The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya Page 9

  ‘Oh dear me. What have I done?’ cried Norton in mock horror. ‘Here, let me have a look at that.’

  ‘No it’s all right. It’s only a scratch.’

  Before Kilby could say another word Norton had taken hold of his hand, whipped a white handkerchief out of the back of his jeans, and was mopping furiously at the slight bleeding. ‘Oh God I am sorry,’ said Norton, continuing to dab away with his hanky. ‘My watchband must have done it. Dear or dear I feel such a fool. I am sorry.’

  Les managed to wipe off a bit more blood before Kilby snatched his hand away.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said thinly. ‘It’s only a scratch.’

  Norton stood there looking all stupid and apologetic as Kilby and Frank both scowled at him. ‘I think I’d better get going,’ he flustered. ‘I’ve made a complete fool of myself.’ Nobody said anything but Frank opened the door and stared blankly at Norton. Les muttered a quick goodbye and shuffled out. Then, trying not to burst out laughing, he started strolling briskly back up Lawson Street.

  ‘Christ, what a fuckin’ goose,’ said Kilby, licking at his hand as Frank closed the office door. ‘Where did you bloody well find him?’

  ‘He just walked in off the street,’ shrugged Frank. ‘I never seen the dill before in my life.’

  ‘What’d the flip call himself? The Chartered Bumsuckers Against Apartheid or something,’ sneered Kilby contemptuously. He took Norton’s $250 back out of the draw and dropped it on the desk. ‘At least his money’s all right. Cash too.’ Kilby looked at the money and gave a chuckle. ‘What do you reckon we ought to do with it?’

  Frank reached underneath his sweatshirt and pulled out his copy of the Greyhound Recorder. ‘Ronnie Sprod’s got that dog going down at Dapto tonight. Rocket Johnny. Reckons it’s a moral, and he owes us a favour. It’ll be 6–1, too.’

  ‘Righto.’ Kilby slid some of the money across the desk. ‘There’s $200. Duck over the TAB and throw it on. We’ll have a feed and a drink with the rest.’

  ‘Beauty,’ said Frank picking up the money.

  ‘Hey, you got a Band-Aid out in the office?’ said Kilby, giving the back of his hand another lick.

  ‘Yeah, there’s a packet in the draw. How is it?’

  ‘It’s only a scratch. More annoying than anything else.’ Kilby looked up at Frank and chuckled. ‘I don’t think it’ll kill me.’

  Les Norton had a look on his face like a cat that had just drunk a gallon of King Island double cream when he walked back into room number 9 at the Thames Tavern. He’d only been gone around half an hour, and Tjalkalieri, Mumbi and Yarrawulla were still sitting on the lounge just as he’d left them.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he smiled smugly. ‘If it isn’t Huey, Dewey and Louie, waiting for Unca’ Donald to come back from the lolly shop. What’s doing nephews?’

  With the hint of a smile flickering round their electric-blue eyes, the three men continued to stare at Les for a few moments. They didn’t say anything, but from the smug grin on Les’s face they guessed he’d pulled something off. Finally Tjalkalieri spoke.

  ‘Not much is doing at all Les. What about you? I’d say from the look on your big boofhead you’ve been up to something and you’re breaking your neck to tell us.’

  ‘Yeah, what have you done in the last half-hour?’ asked Mumbi. ‘Did someone show you how to add up to twentyone without having to take your pants off?’

  Norton nodded his head and continued to smile complacently. ‘Cheeky little bunch of cunts, aren’t you? Well have a go at this.’ He pulled the hanky out of the front pocket of his jeans, opened it up to show the drops and smears of blood, then dropped it in Tjalkalieri’s lap. ‘What do you think of that?’ he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  Tjalkalieri snatched it up and the expression on his and the other men’s faces changed immediately. They said some thing quickly to each other in their native tongue, then turned to Les.

  ‘This is a blackman’s blood,’ said Tjalkalieri seriously, still holding the hanky.

  ‘That’s right,’ winked Norton.

  ‘Kilby’s?’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘How did you manage it so quickly?’ Now it was their turn to be somewhat admonished.

  ‘I don’t think I ought to tell you,’ said Norton cheekily.

