The Tankermen Read online

  The hours they spent safe indoors made the earlier talk of aliens seem a bit peculiar. Now that he was inside a real house, Finn felt that everything around him was wonderfully normal. The comfort of sitting on a cushioned sofa, even one as broken-down and decrepit as Jed’s, and of using a bathroom that was guaranteed weirdo-free, gave his body a lulled, expansive sense of being at home, without any of the worries—the old familiar worries, anyway. And as Jed was a real snacker, forever wandering into the kitchen to raid the fridge, Finn’s stomach soon became fuller than it had been for weeks.

  But by seven o’clock Jed and Finn were sick of staring at the TV, and itched to get outside. Finn had the feeling he’d sometimes had in his box, that he was running out of oxygen and would soon have to start panting for breath.

  ‘I reckon we’re sitting ducks here,’ he said to Jed. ‘I know those guys are slow, but we’re giving them plenty of time to home in on us.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jed. ‘Besides, we need some fresh air. Let’s take the bike out for a run. That way we can make a quick escape if we need to.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Finn was cheered at the thought of freedom and movement.

  Jed had heard of a party that was going on in Kirribilli, so they rode across the Bridge and hid themselves in the crowd for a while. ‘Not that crowds put those guys off,’ said Jed, ‘but it feels safer somehow.’ Jed got talking to some biker mates, and Finn wandered around feeling very young and wide-eyed, just watching people talking and dancing. There was a lot of smoke in the air and a lot of loud music and shouted conversation, and the same reek that spilled out of open pub doors, of hot beery breath. Finn was a bit intimidated by it all, the closeness of all those bodies after the weeks alone on the streets. Like Jed’s flat, it felt safe but suffocating.

  ‘Let’s get away from all this racket.’ Jed had obviously begun to feel the same way. They put on their helmets and started out on a long, aimless ride around the streets.

  Finn liked the city at night. Sunlight was hard on cities, showing up the dirt and the tackiness, but at night you could ignore it and just look at the flashing lights and the shiny reflections off passing cars and the mystery of people reduced to silhouettes. Through the visor of Jed’s spare helmet, which was slightly blurry with scratches, things looked even more cryptic and distorted. Finn was glad the tankermen’s vehicle was so bulky and visible, and wondered uneasily whether they ever went about without it, or discarded their heavy suits and masks to pursue people more easily.

  Jed was making it pretty difficult for anyone to follow them, snaking through dense masses of traffic on the main roads or finding tortuous ways through great complexes of lanes. Finn’s main fear was that they’d find their way blocked by the tanker in one of those narrow back streets, and he kept peering anxiously around Jed’s shoulder.

  Occasionally he recognised where they were and realised that Jed was taking them gradually closer to the Cross. ‘What’re you up to?’ he yelled over the mutter of the engine as they waited at the next set of lights.

  Jed’s helmet turned and he nudged his visor up. ‘Thought we might have a look—’ Finn saw his lips say before the lights changed and the visor snapped down again.

  Finn clung to the little handle behind his seat, the adrenalin of the ride warring with little clutches of terror. He didn’t feel strong. He was nagged by low-level pain in his head, his thigh and a few places on his chest, and he didn’t know how much blood he’d lost that morning. I should be at home in bed, getting better, he thought. Jed turned into Manning Street.

  A beige station wagon blocked the lane, and a police car was parked askew out in Manning Street, its blue lights turning. Both cars were empty.

  Jed drew to an uncertain halt just before the laneway. Finn dismounted slowly, staring at the station wagon. Taking off his helmet, he thought he heard a man cry out. He went to the corner and squatted down, peeping out from the car’s shadow into the lane.

  The tanker was parked as usual, and one of the tankermen was just unhooking the hose. But another was at work, too, lifting an unconscious man into a large metal cylinder that lay on the ground, and snapping the lid closed. Finn pulled back behind the wall and gave Jed a look of blank terror. Jed took his turn peering around the corner.

  Finn recovered and tugged at Jed’s jacket. ‘What’s he doing with that box?’

  ‘Kind of sliding it under the truck. There’s a row of drawer-things, like . . .’

  ‘Like what?’ Finn asked, pressing his cheek against the rough brick of the stable wall.

