Ghost Child Read online

  When I started at St John’s I did make an effort to get people through the doors. I was of the view then – less so now, I don’t mind saying – that if church was daggy, if it was gloomy, then we should make it less intimidating. I put a signboard out the front, next to the wooden cross, and I changed the letters every week, to make the place seem alive and welcoming. Like everybody, I was inspired by the sign that once went up outside a church in Hawthorn: ‘What would you do if Jesus came to Hawthorn?’ Some wag had written, ‘Move Peter Hudson to centre half forward.’ It created much mirth and people flocked to see it. I wanted to show people that church isn’t all about guilt, and that a priest can be a modern person with an interest in football and a sense of humour.

  On a very hot day, I’d write, ‘If you think it’s hot here, imagine Hell!’

  My favourite, though, was, ‘Looking for a sign from God? Here it is!’

  It didn’t work. Attendance at St John’s stayed low, except at Christmas and Easter, or when somebody wanted to get married.

  We charged $100 for a wedding, and for a funeral it was $50. For Jacob Cashman’s family, I waived the fees. I could see from the newspaper coverage that this was a family with limited funds, and I knew it would be a big funeral, with media coverage. I might as well be honest: a big funeral, with journalists and cameras, is as good an opportunity as any to get out the church’s message, so I was on some level pleased when the Cashman funeral came my way.

  Police told me that Jacob’s mother wouldn’t be present. I thought that was cruel. I don’t believe any charges had been laid. I thought it was important that she be there, regardless. But the authorities declined on security grounds.

  ‘She’ll be lynched.’ That’s what the detective told me. ‘They’ll string her up outside the church and tear her to pieces.’

  I won’t deny that emotions on the estate were aflame. The story about the man attacking Jacob had shocked people, and their hearts went out to the Cashmans, but then it quickly began to fall apart and people started to gossip and come to their own conclusions, and of course the mother and her boyfriend were ‘assisting police’, as they say, and people were enraged. They were angry that the parents might have done something to the child. Then, too, there were early rumours that there was more to this story than people even realised.

  I was conscious of my responsibility to both the community and the Church. I would remind the congregation that God alone judges us. In days to come, when Lisa and her boyfriend were formally charged, newspapers would be filled with comments from people thirsting for revenge. One mother would say, ‘You don’t bash your kids. They drive you up the wall but you don’t bash ’em,’ and another would say, ‘I just don’t get how you can do that to a little kid. Have you seen the pictures of him? The boy’s an angel.’

  Police had given me the portrait of Jacob that had already appeared in the newspaper. A lady in the parish office, one of our volunteers, had it framed, and we stood it upon the coffin. Jacob had very white hair, and he also had a white coffin. A state government department – I don’t recall which one – provided a quick injection of cash to Jacob’s family. They do this for all welfare recipients who need to bury a family member, and since Jacob’s mother had been on the single mother’s pension, she qualified. She had been allowed to choose the colour of the coffin. I was pleased she chose white. Once, in a country town, the parents had requested fire-engine red for a small boy knocked over by farm machinery, but generally I suggest white for children. It lends the ceremony a degree of solemnity, reminds us that we are burying a child.

  The police said the boy’s siblings – Hayley, Harley and Lauren – were to be present, and I was conscious of including them in the service. I asked the volunteer we had in the office to seat them on the plastic chairs nearest the altar so I might address them directly.

  In retrospect, I didn’t do enough for the children. I was prideful. I was too conscious of the media attention, and too interested in the impression I might make. The mayor was there, as was the principal from Barrett Primary. I was also too young. This was nearly thirty years ago; I had virtually no experience with small children. It did not even occur to me that the service for Jacob would be well underway before the children realised that Jacob was actually with us, that he was in that white coffin at the front of the church, under the photo graph of him.

  We make that mistake, don’t we, of assuming that children will understand things that adults automatically comprehend? It’s not that I should have said, ‘Here we are, and there are Jacob’s earthly remains, in that box,’ but I wonder if I could have done something to help Lauren, at least, understand what was going on. Because with children it dawns on them slowly: He’s in there, and he’s dead. If we opened the lid he would not sit up as we remember him. He’s dead, and dead’s forever.

  There was no sign of Jacob’s father. His identity had been determined from documents held by the Department of Social Security. He was named in paperwork demanding that he pay child support, but an attempt to find him before the funeral had failed. Who did turn up, in large numbers, were children from the Barrett Primary School. They wore blue polo shirts, with a crest on the right breast, and white socks and school shoes. Their teachers had supplied them with white balloons and, at first, we let them carry the balloons and even hold them in the church, but then they started to do what kids will do when armed with balloons – belt each other – so the teachers had to take the balloons away again. We stored them out the back to release later, when Jacob’s coffin was loaded into the hearse.

  The media was there, too. I made an effort to make them feel welcome. There were some people who looked at them gruffly and I thought, ‘You’re probably the same people who will later go and pick up a copy of the newspaper and see who you can recognise!’