  ‘Suit yourself. Don’t tell us,’ shrugged Yarrawulla. ‘And we won’t tell you what we’ve got in the bag.’ He nodded to the black canvas carryall still sitting in the centre of the room.

  Norton grinned and dragged a chair over in front of the others. ‘Wait till you hear this,’ he said as he sat himself down. ‘It’ll crack you up.’

  Les told them everything he’d said and done from the moment he rang Eddie to when he walked out of the AWEC office. When he’d finished the others were openly laughing amongst themselves — but they were also visibly impressed.

  ‘Well I’ve got to hand it to you,’ said Yarrawulla. ‘That was terrific. And this.’ He ran his fingers lightly along one edge of the blood-smeared hanky. ‘With the fresh blood on it. You’ve got no idea what this means. It’s perfect.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind meeting this Eddie Salita fellow too,’ said Mumbi.

  ‘I’m certain Eddie’d like to meet you blokes as well,’ chuckled Norton.

  The three men suddenly went into a spirited conversation between themselves, in their native tongue again, grabbing at the hanky and pointing and looking towards the balcony every now and again as they spoke. Then just as suddenly as they started, they stopped and once again all three stared at Norton. This time their mood had changed into deadly seriousness.

  ‘Les,’ said Tjalkalieri. ‘What time will Kilby be in his office till tonight. Did he say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Norton. ‘I didn’t ask. It’s nearly half past four. I suppose they’d be getting ready to go home now.’

  ‘Do you think you could use that phone in the foyer again and find out.’

  ‘Sure,’ shrugged Norton again. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re thinking of getting a beam going right now. While we’ve got this fresh blood and he’s so close. It’s too good a chance to miss. We could make the spell that strong, nothing could break it.’

  ‘Righto. I’ll duck straight down and ring up.’

  Fishing around in his pockets for more change, Norton trotted down to the yellow phone in the foyer.

  I suppose they’d be in the Yellow Pages thought Norton as he picked up the heavy phone book. But what would it be under? I’ll try the White Pages first. He put the first book down and was about to try the other when he had to smile. Tucked into a corner of the small glass-framed list of advertisers above the phone was a white business card. Superimposed on the red, yellow and black Aboriginal flag was Aboriginal Welfare and Entitlement Council. Percy Kilby, Secretary, was in one corner and the phone number was in the other. Well that figures, thought Les. It’s only a hop, step and a jump across the road. They’d have to come in here for a drink now and again. Still smiling, he dropped the coins in the slot and pressed the buttons. It wasn’t long before a gruff voice came on the other end which he recognised as Frank’s.

  ‘Hello. Aboriginal Welfare Council.’

  ‘Yes, it’s Mid-City courier service here. We have a parcel to go out to your office. Could you tell us what time you close tonight please?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Frank put the phone down in the front room and walked into Kilby’s office.

  ‘Perce. There’s a courier service on the phone wants to know what time we’re leaving here tonight.’

  Kilby’s shifty brown eyes darted across to the tarpaulin-covered cartons stacked up against the wall.

  ‘Knobby Jones’s coming over to have a look at some of those hot VCRs at five-thirty. I suppose we’ll be here till six.’

  ‘Righto.’ Frank went back into the front room and picked up the phone. ‘We’ll be here till six.’

  ‘Thank you.’

&nb
sp; Norton hung up, then took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘They’ll be there till six o’clock.’

  Tjalkalieri took a quick glance at his watch. ‘That gives us just on an hour and a half.’ He clapped his hands together quickly and looked at the others. ‘Right. Let’s go.’

  As one the boys jumped up off the lounge, Mumbi and Yarrawulla went into their bedroom while Tjalkalieri began to unzip the canvas carryall.

  ‘What happens now?’ asked Norton.

  ‘Now? Now we start to earn our fifty grand. We start taking away Percy Kilby’s Kurinata.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His Kurinata. His life essence. You wanted to know what was in the bag. Well grab a seat, keep out of the road and I’ll show you.’

  Norton moved a seat closer to the wall and eased himself down to watch as Tjalkalieri began to unpack the bag.

  The first things he pulled out looked like three wooden shields, painted in a criss-cross diamond pattern in red, brown, yellow and white ochre. Some of the diamonds were coloured in, others were outlined with lines of dots, giving it an almost glowing effect. He positioned the shields around the room, but at an angle so they all faced the balcony.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Norton.

