and clean house. Wasn't for me, that kind of slavery. I liked the men too much. But they're pigs you know. Pigs. The good ones are few and far between. Never had me a single good one worth keeping.” Enid laughed as if that was to be expected.

“Only thing I regret now is not having a television. Having my own telly would be nice, then again it's all ads, isn't it.” She patted Foley's hand with her gloved one, the wool still soft, but grubby. “You could ask the nice people on the food truck, they might know where your fella went, but if you want my advice, dump him.”

Oddly, probably the right advice from the most unorthodox of sources.

The second bag of oranges went to two men playing chess at the pavilion. They introduced themselves as Noddy and Blue and they knew Drum.

“He's gone away, love,” Blue said.

But that was the easy answer. “How do you know?”

“Came and asked us for advice, didn't he, Nod.”

“He did. Why'dja want to know? He in trouble again? You don't look like a copper.”

“I'm not. We were friends.”

Blue smacked his hand on the table, making the chess pieces dance. “You're the dolly bird.”

Foley grimaced and Noddy said, “What my friend means is you're the woman Drum was seeing.”

She nodded. “He was my friend.”

“Yeah well, he's shot through, love. Don't reckon he'll be coming back. We told him to go north or south maybe, I don't remember, do you, Blue?”

“He should get a van, that's what we said. You can go anywhere in a van. You sure you're not a copper, love?”

They conned a twenty out of her and she ended up with a block of chocolate for herself. Drum could be anywhere.

On a whim, she drove home via one of the spots where the food truck stopped each night. She watched for an hour while the three staff members served free food and drink, battling her belief system. The action around the food truck was orderly and more nutritious than the family block she ploughed through. The reaction in her head was riotous. She should forget this and go home. She should accept he was gone and not coming back. She should get on with being normal, find her way again in a world that didn't include Drum.

While they were serving the last meals before moving on, she approached.

“Soup is potato and leek. Pie is beef and veg. We've got apples and bananas.”

A thousand times better than the Cadbury's. “No, thanks, I'm good, but I wonder if I can ask you a question?”

The man at the counter screwed up his face. “Ah, sure. But look, if you're a journalist or a student, you can't just ride along with us for the night. We have to get permission.”

“No, I'm.” She went for her council ID and flashed it up at him. “I'm Foley Barnes. I'm from the council.”

“Oh, geez, well. You're not going to do an inspection are you? We'll be late for the next stop.”

“No, I'm sorry. This is nothing official. I'm looking for someone.”

“Ah, right.” He relaxed and smiled. “Tea or coffee? I'm Mark McGow. This is Sarah Ying and Angela Fine.”

Foley got a wave out of Sarah who was serving another man, and his dog as well. She waved back. “Just water, if you have it?”

Mark handed over a bottle of water. “Who are you looking for? We don't always have names, but one of us might know by description.”

What was she doing? She'd never known Drum to frequent the free food trucks. He worked for his food, he traded for meals. He was long gone and she needed to accept that.

“Hey, I'm sorry. Don't worry about it.” She turned to leave, embarrassed, defeated, gut sick from all that chocolate. “Thank you for the water.”

“You looking for Drum?”

She turned back. It was the man with the dog. “Ah, yes, I am.”

“Yeah, thought so. I've seen you with him, jogging and stuff. He's skipped. Not to be trusted, that bloke.”

“You know him?”

“I know he's not honest. Some kind of joker. Not fair dinkum.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Back to his life if he has any brains.” The man walked away, calling, “Mully,” over his shoulder, making the dog trot to catch up with him.

“Did you get what you needed?” The guy from the truck, Mike, Mark?

She got what she needed when she first met Drum. He was unstable and even his peer group thought so. He'd hidden in plain sight for over a year before she'd met him, he had the smarts and the incentive to do it again. She'd never find him and she needed to stop pretending she could. “Yes, I did, thank you. And thanks for the water.”

She went back to the car and the bloody thing wouldn't start. Probably the battery again, but who knew. She sipped the water and tried again. The engine made a sawing, coughing sound and then flatlined. This just topped off her night, her week, her life. She rested her head on the steering wheel and then nearly bit her tongue off when someone rapped on the window. She scrolled it down.

He smiled. “You need a lift?”

“No, I'm fine. I'll call road service.”

“Look, this is not the greatest part of town at night. I'm sure you'll be fine but it might be better to take a lift with the truck to somewhere more central and call road service in the morning.”

“I'll be okay.”

“Then I'll stay with you. My shift is over. Someone else is rostered on for the next stop.”

“You don't need to do that.”