  The sermon was one of the more difficult I’ve had to deliver. I tried to focus the mourners on the good that had come from the death of Jacob Cashman. That might sound strange, but I do believe that we must try to find the good in all circumstances, and perhaps also try to understand what God is trying to tell us, or to show us, or expects from us, when a small child dies.

  The community had come together to comfort each other. That was something positive. It may not have been immediately apparent – especially not with so many people bristling with indignation – but I do believe that a sudden death provides us with an opportunity to comfort each other.

  I reminded the congregation that we were in no position to judge.

  I talked about suffering, too. I said that we, as human beings, don’t always understand why God makes us suffer and, in particular, why he makes small children suffer. If you believe as I do that all things that happen on earth are the result of God’s will, and if you believe that God loves us, then it is difficult to understand why He would allow a small child to suffer, and so we must simply accept that God has a plan, and that we must trust in God.

  I heard one or two people snort with derision during that section of the sermon. I imagined them thinking, ‘Is that the best you can do?’ In truth, though, suffering is something to which I’ve turned my mind. People forget: a fair swag of the Bible – Old and New, and all of Job – is concerned with suffering. It’s a common complaint from the lapsed and the agnostic: ‘If God exists, why would He allow this to happen? What could possibly justify the agonising death of a small child?’ The way the media sometimes thrusts this question at me, it’s as if they think such a question has never dawned on the Church.

  Let me assure you, it’s something to which I’ve turned my mind, and I do have some thoughts on the matter. Firstly, we in the Christian religion believe that suffering is real. Buddhists might say that suffering is an illusion, but that is not our opinion. Anguish, distress, pain – none of it is imaginary. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered, and his suffering was real. Jacob Cashman suffered, and his suffering was real.

  Why, then, do we suffer? The oldest explanation comes from the Gospels:
we suffer because of the Fall of Man. We are sinners; therefore, it is not helpful to blame God for our suffering.

  Then, too, there is the idea that suffering plays a corrective role, enabling us to more quickly recognise bad behaviour. God allows His children to experience the consequences of their actions. If we ignore God’s teachings, the results are painful. If we sin, we are punished.

  I can see how those explanations are not particularly helpful when considering why a child like Jacob must die. It seems absurd that a child of five must pay for a sin committed by Eve in the Garden of Eden. Likewise, it’s impossible to imagine what Jacob might have done – not eaten his lunch? Skipped school one afternoon? – to deserve his fate.

  What, then, was the purpose of Jacob’s death? I only know this, and it’s a variation of what I’ve said before: God’s purpose is often not immediately available to us, and when we are perplexed, ultimately we must trust in the God who loves us.

  The Bible says, ‘Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope’ (Romans 5:3 – 4). Peter says our suffering is not endless: ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more mourning and crying or pain.’

  If, as a priest, you didn’t believe that, you’d go mad.

  Jacob’s siblings did not speak at the funeral. I’m not sure they listened, either. I kept one eye on them while I was speaking. Hayley was squirming around the way a toddler will do. The social worker beside her tried to hold her down, but after a while we all gave up and let her scoot about the floor on all fours, gathering up lint.

  Harley was restless. Lauren was mute, except when some friends from the Barrett Primary School came up with some balloons. They were crying, and she began crying too, and they formed a circle and hugged each other.

  Quite a few of the children had made cards and signs saying ‘Farewell Jacob’ and ‘We’ll Miss You Jacob’, and there were piles of flowers in aluminium foil crowded around the door.

  After the funeral, the volunteer from the parish office took the Cashman children to the unit where I lived. They took off their shoes and we got them some cream biscuits and sat them down on the carpet in front of the TV. The three of them sat quietly until the commercials came on and they started squabbling among themselves. We gave them some crayons and they drew pictures, nothing nightmarish, just normal things: Harley scribbled; Lauren drew stick figures under a rainbow; and Hayley, well, she chewed the crayon and let coloured spittle run down her chin.

  We waited long into the afternoon for a social worker to decide what should happen next, and at some point Lauren got up and went into the garden. We had a plastic swing set, the type with a hard swing and a see-saw under an awning for the Sunday-school children. Lauren didn’t sit down on the seat of the swing. She bent herself over the plastic seat and, while she was upside down like that with her face toward the earth, she moved herself back and forward, leaving scuff marks in the dirt with her shoes.

  I should have gone out to speak to her, but to put a question about Jacob … it seemed not to be my place, and in her confusion would she have heard me, anyway?

  Besides, there was a reporter from The Sun on the telephone, wanting to get a few more quotes about the impact on the community, and by the time I finished the call Lauren was gone.

  Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Muggeridge

  I didn’t go to Jacob’s funeral. I’d spent a lot of time on the case already – I was at the place on DeCastella Drive until late the first day and then early again the next day, and then I was at the station all afternoon – and as important as these things are, my wife was getting annoyed. There was no reason to go to the funeral. What was to be gained by going to the church? It’s a whole lot of grief, is all.

  I caught a bit of it on the news, of course. I saw the priest, a bloke not dressed like a priest at all, just in ordinary pants and a shirt, which doesn’t really do it for me. I wouldn’t mind some more solemnity, if that’s the word. He was giving some kind of sermon and, in my opinion, he was not that convincing. He waffled on with the usual stuff: ‘It’s God’s will.’ I mean, surely it’s up to a priest to say something uplifting. But then, the death of a child, what can you say other than, ‘Well, there must be a reason and I’m buggered if I know what it is.’

  They played a bit of what they said was Jake’s favourite song – an ACDC song, ‘Back in Black’, and I remember thinking, ‘Lucky it’s not “Highway to Hell”!’ I mean, what’s wrong with the hymns? The TV made a big deal about Lisa not being there, but she’d sent word that she wanted them to play ‘I’ve Never Been to Me’ and she wanted Jacob buried in a Batman suit.

  It wasn’t long after the funeral that the Cashman case was off my hands. Pretty much the day after Jacob was buried, I took his mum up to D-24 – that’s to Homicide, in the Melbourne City Watch House on Russell Street – to be charged. There wasn’t the heavy security at D-24 in those days. Remember, this was before the Russell Street bomb exploded outside the headquarters, blowing out the ground-floor windows and taking the life of Constable Angela Taylor. You could park out the front and walk right in, and take your prisoner up to the counter. It was at least two metres wide and might even have been marble, although probably not.

  People who were going into the cells used to have to wait while the cop behind the counter got out the old ledger with the leather cover. Computers were in operation but nobody was connected, not the way we are now. So I walked in with Lisa, holding her by the elbow, and the cop behind the counter got her name, address, date of birth, and wrote it all down in pencil. Lisa had to give up her cigarettes and lighters and lighter fluid, and she got photo graphed and fingerprinted, and led into a back corridor where she would have been stripped and searched.

  All the time it was happening, I could sort of see her shrinking. I can’t explain it better than that. She was just getting smaller and smaller as the hours went on. She was pale and shaking and … yeah, shrinking.

  I didn’t watch the strip. There was a time when the male cops could have watched a woman strip at D-24, but then it all changed and if you had a woman prisoner, you had to get a woman guard.

  This is probably the wrong thing to say, but I wanted to see Lisa strip. Not because I had the hots or anything like that, I just wanted to see her squirm a bit. Blokes don’t care about getting their gear off. Most of them have been naked with other blokes before, at the urinal, in the change room, whatever. The women take it harder. By this time, I knew her story was bogus, and I knew – or thought I knew – what had happened on DeCastella Drive. Part of me wanted to see Lisa shaking and suffering, like Jacob must have been shaking and suffering. She would have had to take off that vinyl suit, stand in her undies and her bra, and a female police officer would have felt around her breasts, briefly between her legs, run her hands around her skull, asked her to lift her feet. About then it would have dawned on her: ‘I’m in deep.’ I wanted to see that.

  She asked for a lawyer and I knew she’d get one, not immediately, but certainly before she got to court. If history was any guide, Legal Aid would see to it that she’d have a QC, a silk, because that’s what always happens: down-and-out people get lawyers the rest of us working people could never afford.

  The female officer would have gone through the normal drill: ‘Could you please point out any identifying marks?’

  According to the file she had a rose tattoo on her left ankle, a dolphin on the right shoulder blade and a band of roses around her left wrist.

  Lisa was then taken into the women’s block. It’s like you see on TV: heavy doors at either end of a hallway, the whole thing made from bluestone, covered in twelve layers of creamy paint. The cells come off the hallway. There’s a peephole in every door and a heavy bolt at eye level. Reformers would look at those cells now – brick with no windows, a stainless-steel toilet and no lid – and they’d say ‘It’s macabre’ or ‘It’s cruel’, but they’re reacting to the stone and the iron bars. In ac
tual fact, I know quite a few crims who preferred the old watch house. The new lock-up, out on Spencer Street, there’s no stone, it’s all air-conditioned and low ceilings, and you can hear the bloke in the cell next door farting.

  The officer who was leading Lisa down the corridor said, ‘Wet cell?’ I was a bit surprised. The wet cell was for drunks. It had a drain in the floor so they could hose it out. Lisa wasn’t drunk. She wasn’t vomiting. But then I understood: the wet cell was slightly larger than the other cells – none was bigger than a wardrobe – and the guards were being kind. Lisa was a mother who had lost a child, after all.

  She didn’t go into the wet cell, though. Another officer said, ‘It’s full. Why, you got a D and D?’ He was referring to a drunk and disorderly.

  ‘Child deceased,’ the first officer said. ‘What about Number 12?’