Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [31]
But what does count is the touch and feel of reality at the end of my fingertips, a poem I can trace like Braille, scratched into one of the sandstone bricks:
In the desert, lost and lonely, company
a white plane high and silent, the burning
ground a mile and more from sound.
Then I notice grains of paler sandstone on the red bull dust. This etching is recent. I copy the poem in my notebook and get back in the Toyota. When I swing a U-turn off the track, I realise I’m not the first to have driven here only to head back to Route 1. Another 4WD had recently detoured to return south.
If my mystery man has been out to the ruin, and for whatever reason wants to know the Reverend McCreedy and his Kenyan orphanage a little better, I may have a way of finding out. With the help of Anna, and a broken law, or two.
But I have to wait until midnight to start my ‘investigation’. So I sit at a computer in the youth hostel waiting for the bars to close and the backpackers and drunken locals to stumble home. I buy a postcard of a kangaroo from a stand on the counter.
Dear Gemma
This is Daddy writing all the way from Australia. It is the other side of the world, so I’m feeling a bit dizzy upside down! I’m being silly, but it is a long way away. Do you like the picture of the kangaroo? Did you know they have pockets in their tummies? I’m sorry we didn’t go to White Farm on Saturday. I promise we will when I get back. See you soon. xxx ooo Daddy
When the streets are quiet I walk to one of only two 4WD hire centres in Alice Springs. I feel conspicuous, guilty just thinking about my next move, convicted by the plan in my head to burgle. But I’ve learned from the crooks I’ve caught. The crook I was, a fourteen-year-old stealing food and clothes.
The first office has no alarm, just a pair of sliding doors that lift off their runners. No need for gloves, as they’ll never know I was even here. Because they keep records on good old-fashioned paper, all I have to do is wait for the photocopier to warm up.
Office two is a little trickier. But I guess there’s no remote connection to the alarm so disable the bell by bending back the hammer, and the light by simply unscrewing the bulb. I slip around the side of the building, take off my jacket and spread it over the toilet window. Then, my heart in my mouth, I have the sensation of being watched. And I am. A black cat, still as a gargoyle, perched on the fence above, staring. I hiss, throw out my hand. The cat slinks away and I scan the dark yard again. I punch straight and hard, creasing my face to try and hide the noise of breaking glass. The alarm triggers, rattling faintly inside the plastic cover. Inside, with their computers left on, my only problem is finding paper to print off the customer list.
Walking the empty roads back to the hostel, the lists folded and tucked into my back pocket, my head tipped to the glittering heavens, a police car flashes then pulls up beside me. I feel my knees suddenly knocking, the adrenaline stream.
‘Sorry, officer,’ I say. ‘Star-gazing instead of watching the traffic.’ I wonder if they can hear the wobble in my throat.
‘No worries. We thought you might be pissed.’
‘Just admiring your clear skies.’
‘You’re a Pom, ay?’
‘Last time I opened my passport.’
‘Well, make the most of the stars before you get back to the smog.’
They laugh. I tell them I will. When the car turns the corner I realise my heart is thumping. For the first time in twenty years another policeman has made me nervous.
Back at the hostel I sit at a computer. The clerk watches a late-night horror film on a portable TV. I open a Word file and type out the names from the stolen customer lists. There’s no Philip. But this means nothing. In fact it tells me if this guy isn’t who he said he was, he has the funds, or the know-how, for a manufactured ID. And he’s not the only one.
Next I mail Anna. I know she wants some emotion, some longing, but typing I miss you seems like a defeat,