Crocodile Farm

7.

Elliott wakes to the sound of the door being wrenched open, a chair jammed against it to hold it, and a voice calls out, quietly, "Psst, wake up." He is on his feet before he is truly awake, about to grip the bars with his injured hands and resume the impotent wailing of yesterday, except that the bars aren't there and the gate has been wedged open too, and there's a clear path from his cage to the door and beyond.

A day ago he would have run outside, not asked any questions, not paused to wonder if this was a trap or who might have left the door open. This could be a trap, and he doesn't know who would help him like this, but that's not why hehesitates now. He pauses because he's not sure it's worth it.

Belle is dead. If he stays here, he might die. If he leaves, and escapes, what then? His first instinct would to go back to the Ashfield flat, with its dirty carpets and herbs growing on the windowsill and the ancient kitchen which Belle always affectionately called "old school". He can't imagine walking in there, turning his key in the lock like he has so many times before, the familiar stuffy heat of the sunlit rooms. He can't imagine Dolphin charging over to greet him, tongue lolling out of her kelpie smile, like this is an ordinary evening (or afternoon, or morning, or whatever the fuck time it is now). He can't imagine slumping on the couch in front of the TV, fishing a beer from the fridge, putting his feet up onto the coffee table.

He can't imagine tending his wounded hands with a packet of peas fished from the freezer, the exhausted relief of his dog, who must think she's been abandoned, the smell of three days of cooped-up dog, musty air, fruit rotting in the bowl on the counter, and the eerie hot silence and the knowledge that Belle will never share this space with him again.

And my fault, my fault, my fault, the thought of being alone with that, the echo of his dream made reality. How can he move forward now? How can he move past the memory of her, beaten and bloody, the noise of the gun and the angle of her head knocked back and the moment of helpless please, please, please which he felt before the stunning truth of it knocked through him. How will he ever walk the streets he knows so well, how could he place his palm on Dolphin's soft head, how could he pour himself a glass of old school water from the old school tap in the old school kitchen again?

He is not convinced it is worth it. He is not sure he has any reason to leave here. If he stays, he will get what he deserves – the just punishment for bringing her here (didn't he demand that Gleeson find her? Didn't he plead forit?) and for not answering the impossible questions and for his initial pigheaded belief that it would all be alright if he just told the truth.

And last night, his dream betrayed him. He dreamt of Crocodile Farm, the ironic sign, the uneasy voice of the monitor, the lines and lines of camp beds. The little details he remembers: pyjamas made of stars and flannel; the crocodile on the paper crinkled with thick paint. Can the mind really invent such things – and if not, if the dream is more than invention, if it's a memory (but I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember) then how could Gleeson possibly be interested in such dull minutiae? Could this really be worth torturing Elliott for? The flannelette jarmies were pale blue, Sir. With white stars. What purpose could that knowledge serve?

Gleeson. The thought of him, his ill-fitting suit, his close-cut hair, his peculiar smile, makes the nail beds in Elliott's hands tingle again and he involuntarily curls his fingers under. The cameras are still above him, unless his rescuer has disabled them, it will soon be clear to whoever is watching him that the gate is open and he might escape. Yes, Gleeson will be back soon, and this dithering, this gazing at the open gate and the open door and the dark stairwell beyond (for Elliott sees the vague shape of stairs leading up and away from the cell) will mean that soon this indecision will have been its own decision. He will have chosen this as the just punishment his self-loathing tells him he deserves. He knows what awaits him. More torture, almost certainly. More questions he can't answer. Strips torn from his body until he is a husk, until what is left of him is hollow and can be discarded.

If only he had known. If only he had known that these men were not police, that whatever pretext they had for locking him up, his sister could not bail him out. He would never have mentioned her, would never have brought her into this. She would not have died. If he could go back, he would offer himself as a trade, in a heartbeat.

And yet, part of him knows that she would do the same for him. She would have willingly given her life, if she'd known it would mean he could live. Their devotion to each other went both ways. And, having died, she would have wanted him to live. If she could see him now, she would be shouting at him, the way she shouted at TV characters through the screen, "What are you waiting for? Fucking – go!" She would have wanted him to get out, now that he has this small miracle of a chance.

Somehow, he pulls himself to his feet, and he lurches past the gate of the cell and over to the door, wedged open with a normal-looking orange plastic chair, the mass-produced kind used in old classrooms or scout assembly halls, and he steps past it and goes up the stairs (a fire escape, concrete stairs which echo his footsteps), and he stumbles in his haste but he gets to the top, and he pulls open the heavy door and finds himself

In a bank. Elliott opens the door onto a room crowded with people, queuing for tellers, sitting waiting for their number to be called, a few employees behind desks. The bank is ground-level, with sunshine flooding in through the windows, but temperature-controlled air conditioning, and a door which opens onto a shopping centre. Elliott glances at the wall; there is a classroom clock there which shows it is ten minutes past ten. When he steps out of the door, no one turns to look at him, to note his purpling brow or bleeding hands or rancid clothes. The door clicks shut behind him, and he realises it has no handle from this side, just a keypad identical to the one in the basement. He shivers in the warm, still air. Then he walks, purposefully, his heart beating hard, to the sliding glass doors, and goes out into the throng of people.

*

He slips into Woolworths and shoplifts a bread roll and an apple. His teeth feel creaky and sore when he bites into the food, but it is a relief to have something other than preheated crap.

There is a train station leading off the shopping centre. He jumps the turnstile – he has no wallet, nothing – and sits nervily in a window seat in the middle carriage, watching both doors for signs of pursuers.

The whole journey, he jumps at the most ordinary disruptions – a begging boy walking through the carriage; a long stop between stations, a girl with headphones who falls against his seat when the train lurches. People don't look at him, or when they do, they register his pulpy face and his hunched, sweating demeanour, and their eyes glaze as though they were never looking at him in the first place.

He fixes on the television screenon the train and wills himself to be calm. A Yolkin news station is playing. There is no volume but the whole thing is undertexted with the story: Prime Minister Joel Wainwright today pledged that Australia would provide fourteen thousand extra troops as the Siege of Riyadh continues into its thirteenth month. President Zhukov issued a statement that the

He gets off at Canterbury and walks up to his place, expecting at every second for a hand to reach out from behind and tap his shoulder, or a car to pull up alongside, or a team of police with sniffer dogs to close in on him. As he walks, he can hear his own breath in his ears. He carries nothing, but he feels heavy. The bigger grief over Belle had consumed him up to this point, but the adrenalin begins pumping through him as he realises that he's free. He's free. The word brings tears to his eyes, tears for Belle and for himself and for his lost fingernails and for Taz and Darcy, wherever they are, and for the hours he spent in pain and despair. He is so on edge that he doesn't realise until he is very close to his apartment that Dolphin is barking, hoarse and frantic, and he thinks,Thank God, she's still alive and he notices that he hadn't acknowledged up till this point that there might be any other possibility.