  ‘Tjuringa boards,’ replied Tjalkalieri, returning to the bag. ‘Sort of shields. They help to protect us from the power of the bone.’

  Next to come out of the bag were two small animal-skin sacks full of fine red sand and tied at the top like a schoolkid’s marble bag. Tjalkalieri measured out a dozen handfuls which he placed around the room in the shape of a half diamond, the point facing away from the balcony.

  ‘What’s that? Just plain sand?’

  ‘It’s desert sand from right out in Central Australia, where the Pitjanjatjara tribe used to live. Sacred ground.’ Tjalkalieri turned to Norton with a calm but sinister smile as he took the last fistful of sand and let it run slowly through his hand onto the floor. ‘A man’s life goes like the sand, Les. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. But when a man is pointed — that’s the end of him.’ Tjalkalieri opened his hand and let the sand run through.

  A slight shiver ran up Norton’s spine at the odd look on the blue-eyed Aborigine’s face and the quiet yet deadly serious tone of his voice. It then occurred to him just what he was dealing with, and what he’d so far taken so lightly. These three men were going to kill another man by mental telepathy. Percy Kilby was going to be slowly murdered and not even know what was happening. Murder over a distance by thought transference. No weapon, no evidence, no motive. And no trace of the killers. The perfect crime. Norton stared at Tjalkalieri in awe as he bent back over the bag. And white people demeaned and patronised the full-blooded Australian desert Aborigine. Looking on them as nothing more than ignorant, dirty savages. Almost encouraging them to drink cheap booze and sniff petrol, then stand back and laugh as they died and their culture going back hundreds of thousands of years — a culture so breathtakingly beautiful, yet so simple it’s almost an enigma — is plundered and destroyed. What an unbelievable paradox. On the one hand they were simple, aimless natives, running around in the desert not far removed from the Stone Age. On the other hand their minds were thousands of years, light years, in front of the white man’s. To have the ability to kill someone by mental telepathy. Another chill ran up Norton’s spine and he felt as if the room had suddenly turned several degrees cooler.

  Tjalkalieri dipped into the bag again and brought out two shapeless objects wrapped in a sheet of white cloth. When he opened it up they looked like a pair of fluffy housewife’s slippers, only in a dusty discoloured beige.

  ‘I know what they are,’ said Norton. ‘I’ve seen photos. They’re Kurdaitcha boots.’

  ‘That’s right Les.’

  ‘They’re funny looking things. What do you make them out of?’

  Tjalkalieri carefully ran his hands over the boots as he slowly and easily placed them on the floor. ‘Emu and cockatoo feathers. The real downy and fluffy ones, held together by human blood. The rest is made from kangaroo and euroglider fur.’

  ‘Human blood?’

  ‘That’s right Les.’

  Tjalkalieri then went back to the bag and just as carefully brought out another object, also wrapped in white cloth, which he tenderly placed on the floor next to the boots. ‘This is it, Les,’ he smiled. ‘This is the big one. This is the bone.’

  Painstakingly he unwrapped it and laid it out on the sheet of cotton. It was slender and white, about twenty centimetres long and made from the forearm of a dead woman. It was ground to a point at one end and at the other was a blob of a black resinous substance something like pitch. Attached to the bone with more of the tarry substance was a length of firmly plaited, light brown chord, about half as long again as the bone. The fragile little object, if somewhat macabre, appeared innocent enough, but there was a definite and esoteric aura radiating from it — an aura that defied description and explanation.

  ‘So that’s it eh?’ said Norton, more than a little awestruck. ‘The dreaded bone.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Tjalkalieri, crouched on his haunches looking down on it. ‘That’s it all right.’

  Norton couldn’t help himself. He had to get up and walk over for a closer look. ‘What’s all that black stuff?’ he said, pointing to the end. ‘It looks like tar.’

  ‘It’s a sort of glue. You make it out of spinifex bushes. You beat them with a stick, burn them, then blow away the ashes and collect the residue. When it cools off it goes as hard as pitch.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Norton slowly, now more curious than ever. ‘And what’s that bit of rope, or whatever it is, made out of?’

  ‘Human hair.’

