Chapter Twelve #2
Cam took both bikes around the back of the flat, while Jack picked up the parcel.
It wasn’t very big, maybe the size of a shoebox, but it was elaborately wrapped with embossed black paper, a dark red velvet ribbon, and a single pink daisy.
He assumed it must be for Mrs Dorsey, but when he looked at the card, he saw his own name and address, written in flowing calligraphy.
By the time Jack had opened the front door, Cam was back. He’d lost interest in the parcel and was ready to do what he did best—talk in an endless, circular flow about his current favourite video game.
‘So Dad. Raft is like this game where you start on a small raft and you have to find scraps in the water and build off that raft while there’s a shark circling you.
And then you come across small islands and you start to get slightly more resources, and you keep doing that until you’re getting some iron, and like copper and like mining some more. ’
‘Right.’
‘So, the main bit of the game is that there are five or six big main islands that have all the story in them and have, for example, one of them’s a bear-infested island and stuff like that and one of the last ones is like a whole civilisation city that’s now abandoned and just floating in the water. ’
‘Cool.’
Jack listened with one ear. He put the parcel on the kitchen table and unpacked the wrapped sausages while Cam got the tomato sauce from the fridge.
‘Can you get water too, mate?’ Jack asked.
They sat at the table and ate, Cam still talking between mouthfuls.
When Jack had finished his first sausage, he wiped his hands and unwrapped the parcel.
Inside the wrapping paper there was a cardboard box, and the box was full of packing peanuts.
Jack searched through them. His fingers closed on something hard and cool and metal.
He lifted it out, and found that he was holding a gun.
A handgun. Grey and smooth and cool to the touch.
‘Oh, shit.’
Jack dropped the gun onto the table and took a step back.
‘Wow. What’s that? Is it real?’ Cam slid the glasses of water onto the table and reached for the gun.
‘Don’t touch it!’ Jack said.
Cam held his hands up in the air, eyes wide.
Jack had never touched a gun before. Never even seen one in real life. Who the hell would send him something like that? He picked up the card and examined it again. His name and address were clearly and carefully written, but there was no return address for the sender.
‘Is it real, Dad? Where did you get it?’
‘I don’t know.’ It looked real. It had felt too heavy to be a toy.
Jack picked up the box. It felt light, empty except for the packing peanuts.
He poured them carefully out onto the counter.
There was a folded sheet of paper on the very bottom of the box.
It fell out and slipped onto the floor. He picked it up and unfolded it.
It was blank, except for a line of text, right in the centre of the page:
He’s still here, sometimes, but he doesn’t want to be.
The words meant nothing to him. They were beautifully handwritten in calligraphy, with navy ink.
Were they a quote from somewhere? An extract from a book?
Jack turned the page over. The other side was definitely blank.
He looked more closely at the gun. It was black, snub-nosed.
It looked . . . dangerous. Like it wasn’t just a tool but something that had a will of its own.
Cam had taken a seat at the table. He applied the sauce to his sausage and took a big bite, still looking with interest at the gun. Jack’s stomach growled. He sat down and picked up his own food. He and Cam stared at the gun while they ate.
‘It’s a mistake,’ Jack said in the end. ‘Someone sent it to me by mistake.’
Cam nodded. ‘Maybe a gangster,’ he said seriously. ‘Or a hit man.’
What the hell was he supposed to do with the thing?
He should call the police, that was the obvious answer.
Hand it in. Handguns were illegal in Australia, weren’t they?
You could have a shotgun, if you had good reason, but only if you had a licence.
Jack was pretty sure that only criminals and cops had handguns, and he was neither.
He finished his food and wiped sauce from the corner of his mouth.
The nearest police station . . . he took out his phone and looked it up.
There was one just over a kilometre away.
He could bike there in a few minutes. But that would mean either bringing Cam with him, or leaving him behind, neither of which was appealing.
It was getting late. Coming up on peak hours, probably, for your average cop shop.
What would he say to them anyway? Hey guys, got this weird parcel.
No idea who sent it to me. And then what?
They’d just say thanks, and send him on his way?
Well, what else?
They’d want to ask him a lot of questions, at the very least. It wouldn’t be a five-minute drop-off.
He couldn’t leave Cam alone for an hour or more, and he wasn’t going to drag him along to sit in the waiting room of a cop shop either.
But he wasn’t keeping this thing for a second longer than he had to.
Just having it in the flat felt dangerous.
‘What would you think about going over to Elsa’s place for an hour or so?’ Jack said.
Cam’s face brightened. ‘I can play Raft with Lola.’
‘Maybe. There’s school tomorrow. We’ll check with Elsa when we get there.’
Jack got a tea towel. He wrapped it around the gun, making a clumsy attempt to wipe it down as he did so, not even fully understanding why he was doing it.
Except that his fingers still felt wrong where he’d touched the gun, and he had an urge to clean away the moment.
He put the wrapped gun carefully into his backpack. He zipped the bag closed.
‘Finish up your food, okay? And put on your jacket.’ He put the backpack on his back, and waited impatiently for Cam. He wanted the gun out of their house.
‘Can I bring my Switch?’
‘If you’re really, really quick.’
Cam ran to his bedroom. It took him a minute to unplug the Switch and pack it up.
Jack cleaned the table while he waited. He put the box and the packing peanuts on the kitchen counter, debated what to do with the letter.
He should bring it, he decided. Let the police decide what to do with it.
He’d leave the box though. That wouldn’t fit in his bag.
‘Ready!’ Cam said.
They turned to leave, and as they did so, there were three loud knocks on the door.