Black Teeth by Zane Lovitt Read Free Book Online Page A

the scariest thing…’ I lower my voice, talk directly to Stuart now. ‘I spoke to half-a-dozen people who were up there with him. I saw video footage of Heaney at the site. I saw the bus ticket with his name on it. But he was convinced. I mean, I looked him in the eye. He was convinced he’d been the victim of a fraud. He’d made himself believe, without a doubt, that this thing which had happened had never happened. That was the scariest bit.’
    Stuart nods, his glower weakening.
    ‘Well…’ he says. ‘Getting stabbed by a disgruntled job seeker might have been a bit scary too.’
    ‘People can freak out when you dig into their past. So I take precautions.’
    And he smiles, looks at his watch with an air of conclusion. I’ve brought him round.
    It’s a lie, that story. The scar on my arm came from a tower PC that fell on me at Mum’s place. There is no Paul Heaney. He never went to Jabiluka.
    I’m just more comfortable being someone else. I don’t get panic attacks when I’m being someone else.
    It’s the same with Madison de Silva, finally bingeing on the biscuits she’s been bringing to meetings for years. She had to become someone else before she could be herself.
    She swipes another macaroon from the plate, a pink one. I try not to let her see me notice, but she does. She disarms me with a coo:
    ‘Don’t look at me like that, Andrew. I’m eating for two here. Obviously.’

8
    It rings for an age before someone answers. Like, for a minute. No message bank or answering machine. The ringtone is the weird kind of analogue one that landlines have. I hug my coat tighter, am about to hang up when I hear a cough and a man’s voice:
    ‘Hello?’
    An old man. But not a very old man.
    ‘Hello, is that Mister Glen Tyan?’
    ‘Who is this?’
    I’m in a paved alcove skewered between Albert Kane and Roach and a sheer brick wall, the pedestrians of La Trobe Street just far enough away for me to believe I’ve found privacy. But through an invisible glass door emerges now a hunched and grim-faced woman and before she does anything I realise this grey nook is the official smoking yard for her and her fellow office dwellers. A black enamel ashtray clings to the wall, overflowing with butts and black ash and a sign beneath it says Smokers Please , like it’s asking for more smokers. The ground below is strewn with orange stubs. She lights up and I turn my back to her and the traffic and the wind and jam a finger in my ear.
    ‘My name is Alan Harper, I’m a journalist with the Daily Sun . Your name was suggested to me by the Police Association as someone who may be interested in discussing a piece I’m working on about the lives of retired police officers.’
    ‘How did you get this number?’
    Glen Tyan draws on a cigarette, inhales deep, but the smoke I cansmell comes from behind. To keep this conversation private I huddle into the glass wall, an icepack against my forehead.
    ‘Um, the Police Association—’
    ‘The Police Association does not have my home phone number.’
    I glance around, thrown. The woman stands silent, as if waiting to hear what I’m going to say to that.
    ‘Mister Tyan, all I can tell you is that Marjorie Schwitzer at the Police Association gave me the names of three former officers who may be appropriate for the feature I’m writing, one of them was you, and she included the telephone numbers.’
    ‘Who were the other names?’
    I flounder.
    ‘Paul Heaney and Madison de Silva.’
    ‘Never heard of them.’
    ‘Well I believe they were based in Geelong.’
    Tyan sucks back so hard I hear tobacco burning through the phone. His inhale is a rattlesnake.
    ‘What’s this really about?’
    ‘Umm…’
    ‘I haven’t heard from the press in nine years. You come out of the blue—’
    ‘The piece will be about how you’ve adjusted to retirement, what parts of the job still haunt you, what you took away from your experience. It’s an attempt to show the human side of the