  ‘Human hair?’ Norton had to think for a moment as he studied it. ‘But it’s a sort of brown colour. All you people have got black hair. C’ept for the kids. They’ve got sort of tawny hair.’

  Tjalkalieri smiled and gave Norton a wink. ‘Let’s just say it’s a bit of sneak go. Mother-in-law’s hair.’

  ‘Oh.’ Norton shrugged and continued to stare, fascinated, at the weird object.

  A movement to his left caught Norton’s eye. He turned around to see Mumbi and Yarrawulla had come back out of the bedroom. But it was a different looking Mumbi and Yarrwulla from the two natives that had got on Kingsley Sheehan’s plane earlier in the day.

  The tracksuits were gone and both men were stripped down to black-cotton G-strings. Their black string headbands, the sign of a circumcised man, were still wrapped around their heads, only they were now adorned with grey and white falcon feathers. A small piece of bone, about five centimetres long, was pushed through the fleshy part beneath their noses and red, white and black ochre paint had been liberally applied to the upper parts of their bodies. Mumbi had three black circles — one over each breast and another painted over his navel — which were joined by parallel black lines and outlined with white dots. Yarrawulla had two rows of red circles, which were also outlined with white ones, running across his collarbones down to his groin. Standing together they looked like they’d just stepped out of the pages of a book on ancient Aboriginal mythology.

  Norton stood back and blinked as they walked across the room to Tjalkalieri. ‘Jesus, that was a quick paint job,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t muck around when we get going,’ replied Mumbi.

  ‘You got the stone?’ said Yarrawulla to Tjalkalieri.

  ‘Yeah. Right here.’

  Tjalkalieri produced what looked like a small piece of sharpened quartz, and while the others held their arms out he made a small incision in the vein near the fleshy parts of their elbow. Then he did the same to himself. Once the blood started to run all three let it drip over the bone, making it look even more sinister.

  ‘Righto,’ said Tjalkalieri. ‘Who wants to wear the boots?’

  ‘I suppose I may as well go first,’ said Yarrawulla, sitting down on the lounge and pushing his feet out in front of him.

  As he did so Tj
alkalieri took hold of the long skinny toe on each foot, next to the big one, and reefed it back with an audible crunch. Yarrawulla closed his eyes and winced but didn’t make a sound.

  ‘Jesus, what are you doing?’ asked Les.

  ‘Dislocating his toes’ replied Tjalkalieri. ‘You have to before you’re allowed to wear the Kurdaitcha boots. It’s okay, I’ll set them back later.’

  Norton gave his big red head a shake. ‘Shit! What next?’

  Yarrawulla slipped the feathered Kurdaitcha boots on and stood up as Tjalkalieri carefully handed him the bone and opened the door to the balcony. With Mumbi next to him, Yarrawulla took the bone in his left hand, the length of chord in his right, and moved over to the open door where he pointed it out across the balcony towards the AWEC office and started moving it around almost like he was playing a fish on a rod. Then with Tjalkalieri standing just behind them like he was giving them some sort of encouragement, he and Mumbi began to chant in their native tongue, at the same time performing an odd little dance, shuffling quickly from one foot to the other.

  Norton watched them from a discreet distance for about five minutes before going over and sitting down on one of the chairs. After another ten minutes or so, while the chanting continued, Tjalkalieri came over and squatted down next to him.

  ‘How’s it going?’ asked Les.

  ‘Good. We’ve got him.’

  ‘What? You mean he’s dead already?’

  ‘No.’ Tjalkalieri shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. We’ve only just made the point. The contact. It won’t hit him for a while yet. We’ll go for a little longer, then we’ll knock off and start again tomorrow. But Jesus, we’ve got a good point going. One of the best ever.’

  ‘That’s good,’ nodded Les. ‘So how long do you reckon it’ll take?’

  Tjalkalieri closed one eye and picked at his chin for a moment. ‘Monday maybe. Probably Tuesday. Wednesday at the most.’

  Norton was visibly impressed. ‘Tuesday eh? Shit that’s all right.’

  ‘We got off to a good start. It makes all the difference.’ Tjalkalieri winked up at Norton and gave him a pat on the leg. ‘Even though we were bagging you before, you did the right thing moving us into this dump.’