Tristan Bancks - The Fall

The fire hose reel cupboard outside was embedded into the other side of the front wall of Harry’s apartment. When I was snooping around earlier I’d realised that the cupboard didn’t take up the whole space. There had to be a large cavity between it and the front door. It was the perfect place for me and Magic to hide if Mr Hill came back before Harry did.

Was that his name, the man from 6A? The envelope that I had photographed was addressed to J and M Hill. But was Mr Hill the moon-faced man under the umbrella or the man who fell? I hoped Scarlet could tell me.

I pulled the first board free, revealing a tangle of old electrical wires and some ancient orange insulation that looked like fairy floss covered in spider webs. It smelt dull, like dust and mould, a cross between the caretaker’s storage cupboard downstairs and my grandmother’s house in Melbourne. I took a handful of the insulation. It felt squeaky in my grip and made my teeth feel strange, like fingernails on a chalkboard or the skin of a peach on my lips. As I pulled the insulation out of the wall, dozens of tiny dead insects and roaches rained down on the floor.

I started work on the next board and the next, prying them off the wall and carefully inspecting behind them, waiting for something to jump out and kill me. Nothing did, but I found five mouse corpses – flattened, crispy animal husks – and a dead rat that looked as though it had been frozen mid-stride by some ancient curse.

Magic sniffed around, looking like she wanted to eat the rodents but I pushed her away. I inspected the bodies closely – legs and spines and skulls. They were like museum exhibits, only not behind glass, which made them more real and terrible and interesting to me. They had been alive and now they weren’t. Like the man who fell. Insects, ants, rats, mice, humans. They all die sooner or later.

I used to worry a lot about Mum or me dying. It scared me that the world would still go on after I was gone. And that it was here before me. On those nights when I was younger and I felt panicky, Mum would come into my room and stroke my hair till I fell asleep. It’s weird that something so simple could make you feel okay about a worry that felt so big. Mum called this ‘learning to suffer well’. She said that being happy wasn’t about slaying all the dragons and overcoming all the bad things. She said the dragons would always be there. Being happy was about learning not to panic or freak out every time you saw one. I tried to do this. I didn’t always win, but I tried.

I knew that the things lying on the floor were only bugs and vermin but I had never known anyone who had died. Not that I had known the rat either. Or any of the mice or insects. Or the man. But I didn’t want to just sweep them up and put them in the bin. I felt like I had a responsibility. I wanted to be respectful to them.

Magic’s nose was working overtime and she was drooling on the floor so I told her to sit. There was no way the stinky mutt was going to eat a dead rat in front of me. ‘You’ve had your two-day-old pizza,’ I told her and she started panting, her long, pink tongue lolling from her mouth like the pizza was the best thing she’d ever eaten.

I peered into the darkness of the wall. The cavity was just deep enough for me to squeeze into but did I want to? I wasn’t crazy about small spaces. But then, I wasn’t crazy about large men with fat faces who wanted to kill me, either.

It took a few minutes to get Magic inside the wall. She was not happy at all. Then I eased my damaged leg inside and squeezed my body in, trying not to think about all the live spiders and insects I must be brushing up against. Once I was in I crouched awkwardly. A timber beam ran across the wall above me. I placed all of my weight on my bent left knee and tried to keep my right leg straight. Magic groaned. But we were in.

Now I needed to make a door, a cover for my hatch. I imagined the four boards enclosing me in the wall and the fear of that made me want to go to the police right now. I prayed that I would never have to use this hiding space. And maybe I wouldn’t, but I needed to be sure. I needed to look out for myself.

Some part of me wanted to hide in here when Harry came home too, and just watch him for a bit through a crack between the boards. Not that I really believed he had done anything wrong. But something had made him go out drinking last night and he had told me that he didn’t do that any more. Not in almost a year. It was probably just because I’d asked all those stupid questions. But I wanted to know for sure. What if there was something else, too?

Promise me you won’t hold me up as any kind of hero, he had said.

I would just watch him for a little bit to confirm what I already knew – that he was a good guy.

When I was eight I sent a letter to Harry. I waited and waited for him to reply, hoping that he would tell me everything I needed to know about him. I never heard back, but I remembered every word of that letter. I still wondered about most of this stuff.

Dear Dad

Hi. It’s Sam, your son. How are you? I’m good. I wanted to ask you if I could come and stay at your house sometime. Or if you could maybe come to our house for dinner. (Mum doesn’t know I’m asking but she wouldn’t mind.) I also have a list of other questions if that’s okay.

• What is your favourite colour?

• Where do you live?

Do you ever miss Mum?

• Mum says that you have one short leg and scoliosis too. I have to wear a built-up left shoe. I don’t mind but Mum says it will get worse when I’m older so I better have an operation. Do you mind having scoliosis?

• What’s your favourite food? Mine is pizza and chips.

• What type of car do you have?

• Could you please send me your phone number? I tried your old one from a few years ago but it said that the number was disconnected.

• What’s it like being a crime reporter?

• Do you ever go undercover?

• Do you have an undercover identity? (I won’t tell anyone.)

• Do you live in a nice part of the city?

• Do you ever go on stakeouts?

That’s all for now. Thanks for the comics you sent me a couple of years ago. I have read them all 150 bazillion times. Can you please write back to me with the answers at 12 Cavanbah Crescent Katoomba NSW Australia 2780. And if you want to know about me, just include some questions.

Thanks.

I stared at Harry’s laptop for a long time before I opened it. I’m a snoop but I have boundaries. I would never search through someone’s personal files.

Not usually. But I was trying to uncover the details of a felony. (I loved using the word ‘felony’ rather than ‘crime’.)

I took the laptop into Harry’s bedroom and sat on the far side of his bed, making sure I wasn’t visible from the front door in case he came home. I lifted the lid and the screen demanded a password. I had no idea what it might be. You needed to know someone to guess their code.

I punched in ‘0000’. I tried ‘1111’. I tried ‘9999’. I tried ‘1234’ and ‘9876’. I tried ‘magic’ and ‘harry’ and ‘harrygarner’. I tried his birthday: ‘230954’.

Nothing.

I shut the lid and put the laptop back in the cupboard under the kitchen bench.

At midday, I flicked on the TV to catch the news. I prayed that there might be something related to the crime. What if, somehow, someone else had seen what had happened? Maybe the man had been arrested leaving the building. Maybe the body had turned up somewhere.

The news anchor thanked us for joining her. The top story was about a footballer involved in a nightclub brawl – apparently the most important story in the world today. There were freak weather events across the country. The Prime Minister denied any connection between these events and climate change. There was a story on the crime wave ‘sweeping the city’ – young men using new technology to stay ahead of police. That was something my dad had reported on a few weeks back – a new breed of criminal using encrypted messaging apps and social media to organise themselves in ways that old-school police were finding impossible to keep up with. Next was a ‘Could it happen here?’ story on the fear of local terror attacks, encouraging citizens to remain ‘alert but not alarmed’. Then, ‘In sport, big news for the Brisbane Broncos, Geoff…’