Coming in the front door I can see the back door wide open and beyond that the back gate open to the alley. We’ve been burgled. Or are being burgled. My hands ball into fists and I hiss at Wilma to get her hackles up. Walking down the hall if someone steps from a doorway on my right I’ll throw a left hook, if they step from my left I’ll throw a right. Nobody can parry a punch while being attacked by a heeler. But the intruders are gone, the house rustled, drawers gaping, defiled, everything open, breached, broached, the place a crime scene.
I ring the police and after only minutes I get through to Laura, who is nice, and who is rote. Laura has a questionnaire, and she is going to go, imperturbably, through her process. She gets my address and age and wants to know what has been stolen. I can’t tell you yet, Laura, we’re trawling through the wreckage. But it’s mostly jewellery, intergenerational morsels, gifts from a mother to a daughter who then becomes a mother and gifts them, like DNA, or love, to her daughters – a hallowed lineage now broken by someone who got up in the morning knowing he would do this.
Credit: Robin Cowcher
Halfway through her survey to determine what sort of victim I am Laura asks me if I identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. She tells me it’s something they have to ask. I identify as a bloke who’s feeling pretty raw, freshly robbed. I guess if an islander’s house was robbed he’d feel much the same. You get burgled now and the cops’ priority is your relatives? Your lineage?
When they arrive they dust for prints and search for CCTV footage while everywhere our drawers and wardrobes are open-mouthed, screaming silently. Detectives today are stylishly shod in black R.M. Williams boots.
I want to see this burglar. I want to know something about him. The idea of breaking in to someone’s home and stealing their most emotionally precious possessions is such a heterodox one that I want to meet the beast that thinks it OK and ask him questions to try and understand how his life got to be this. I ask a cop what sort of person a burglar is. A teenager? A drug addict? Homeless? A recidivist pro? A sociopath?
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But she won’t hear it suggested that anyone is more likely than anyone else to be a perpetrator. Old and young both commit burgs, she tells me. Men, women, rich and poor … There is no typical burglar. Burglars are all shapes and sizes … diverse. It’s everyone.
Yeah, right. Octogenarian society dames from Toorak are kicking in back doors in Port Melbourne. That would explain the scent of Shalimar in my hallway.
Out on the street I become suspicious of other men. That guy there walking his staffy, glancing at the house. The guy from the commission flats with a limp and a purpose. The trio of mulleted vapers on the bench across the road. The Bay Street idlers who’ve never known a dentist.
