Tristan Bancks: The Fall

Harry had only lived here for about a month. He said he didn’t plan on being here long, that it wasn’t worth getting the web connected and that I could do better things with my time than stare at a screen. He said he was a Luddite, which meant he was allergic to technology. He used it only when necessary. But I don’t think he understood the seriousness of the situation. Kids can die from wi-fi starvation.

Mum said Harry only ever lived anywhere for a few weeks or months before he moved on. She called him ‘itinerant’. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment. Texting her now would only confirm her belief that my dad was a hopeless, irresponsible little man.

I’ll just pop out and grab some milk. I’ll only be a minute. You go off to sleep. It’s late.

That’s what he’d said. Milk. And now he was gone. But he couldn’t be gone. Fathers don’t just disappear. Especially fathers who you barely knew, had barely had a chance to know.

I tried not to see newspaper headlines with his name in them. I went to the sofa bed and pulled my backpack out from underneath. I took my phone from the front zip pocket and texted my dad. I knew it wasn’t worth it but I tried anyway.

WHERE R U?

I heard a bing from Harry’s bedroom. He only sometimes took his phone with him. He said it was too easy to track, that phone tower records could be used in court and crime reporters like him were being sprung for meeting with criminals and forced to dob in their best contacts.

I wanted to turn on a lamp for comfort but I stopped myself. I didn’t want anyone to know that someone was awake in this apartment. There was enough city light pouring in through the window for me to get around. Night-time in the Mountains was pitch-black with millions of stars but the city sky on a cloudy night seemed almost as bright as day.

I moved slowly, quietly to the window again and pushed it open a little more. When I saw what was down there, my breath froze in my throat. There was a large black umbrella. Someone was standing over the body. I flicked my phone to camera. Gather details. That’s what Harry Garner would do when he was out on a story. I wondered if he was a crime reporter because he loved details, or if he loved details because he was a crime reporter.

As I reached out the window, in my excitement I knocked the phone hard against the timber window frame, making a loud clunk. The umbrella shifted to the side and the shape beneath it looked up, directly at me. He was larger than I had thought. Even from up here he looked big. An elephant of a man. His face was white and round as the moon. His hair was silver and his eyes were lit up by the security lamp. I stepped back from the window onto my bad leg, pressing my hand hard against my mouth.

What have I done? Why did I look? I had seen everything and the man knew it.

I’d never met a murderer but I figured they probably didn’t like it much when they realised that someone had seen them committing their crime and then tried to take photos of them standing over the body.

He would come up here. I had to go.

The stairs. Harry had told me to always use the stairs. And the man had used the lift. I could go to the police station. I had seen one on the street when I arrived. Or I could go to the convenience store across the road. It would be open.

I pulled a pair of shorts on over my boxers. As I threw my phone into my backpack, I saw Harry’s laptop sitting on the dining table. He worked on it constantly when he was home. He would want me to take it with me. I put it in my bag too. As I shouldered the backpack an electricity bill fluttered from the table to the floor. I left it, crutching quickly towards the front door.

Clink-screek. A sound from the ground below. The man escaping? Or coming upstairs?

‘Magic, come,’ I whispered.

She lumbered across the seagrass matting, thrilled to be going for a walk.

I eased my way, barefoot, down the creaky timber staircase. The cold wood bit the sole of my left foot each time it made contact with the stairs. I hadn’t crutched downstairs much. Tina, my favourite nurse at the hospital, had taught me on the fire exit just outside the ward. I tried to remember what she had said. Crutches first, then left foot, always keeping my right foot raised and out of harm’s way. If you swung your feet out first you could pole-vault down five or six stairs. Believe me. I knew.

I held tight to the crutch and Magic’s lead with my left hand to stop the 42-kilogram dog from losing her footing and shooting down the stairs like a furry torpedo and taking me with her. The collar pressing on Magic’s throat turned her noisy breathing into something like a bowsaw cutting down a thick gum tree.

The staircase smelt like mould and was lit by a cold, fluorescent strip light on each landing. There were two flights of stairs between each floor. Magic and I slowly weaved our way down.

‘Shhhhhh,’ I whispered to the noisy breather. I doubted that Magic had ever been walked in the thirteen years since my parents broke up. She didn’t even go outside to wee and poo, which, in my opinion, must be humiliating for a dog. She had a small doggy litter box in the bathroom and she didn’t like me watching her while she used it. In the time that I had been staying at Harry’s apartment, I had seen him feed Magic chocolate-chip biscuits, a whole banana, spaghetti bolognaise and half an extra-spicy Thai chicken pizza. So Magic’s weight and breathing problems weren’t a total mystery.

As we passed the two apartment doors on the third-floor landing I paused to listen, to make sure the man who had been standing over the body wasn’t using the staircase. I stared at 3A and 3B, wondering if either of them was unlocked. I thought about knocking and asking for help but my father had told me I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone in the building. Harry was gone now, though, so why should I care about his stupid rules? The thought that he had left me alone in the apartment in the middle of the night made me angry. He had been upset with me before he left just after 10 pm – he hadn’t yelled or anything but I knew. I waited up for a bit but must have fallen asleep.

I’ll only be a minute. You go off to sleep. It’s late.

I could feel the wire coil of rage in my chest start to heat. That coil made me do stupid things. That coil was why I was here at Harry’s, why my mother had finally given up and sent me here after years of me badgering her. I tried to breathe, to stop it from glowing red.

Harry didn’t mean to stay out. He’s a good person. There must be a good reason.

‘You can’t be seen going in or out of the apartment. In fact I’d rather you didn’t go out on your own at all.’ That’s what he had said on the first morning.

‘Why?’ I’d asked.

‘A story I’m working on, something I’m involved with. I can’t go into it right now, but it’s important that you listen to me, okay?’

I had nodded.

‘Only the stairs, Sam. You promise me?’

At first I thought it was a bit harsh, him not letting me use the lift when I was on crutches. But then I realised that he was trusting me with his secret. I had no idea what that secret was but it still felt good to know that I had a role to play. I didn’t like the idea of crutching down all those stairs so I had spent the past six days inside: watching TV, playing my Xbox, writing a new comic book, trying to avoid the schoolwork Mum had made me bring and, at night, monitoring my father, trying to find out about the story he was working on.

A month ago I overheard Mum on the phone in her bedroom. She sounded kind of weird so I went to the door and listened. I realised that she was speaking to Harry, asking if I could come stay for a week after my operation. I sat in the hallway, back against the wall outside Mum’s room, and listened to their conversation. She only spoke to Harry every couple of years as far as I knew, usually about money. He was a little bit late in his child support payments. Nine years.