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Back Man at the Window Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. Thirty
  32. Thirty-One
  33. Thirty-Two
  34. Thirty-Three
  35. Thirty-Four
  36. Thirty-Five
  37. Thirty-Six
  38. Thirty-Seven
  39. Thirty-Eight
  40. Thirty-Nine
  41. Forty
  42. Forty-One
  43. Forty-Two
  44. Forty-Three
  45. Forty-Four
  46. Forty-Five
  47. Forty-Six
  48. Forty-Seven
  49. Forty-Eight
  50. Forty-Nine
  51. Fifty
  52. Fifty-One
  53. Fifty-Two
  54. Fifty-Three
  55. Fifty-Four
  56. Fifty-Five
  57. Fifty-Six
  58. Fifty-Seven
  59. Fifty-Eight
  60. Acknowledgements
  61. About the author

The boy crouched in his spot looking across to the armoury door when the sliver of light disappeared. He strained his eyes, willed himself to see in the darkness; a darker hole appeared, a doorway, blacker against the black. He stopped breathing, he imagined his heart thumping his ribs apart and throwing itself at the mercy of who he might see. Nothing. Then movement, the blacker black disappeared, a dark shape, a head, appeared at the corner of the armoury, then a body, then another; the light before them, tall dark shapes moving away. He ran across the space and crouched at the corner of the armoury looking out at the figures not ten yards away. They stopped, one turned and he saw the features. It was him. The boy lifted his head in the light as if to say, ‘See me’.

‘I see you. Go back to your dorm the way you came. After breakfast report to me in the sixth form common room. Tell no one.’ The figure turned and started walking away.

‘Who was that?’ his companion asked.

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘What do you think he saw?’

‘Later.’

They stayed in the shadows of the gum trees as they walked to the dorms.

He knows me. He knows me. How? The boy sat in a trance. Does he know what Captain Edmund did to me? Fear seized the boy; he trembled wildly against the bricks, pushing his body at them, harder and harder, feeling the building trembling with him. He saw the shadow of the building shaking, he saw the roof shaking. He ran to the grass and vomited. He was helpless in the grip of the clenching fist encircling his stomach, squeezing him again and again, like his father’s fist on a cow teat.

Twenty-Four

TWENTY-FOUR

Day 6

St Georges Terrace

1.54 p.m. Friday, 30th October 1965

Cardilini hitched a lift with a patrol car to an office at Council House, St Georges Terrace. He’d skipped lunch. He’d learnt that suicides in the state were monitored at the coroner’s office and was now knocking on a door on the sixth floor identical to the fifteen doors he’d just passed.

A plastic tag slipped into a purpose-built slide on the door read, ‘Dr Loretta Young’. Cardilini considered the temporary nature of these name tags compared to the gold-embossed names of the police hierarchy.

‘Come in.’

He opened the door. Dr Young sat with her back to a view of Langley Park and the Swan River. She stood from behind her desk and walked forward, her black hair gently curling to her shoulders, eyes dark and skin fair. Her handshake was soft and warm. She had a trim figure and dressed smartly. Cardilini guessed she was in her early forties. He automatically checked his fly and poked some straying shirt back into his trousers as she returned to her desk.

‘What can I do for you, Detective Cardilini?’

‘Suicide.’

‘Yes?’