  ‘Like those drawers you see in a morgue.’ Jed sat back beside him and drew a breath in through his teeth. ‘I guess they’ve got a dead copper or two in there.’

  ‘Jed,’ said Finn, pointing at the station wagon, ‘this car belongs to my dad.’

  There was a very nasty pause. The pump chugged.

  ‘We’d better go after them, then,’ said Jed. Finn could have hugged him for the calm, commonsense tone he used, but fear stopped him.

  ‘And get blasted too?’

  ‘Maybe. But maybe we won’t. We might get to see where these guys operate from. And even if we can’t do anything for your dad, we can at least . . . get him back.’

  Recover the body. The words lay like a sheet of lead across Finn’s brain. The chugging ceased and the clanking of the hose being replaced echoed in the empty laneway.

  ‘Okay,’ Finn whispered, and busied himself with his helmet.

  They sat astride the bike in silence until they heard the tanker’s motor roar into action; then they crept forward to the lane’s opening. The tanker was just turning into Hughes Street at the far end, slipping into a solid, slow-moving line of traffic. The stink in the lane crowded into Finn’s helmet and set him gasping; he was half blinded by tears and clutched Jed’s waist for balance. The man he’d seen in the tankerman’s arms—he hadn’t been a policeman. It had to be Finn’s dad. But Finn didn’t recognise him collapsed and helpless like that, just as the voice crying out, the fear in it, couldn’t have been his father’s. He felt sick, even as the fumes began to clear from his helmet.

  The tanker headed straight for William Street and the city. If the tankermen realised the bike was there, they made no attempt to evade it. Finn kept an eye on its rear-vision mirrors, thinking a glimpse of a face or a twinkle of red would be a warning to take cover. But there was no sign. Either they didn’t know they were being followed or they didn’t care.

  They cruised past the Town Hall and turned right into Clarence Street. Finn grew nervous in the narrow canyon of the city street. He tried to watch for hiding places and keep an eye on the tanker’s mirrors. His brain was firing at double speed, keeping worse thoughts from bothering him.

  The tanker freed itself of most of the traffic, turning into Cumberland Street and under the Bridge. Jed followed it, keeping a block or so behind. They went down through a maze of narrow streets, then found themselves speeding past the Walsh Bay piers. It was dark and there were no lanes by which they could make a quick getaway.

  Finn was about to thump Jed on the back and ask him to stop. Ahead was a cutting, two walls of sheer rock bridged by two streets, the road underneath running through to the dockside. There were no other people around. It was a classic trap, and Jed was falling into it without a thought.

  The tanker began to slow down, and so did Jed. It put on a right-hand indicator as it entered the cutting.

  ‘What?’ said Finn to the inside of his helmet. He pushed his visor up.

  ‘They’re going to do a U-ey and run us down,’ said Jed flatly to himself. He braked harder and came to a halt, planting his feet on the road.

  The tanker turned right and disappeared into the rock.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled Finn, scrambling off the pillion and running forward. ‘Where are you taking my dad?’

  Jed watched, immobilised by surprise, as Finn’s tiny figure in its bulbous black and red helmet ran away from him, pounded its fist against the rock w
all. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said to himself sensibly. He turned the bike around and parked it, then followed Finn into the cutting, slowly removing his gloves and unstrapping his helmet.

  Finn was searching for a way through, pushing at every bump in the rock and hauling at every tiny crack with his fingernails.

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Jed, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘There wasn’t, like, a secret panel or a sliding door or anything. They just drove straight through it.’

  ‘How could they? It doesn’t make sense!’ Finn stopped his frantic search and took off his helmet. Underneath, his face was white and gleaming with perspiration, and his hair was pressed damply to his head.

  ‘No, but that’s what happened.’

  ‘It can’t have,’ said Finn in a voice too small to echo along the cutting. He was very close to crying.

  They stood there for a minute, running their hands over the rock. A car with the stereo on, thudding with the bass-line, swung exuberantly around the curve and through the cutting. In its silent wake Jed stood back and appraised the wall.

  ‘We may as well get out of here,’ he said to the miserable Finn. ‘I don’t think there’s much we can do.’

  ‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ said Finn, and then in a slightly firmer voice, ‘I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘Well—’ Jed’s voice was suddenly dull with exhaustion ‘—figure out a way to pass through solid rock, and we’ll go in and get him.’

  He took Finn’s elbow and gently pushed him towards the bike.

  6

  Message from Paradise

  The next morning, Finn stood in brilliant sunshine outside Kings Cross Post Office, two postcards in his hand. They both showed a picture of a long, low timber building with wide verandahs, a row of cane settees along the front. ‘Greenlawns Nursing Home, Casino’ was gold-blocked across the lawn in round, sloping script.

  Finn didn’t understand the first card’s message. Not that it wasn’t clearly written; in fact, the firmness of the handwriting was one of the mystifying things about it. There was no date on it, but it read ‘Paradise Row tonight.’ and was signed ‘Your loving Gran XX’.

  But everyone knew his gran couldn’t write. She hadn’t been able to since the second stroke last January. Was it one of the nurses, passing on a message? It was weird, though, that the writing was so like his gran’s used to be. The nurses all had open, rounded handwriting, but his gran’s writing had this old-fashioned lean to it, with uniform, curly capitals, and all the little letters exactly the same height. The second card was less mysterious.

  Dear Donny, Us girls are all worried about you. You OK now? Sarah’s coming to Sydney next weekend, she says she could check on you if you make a time and place to meet her. She’s got important news for you. Just a p/c with the details will be enough. Take care and write back straight away, won’t you? All our love and concern, Danielle S.

  It was dated two days ago—it was too late now to get a postcard back there for the weekend. In a way Finn was relieved—Danielle and the others obviously knew he’d left home. Had those nurses been rung in, were they ambassadors for his family now? If so, he wasn’t much interested in being ‘checked on’. Sarah was the oldest, the most responsible of the nurses—he wouldn’t have got away without a little lecture on all the worry he was causing everyone. As for the important news, well, he figured he knew it, better than anyone. The lid of the cylinder closing with a clank, the tanker engine revving up, the open door of the station wagon, the keys still in the ignition.

  He slid the card into his back pocket and made ready to cross William Street. He’d just intended to dash out to the post office and then head into town, but now he thought he might go up to the Cross and check out the back lanes for clues to the tankermen’s operation.

  He felt unsteady, vulnerable. His usual routine had been completely disrupted. Jed had insisted he stay at the flat, which was good of him, considering Finn was such lousy company. He was in a daze that was one part grief to two parts angry puzzlement. His mind kept replaying the disappearance of the tanker, and fighting the final frames where it had slid into the wall. It couldn’t be done; it was a video trick, a dream; it hadn’t happened. He knew that as surely as he remembered having seen it happen.

  And Jed had seen it too. He could tell, though they hadn’t talked about it. Every now and again he and Jed exchanged glances that asked each other ‘Did it happen or am I going nuts?’, and then answered, every time, ‘It happened. No doubt about it.’

  Jed had tried. At breakfast he’d said ‘Maybe your dad and the cops were behind us somewhere near that lane, hiding out. They could have come out after we’d gone, and got in their cars and driven home.’ He looked hopefully across the kitchen table at Finn, who was slowly buttering a piece of toast and wishing he could enjoy it to the full.

  Finn had shaken his head. ‘They couldn’t have got the tanker into the lane with the cars there—they always come in that end of the lane. Dad’s car, at least, would have had to have got there later than the tanker did. And the cop car wasn’t exactly trying to hide itself, flashing away like that. And the doors were open—they’d obviously just got out. Besides, I saw that guy in the suit put . . . put Dad in the box.’

  As soon as he’d started speaking, the hopefulness had fallen away from Jed’s face. ‘I know,’ said the big guy when he’d finished. ‘Just grabbing at straws, mate.’

  For Finn there were no straws to grab. He had phoned FinCom this morning and been met with awkward silences and a request to leave a message for his father, who was ‘unavailable’.

  ‘That’d be right,’ Jed had said. He was on his way out to work—a few days helping out at a friend’s bike shop. He’d turned round at the door and seen Finn slumped on the sofa, the phone in his lap, debating whether to try to ring Janet at home. ‘Well, it’s what we expected, isn’t it?’

