The CIB man slapped his back. ‘Strangled before he could shoot his load.’
They snickered and looked at the pictures again. ‘Poor bastard’s parents found him,’ the CIB man said. ‘Want us to find the murderer.’
Napper’s head shake said you wouldn’t credit the ignorance of parents and he went back to his desk. He opened a file and the telephone rang. It was his solicitor, with news that threatened to ruin Napper’s day. ‘What do you mean, they’ve got the right?’
‘Just what I said,’ the solicitor replied. ‘Under law they’ve got the right to divert tax refunds to meet back payments owed by the husband.’
Napper directed a hot and bitter look along the line. ‘How? Tell me that.’
‘The Child Support Agency has revenue-collecting powers through the Taxation Office.’
‘Bastards,’ Napper said.
He stared moodily at a picture of the Queen. She was fly-spotted. Things were falling apart there, too, except your royals weren’t strapped for cash like he was. ‘I love my kid,’ he said into the receiver. ‘I’d never let her go without. I was late, that’s all.’
‘Nap,’ the solicitor said, ‘I warned you what could happen. Next time they’ll be much tougher. There’ve been cases of the Agency obtaining court orders for the sale of assets to meet back payments. They could make you sell your house, your car…’
‘Bastards,’ Napper said again. His voice grew harsh. ‘Look, I paid her five hundred bucks the other day.’
‘But you owe her nine thousand. They’re not going to wear that.’
‘I haven’t got it. I can’t earn it. I drive a fifteen-year-old Holden ute, for Christ’s sake. Have another go. Show them some figures.’
The solicitor was doubtful. ‘I’ll do what I can, but there comes a point when you can’t massage the figures any further. Like I said, they’ve taken greater powers on board. Next thing you know they’ll have the power to freeze bank accounts. Last month they subpoenaed some bloke’s Visa card statements. Turns out while he was crying poor to the Child Support Agency, he was dipping his wick in some brothel twice a week.’
Napper wasn’t interested in the sordid lives of other non-custodial fathers. ‘Do what you can,’ he said, and hung up.
For a while, ten minutes, he stared at his files. At 3.30 he went to the locker room, changed into stretch, stonewashed jeans and flanelette shirt, and signed off duty. He had to get a couple of the boys to help him push-start the ute. By 3.45 he was in a Fitzroy side street, field-glasses clamped to his eyes.
There she was, his little darling, at the edge of the pool, eight years old and slipping in and out of the water like a frog in her red Speedos. She was doing backflips and bellyflops with a couple of other little frogs, happy and tireless, in and out, in and out. It brought a lump to his throat.
Napper lowered the field-glasses and Roxanne became just a tiny red flash in the general scenery-a small park, a cyclone fence, sunbathers on the lawn, the kiddies wading pool, the main pool beyond it. His ex-wife brought Roxanne here every afternoon after school. It hadn’t taken Napper long to establish that. Anyway, you can’t stop a bloke from looking at his own flesh and blood. He raised the glasses again and felt his heart clench. Roxie had hurt herself. She was standing, head bent, and her little mates were crouched around, and the world and Napper were focused on her right knee. But then she grinned and everything was all right again. Aqua Profonda, said the sign at the end of the pool.
Napper sat back and drained a can of Fosters. The ute cabin was a hot place-the sun on the glass, the exhaust pipe showing through the rust holes in the floor. Out on Alexander Parade the traffic was building up, pouring toward the freeway. Only four o’clock, but already bastards were going home. Not for the first time did Napper tell himself the country was getting slack.
And there had to be something wrong with a system that allowed a woman to bleed her ex-husband dry and still not let him see the kid he’d fathered. Napper closed his eyes, blocking out the poisonous shit they’d heaped on him in the Family Court. For two bucks he’d jack it all in and bum around overseas for the rest of his life. He thought about it: golden beaches, a glassy sea, topless birds speaking French and Italian, long cold drinks under a Cinzano umbrella. Except that wasn’t exactly bumming around. It would require cash and he didn’t have it. He didn’t even have enough to keep his kid in Weeboks, the style his ex-wife had accustomed her to.
Napper raised the glasses for a last look at his daughter. Her shoulder-blades, her funny little poddy stomach, her long legs: God, he could practically feel her squirming and rubbery in his arms.
4.15. The kids disappeared into the changing room. Napper was leaning forward, turning the ignition key, listening for life in the battery, when women surrounded his ute, snapping wet towels at the sorry, sun-blasted blue duco. Napper couldn’t believe it. He edged his stomach under the steering wheel and got out. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Pervert,’ the women said.
The ring-leader was his ex-wife and she had got the other mothers worked up. They said, ‘Pervert, pervert,’ and snapped their towels. Napper put up a meaty hand. ‘Back off, or I’ll have you in the lockup so fast your heads’ll spin.’
‘Oh, big man,’ the women said, dropping into hoarse baritones.
‘Come on, Josie,’ Napper said. ‘Give me a break.’
‘Give me maintenance and I’ll give you a break,’ his ex-wife said.
‘Give him hell,’ the women said, but they were stepping back, watching to see what he’d do. What he did was not risk embarrassment with the battery. He walked to the Caltex service station on the corner.
Eleven
Wyatt watched the London Hotel for three hours that afternoon, standing patiently at the first-floor window of a second-hand bookshop on the opposite corner. At four o’clock he slipped across the street. Ornamental trees in terracotta pots stood on either side of the sliding glass doors of the hotel. Using one of them as cover, Wyatt surveyed the reception desk and the lobby. The clerk was talking on the telephone. The man’s clothes flapped and sagged on his body and his face was rubbery with anxiety, his left hand worrying the manufactured knot in his bow tie. The lobby itself was empty. Wyatt wondered how best to work this. If he went in now, the clerk would spot him and run. There were probably side and back entrances but they would take time to find.
At that moment two taxis drew into the kerb behind him. Several young women got out. They wore suits with shoulderpads and carried white vinyl conference wallets. He stood back and watched them enter the lobby. A couple of the women glanced at him. It was covetous, as though they were intoxicated by the day and wanted to admit an element of risk into it.
Wyatt waited. He watched the women walk across the lobby to claim their room keys. He went in then, using them as cover. While they conversed noisily at the reception desk, Wyatt buried his nose in a revolving display of brochures of Melbourne’s beauty spots. When the women were gone he stepped up to the desk and opened his windbreaker.
The clerk saw the.38, closed his eyes and tried to make the best of it. ‘Is sir enjoying his stay?’
Wyatt didn’t say anything. He watched the scared, eyes, waiting for the man to break.
It didn’t take long. ‘I was just doing my job,’ the clerk muttered.
Wyatt ignored that. ‘You were on the phone just now. You looked worried.’
The clerk swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘What about?’
The clerk said, ‘Look, it’s nothing personal. I had orders to watch your movements, that’s all.’
Wyatt tried again. ‘I know that. I want to know what the phone call you had just now was about.’
‘They’ve been calling every fifteen minutes in case you came back here.’
‘And here I am,’ Wyatt said. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s four. What time do you knock off work?’
‘Any minute. I’m on eight till four.’
‘You were also on duty when I got in last night.’