The Paradise Stain. Nick Glade-Wright

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      ‘Och, only in my dreams.’

      Kant laughed. ‘You could’ve shared a warm milk with me.’

      The pause was long enough for Kant to realise that MacLean hadn’t a clue what he was suggesting.

      ‘Anyway, thought the laddie was drunk at first but he’d been beaten up something terrible. Said he’d been abducted. Sounded like rednecks to me. Took him up the bush somewhere out the back of beyond and dumped him there to find his own way back to Hobart. Or not.’

      ‘That it?’ Kant said, thinking this could have waited till he was back at work. ‘Unpleasant as it sounds, it’s just another mugging really. Don’t you think?’

      ‘Aye, but his big story is what happened to him in Africa. It’s huge. Reaches Tasmania, safe at last, then he gets the locals’ welcome.’

      ‘Okay, Vinnie. Look, I’m off to see my granddaughter in half an hour so … ’

      But MacLean was clearly wound up with the story and needed to finish.

      ‘He’d escaped a far worse enemy in his homeland. The rebels there, took me back to Rwanda, would make these Tassie rednecks look like a bunch of fairies. Cold blooded killers, child soldiers too, sometimes even friends from the same village. Four weeks fugitive travelling with his siblings at night, hiding in caves during the sweltering days, saw them reach the so called safety of a Ugandan refugee camp. Fifteen he was then.’

      ‘Fifteen! What’s his nationality?’

      ‘Sudanese.’ Vince chuckled warmly. ‘Head like coffee bean, and despite what he’s been through he’s got one hell of a smile.’

      ‘Okay, sounds good. Well … you know what I mean. Book him in, maybe tomorrow arvo. First cab off the rank.’ Kant sighed again audibly, this time for real. ‘Oh, has he got a name?’

      ‘Has he ever. Ishmael Abraham Liri Mogamba.’

      ‘Impressive. Thank God for the bible.’

      Another of those pauses.

      ‘How’s the holiday?’

      ‘Like magic … it just disappeared.’

      There was no pause then. MacLean snorted a sympathetic laugh down the phone. ‘Oh, by the way, happy birthday BK!’

      Chapter Four

      Prone in the well worn armchair in his daughter’s living room, Barry Kant, grandfather and family man, held the newspaper between index fingers and thumbs, arms stretched to their limit, eyes straining to focus .

      ‘Left my wretched specs behind. Still can’t get used to keeping them with me.’

      Melinda replied with a preoccupied ‘Mm.’

      Barry was waiting for Rosie to finish her morning nap. Melinda was in the adjoining kitchen juggling bread baking, dish washing and surface clearing before Rosie awoke; she was always amused at how far her daughter’s little sticky fingers could spread themselves. Barry adjusted his weight onto his left buttock and with a searching hand located one of Rosie’s plastic horses, beneath the other, lost in the folds of the cushion.

      ‘Just love the smell of home cooking.’

      ‘Mum taught me everything I know,’ Melinda replied wist fully. She was eight years old when she’d baked her first loaf of bread. Now, with memories of her mother, the practice for Melinda was more than just making loaves.

      Barry stretched his legs out on the well heeled patch work ottoman, complementing the blue family suite, more a bleached grey now. He and Sarah had given the ensemble to Melinda when she’d partnered up with Mungo four years ago. The sofa, having borne the weight of the family at the cottage since she was a youngster, was permeated with rich memories from her country upbringing, so it didn’t matter to Melinda that it wasn’t really their style. Not that they could afford one yet. Mungo’s musical pursuits were still being developed and they had agreed to give it a couple more years with her earning sufficient bread winning money as a teacher as long as he put aside two days a week to be with Rosie.

      Each time Barry drove past the green belted Domain and into the shabby surrounds of Lutana to visit his daughter he felt disappointed in their decision to live there. The sixties’ government housing was still cheap when they paid the deposit in 2007 on the wholly unremarkable hip roofed, grey Besser block box, saved only from total blandness by a stubborn walnut tree in the otherwise bare backyard. Creativity was loose but money was tight, end of story. It was close to the city by Tasmanian standards, and Mungo’s DIY skills were definitely improving, the brass number four screwed to the fence out the front was testament to that. He had even managed to put the screws in without drilling first into the gate post. Skilled with an assort ment of tools, a hammer proved useful for the final fastening.

      Melinda had found stubborn feet to dig in against her father’s resolve for them to move south of the city, to ‘a more reputable suburb where the word culture has some meaning’.

      It didn’t help that Mungo loved the sport of ‘taunting the father in law’. Six months after they’d moved in, and the battle of wills was at its peak, he gleefully mentioned that Lutana alongside the infamous Chigwell had found itself in the list of top ten bogan suburbs in Australia, alongside Albion Park in New South Wales and Dandenong in the smog soaked sprawling outer reaches of Melbourne.

      ‘Don’t tell me there’s actually somebody who sits at a desk and compiles those statistics as a job?’ Barry had countered.

      ‘Must be. And, until recently, Frankston, that other Victorian piece of work, was up there too. But then Franga embarked on a marketing push to show the city was perking up. I LOVE FRANKSTON stubby holders and T shirts made those die hard bogans real proud for a while, until of course they realised there were a few too many lattes being served up in cafés around the joint. It’s amazing how prejudice can be formed by a simple cup of coffee.’

      ‘I don’t know how you can be so proud to be part of it with your musical sensibilities,’ Barry had answered, appealing with another tack. But he knew he was clutching at straws, besides, and this was the crux of his dilemma, his own father still lived not three minutes’ walk away.

      ‘Does it really matter which side of the tracks you live?’ Mungo pursued. ‘The chiggas, and virtually anyone who lives in the northern suburbs, that you seem to want to disassociate with, albeit with their moccasins, mullets, and flannies, aren’t so much removed from your average 4x4 driver for steep drive ways to nouveau riche brick monstrosities in ‘poash’ Sandy Bay. And you can be sure they’ll all be rubbing shoulders at the footy screaming the same obscenities at the umpire.’

      An article on page four of the paper about the homeless eighteen year old girl, Minnie Donovan, had caught Barry’s eye. Editorials recently had given much ink time to homelessness in Hobart, describing the phenomenon as a complex issue, more than not having a job to support renting, owning or indeed feeling part of a family unit.

      Mackelroy had intended to get the girl on BKS but before they could make her an offer she had drugged herself silly before cutting her wrists with a serrated bread knife, concluding her short life in a tepid, crimson bath .

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