Tristan Bancks - The Fall

I wanted to. I really did.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can trust you.’

He unlocked the two new deadlocks, opened the door and said, ‘See you tonight.’

I wanted more than anything to go with him. I felt tired and like I might start bawling again so I just said, ‘Okay.’

Harry slipped out the door. ‘Lock it up,’ he said in a low voice.

I pushed the door closed and twisted the brass knobs. He tested the door and then said, ‘I love you.’

‘Huh?’ I asked.

I heard his quiet footsteps fade down the staircase.

Then it was just me and Magic again.

I love you? I thought. He had never said that before. Sure, he had said it through a door and then scurried away, but he had still said it. Hadn’t he?

I kneeled on Harry’s unmade bed and peered through the dirty window and down Victoria Street. I waited for him to appear, hobbling along in his coat and hat.

The young homeless lady in the purple puffer jacket was on the corner of the street diagonally opposite, breathing clouds of steam through cold air, shaking her paper coffee cup, asking for donations. I’d seen her on a couple of other days when I’d watched Harry leave. The lady was outside Pan, the bakery that Harry had gone to more than once during the week. The last few orange leaves fluttered down from the almost-bare tunnel of trees over the street.

Harry crossed the road towards Pan. I desperately wanted to go down in the lift and follow him. I did not want to be here alone. Watching him from above, I saw how bad his limp was, how bad mine might have become if Mum hadn’t forced me to have the operation. He heaved open the heavy door of the bakery and, a moment later, a woman – chocolate-brown hair, knee-length black coat – exited, coffee and brown paper bag in hand. Harry followed her out. His girlfriend? I wondered. That made me angry. I don’t know why. Why shouldn’t he have a girlfriend? Still, the uncomfortable feeling stayed with me.

‘Watch the bad feeling but don’t engage with it.’ That’s what Margo would say. She was a therapist Mum had been sending me to. I called her my coach. Her voice was annoyingly soothing but I kind of liked her anyway. She read comics, especially The Phantom , and she talked with me about them. Not in a fake adult way where she pretended to be interested just to make me have a conversation with her, but in a real way where she actually knew stuff.

‘Don’t push the anger away or act it out,’ she would say. ‘Just let it sit there. What’s behind it? Moods are like clouds passing the sun. Let them pass.’

In that moment, watching this lady coming out of the bakery with my dad, I felt really annoyed. He said he had to go to work and that he couldn’t stay with me or take me with him but he seemed to have time for her. As soon as I noticed that I felt annoyed, though, and I named it, the feeling kind of drifted away, like a cloud. It was one of the first times that I’d been able to do what Margo suggested and it actually worked.

I pulled out my phone, switched to camera, zoomed in and took a bunch of pictures. The woman looked much younger than Harry. Was she another journalist or maybe a cop? She could have been either. A criminal? Maybe. Probably not. She didn’t look like a criminal. But what was a criminal supposed to look like? A scar on her face? Shifty eyes and rubbing her hands together, like a bad guy in an old movie?

Commandment number six: Never assume anything. And don’t convict people. That’s the job of the courts. Just report the facts. Be as objective as you can. Innocent until proven guilty.

Harry and the woman walked off up Victoria Street, turning right at a little laneway with a backpackers’ hostel on the corner and disappearing from view. I wanted so badly to follow them. Where are they going? What is he going to do till 6 pm? Had he planned to meet her? Is he telling her about the crime I witnessed? Or is it totally unrelated?

I looked back through the pixelly, zoomed-in photos on my phone, then turned and looked around Harry’s dimly lit bedroom.

Solve it, said a voice in my head.

I didn’t feel sleepy at all now. I felt jumpy and alive.

Solve it.

7.57 am.

Harry was due to put me on the 8.01 train back to the Mountains tomorrow morning. I only had today to find out more. When Harry came home at six I would show him the fresh evidence I had found. He would be pleased. I could be useful to him, like a researcher or an assistant. He would love me for it. Maybe we could find the perpetrator of the crime and the man who fell. I had always wanted to be a crime reporter. Maybe this was my chance.

1. God is in the details. Gather as many details as you can about the crime. Observe colours, sounds, textures, smells, even tastes.

2. Make contacts. You have to know crime fighters as well as criminals. You need sources of good information on underworld dealings.

3. Watch what you say about people. Build trust.

4. Sometimes criminals will try to make you see things their way. These are dangerous and often charismatic characters. You need to be clear with people which side of the law you sit on.

5. Don’t keep everything on a phone. It can be hacked for content and the digital trail you leave can be used as evidence in court by both police and criminals. Phone towers know where you are.

6. Never assume anything. And don’t convict people. That’s the job of the courts. Just report the facts. Be as objective as you can. Innocent until proven guilty.

7. Always be authentic. Don’t make things up or sensationalise the story.

8. Is the crime part of something bigger? Does it reflect changes happening in society? What does it say about us as humans?

9. Curiosity killed the cat. Be careful of becoming too obsessed. Sometimes a story can eat you up and take you to dangerous places, physically and mentally.

10. Show determination, patience, mindfulness. Evaluate all evidence.

I sat on the windowsill and stared down through the bare tree branches. Fragments of what I had seen and heard last night flickered through my mind. That flash of black. His voice. The slunching sound of impact. The bang of my phone on the window. The round, white moon of the man’s face emerging from beneath the black umbrella.

The yard didn’t look as scary during the day. Trains snaked by, in and out of the city. Rain still fell. I could see where he had landed but not the shape of him, not from up here. But I could imagine it.

I felt a gut impulse to go back down there. I knew it was stupid but I wanted more than anything to find more evidence to show Harry.

I had promised to stay inside. He made me promise.

I turned away from the window, pushed the temptation aside.

I looked around the apartment. Harry had cleaned up a bit but there were still bits of broken bowl swept into the corner and open books spread across the floor like dead birds.

How can I help Harry? I wondered. Maybe the man had left DNA evidence in the apartment. I couldn’t test it but I could gather it. I had read stories about a single hair being used to convict a criminal even forty years after the crime had been committed.

And if this crime had something to do with the story Harry was working on, maybe there were notes or photos hidden somewhere in the apartment – if the man hadn’t already found them in the night. I could use them to help my own investigations.

I was pretty much addicted to snooping. At home, I knew where Mum kept chocolate (on top of the pantry in a plastic tub with the medical supplies), Christmas presents (window seat, under the spare pillows) and my Xbox controllers (bottom cupboard, behind the rice cooker).