  Finn had nodded without looking up. Then Jed was squatting on the floor in front of him. ‘I’ll tell Harry I can’t come, hey? We’ll . . . we’ll sit here and . . . and brainstorm the thing. We’ll ride over to the cutting—’

  Finn shook his head, looking into Jed’s helpless blue eyes. ‘No, Jed, you need the money. Besides, we’d both go crazy trying to figure out what to do. And it might not be safe here. You should go—and maybe I should go somewhere different today, throw ’em off my trail, if they’re looking for me.’

  ‘You sure?’ Jed had regarded him a long time, then stood up. Straight away Finn wished he hadn’t told him to go. The guy was so big, he looked indestructible.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll be fine. You go.’

  ‘Okay. Just don’t do anything risky, that’s all. And try to be here when I get back at six-thirty—or leave a note where you are so I can find you. Don’t just disappear on me. Here, my work number’s written down on the phone pad, so call me if things look tricky.’

  ‘I will. Don’t worry about me. Go on, you’ll be late.’ All this concern had made Finn frightened again, had made the nightmare of last night more real than he wanted it to be. Once Jed had left, he hadn’t stayed long in the flat. He’d put off the decision about ringing Janet until this evening, then showered and left.

  The Cross was slow today. A mere trickle of people was emerging from the train station, and otherwise there was just the usual assortment of cool young residents, ravaged-looking girls in short, tight skirts and drunks grubbing about in the bins. Finn went to the bank and took out a twenty so that he could buy a few things for Jed’s house—he was feeling guilty for sponging off them, and after last night he had a feeling he wasn’t going to be out on the street much longer, so he could afford to lash out a little.

  The wandering and choosing in the supermarket took his mind off his worries for a few minutes. It was only a minimarket, but the array of goods was fascinating to someone who’d sworn off shopping for a few weeks. He cruised up and down the aisles reading labels and sniffing soaps and cleaning fluids, and finally gave in to the
temptation to get the household a self-saucing butterscotch pudding as well as the essentials he was buying.

  Automatically he checked the street for tankers as he stepped out of the store. There were none, but as he crossed, a voice stopped him in mid-street.

  ‘Don! Hey, Donny! Over here!’ Janet was standing on the kerb outside the station, with Alex beside her. They were both waving at him, and Alex was jumping up and down and laughing, only just restrained from dashing towards Finn through the traffic.

  Finn felt as if someone had punched him in the belly. He dithered and tried to retreat through the slow-moving cars. Someone beeped their horn at him and a man yelled ‘Geddoff the road, ya mug!’ Janet’s hair was so blonde it was almost white, and it fell past her shoulders, straight and innocent, shining in the sun. She looked no older than himself, she was so short and finely made. He turned back towards her, scurrying across the road.

  Janet clutched at his arm as soon as he was within reach. ‘You know your father’s missing, Don?’ Close up you could see she was older. She looked as if she had forgotten how to smile.

  He nodded, then looked confused. Alex wrenched his hand from Janet’s and started clambering up Finn’s legs. ‘How’d you know I knew it?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I just hoped—we knew you were here somewhere, and this is where the car was found. Don, how did you know? Are you connected with this somehow?’

  Finn had to look down slightly to meet her light-grey eyes. He wondered how she’d react if he told her the whole truth. ‘I saw the car in the lane, that’s all, and the police car, and no-one around.’

  Alex made himself comfortable on Finn’s hip. ‘Are you coming home with us now?’

  Finn looked at him without answering. In the sun Alex’s unmarked skin glowed. No-one up at the Cross had that kind of skin.

  ‘We’ve all missed you,’ Janet began in a rush, her fingers among Alex’s curls. ‘And now this has happened, we just had to come and find you. I know kids have to get away from their families at some stage—that’s understandable, and I know things weren’t all that great between you and your dad, but—’. She looked away, despairing. ‘Well, we talked, Richard and I, and we’d agreed that things had to change, and now I don’t really know what’s happening. Richard said we should just let you come home in your own time, but I always wanted to at least say it to your face, that it’d be nice to have you back at home, if you wanted to come. You do belong with us, for a little while longer, anyway.’