“Yeah. I do. I won't hang with you. I'll go over there,” he pointed to a low brick fence he could sit on. “I'll just wait till road service gets here.” They stared at each other. “I've just totally creeped you out, haven't I?” He sighed. He had nice eyes and an open face. He was a charity volunteer, he probably wasn't a threat. “That was like the opposite of what I intended.”

The truck was idling and the driver was watching them. Foley got out of the car. “I'll be fine. I can lock the car.”

“Mark, are you coming?”

He turned back to the truck. “Wait, Ange.” He looked at Foley. “Come with us, we can ask about your guy at the next stop.”

She shook her head. “He's long gone.”

“You never know.”

She put her hand over her face. “Oh hell, don't encourage me.”

He grinned. “Seriously, this is a bad place for you to wait alone. The deal is either come with us, or I'll wait with you, but you should ask the girls if they think I'm the next backpacker murderer or not.”

“Mark!”

Foley looked at Mark, then at her car. “Do you think it's safe to leave it here?” Mark had trouble choosing an expression, his face settled on neutral with a chance of smirk. Foley laughed. He was kind of cute. “Say what you were going to say.”

He laughed. “No one is stealing that car.”

She rode in the food truck for the rest of the night, talking to the homeless who came for a meal, handing out water bottles, and laughing with Mark, Sarah, Angela and the other volunteers who came and went.

Mark hung out, even though his shift was over. After the second stop she gave up asking about Drum, Enid's words running through her head.

If he were a decent man, he would be worried about her.

32: New Rules

It was a holiday town but it wasn't yet holiday season and there weren't any caves, so Drum bought an old tent. It was the fifth town he'd stopped at and it would do. He was bone tired of wandering, searching for things he'd left behind, Foley and his peace of mind chief among them.

He couldn't think about Foley. It wrecked him to remember her face when he kissed her goodbye, to recall the sob she killed short and the scrape of her nails on the back of his hand as he pulled away. Whenever he thought about her, he went back to reciting the victim's names. He'd been reciting a lot. He never missed a name.

If he'd been in hiding on the cliff, it felt like now he was on the run, and until he found a new edge to pull him up, give him focus, he floundered. He couldn't settle. He lost his appetite and his sleep pattern was worse than ever, disturbed by old dreams and worried by new ones, all of them so tissue thin by daylight they burned off, leaving him dazed.

The tent was old and clunky, but he modified it with another tarp and fashioned himself a home on the far edge of an abandoned caravan park. The park was slated for redevelopment and the property was fenced off, but the amenities block was still functional and he had the place to himself. It was a good situation in a tolerant town.

But there was no work, no industry other than retirement and golf. He had two visits from the cops who tried to move him on half-heartedly. The local teenage bully, Jayden, and his pack of dickhead mates messed with his tent twice, but he left nothing of value in it so it didn't matter. The problem was he couldn't feed himself so he was forced to use his cash. It was better than being on welfare, but it irked him all the same, to need the earnings from his NCR shareholding when he'd done without them before. It felt like he was stealing from the charities the trust funded. Not that that made a lot of sense. He'd been the bum with a million dollar address at his disposal, how was it worse to be the bum who used a bank-teller machine card?

He should've bought Foley a new car before he lit out.

That was another mistake. The third one that last day. Not buying her a car, hurting her, avoiding Alan.

He should've whistled when he came up the stairs, cooked Alan bad eggs, spread butter on his toast and shrugged when he asked for jam. He should've made sure Foley knew it was okay to let Alan in the house, by showing her it was.

Alan Drummond liked his jam, primarily blackberry. But not getting jam on his toast that day would've been the least of his inconveniences. He liked his son to be a certain way: consistent, reliable, performing to expectations, conforming to established norms. And Drum simply wasn't that person anymore and he shouldn't have been afraid to show it.

He could've hashed up breakfast and told Foley how Alan was an excellent chemist, an outstanding chairman, respected, revered by his peers. That he was a patient man, who knew the value of testing and continuous improvement, but when it came to being a father he'd been ill-equipped to go it alone, hands off and trial and error, a clinical approach, more observational than active participant.

Drum had worked this out, though not in those terms as a kid. Like Jayden had worked out his mother, Melissa, could be pushed into a corner and once there, had no new game to bring and he'd get his own way.

Drum knew Alan's one weakness was being a father. And that hadn't mattered; there were two grandpas, and Benny. There was always an adult for basic needs and Benny for fun and games and teaching him things a kid probably shouldn't get taught. All the best things, like how to build a billycart, fly a kite, chop a tree down, fish, fight and smoke a cigarette. He'd loved Benny because nothing Drum ever did displeased him. It was Benny who'd first called him Trick. But it was Alan who wore the hero's cape and swooped in with stories of the wider world where amazing things happened in labs and test tubes. And Drum had loved him for the mysteries of that.