Boy Swallows Universe

Cannon Hill, eastern Brisbane, 1957, bloke named Marian Majka, Polish immigrant, mid-thirties, kills his wife and his five-year-old daughter with a knife and a hammer. He sets fire to his house then walks on over to the house opposite his. Kills the mum in that house too, along with her two daughters. Then he starts piling all the dead bodies up because he’s gonna set them all alight and this little girl from the neighbourhood – ten-year-old girl named Lynette Karger – knocks on the door. She’s come to pick up her friends to go to school like she does every other day. And Majka kills her too and adds her body to the pile and sets it alight. He then shoots himself and the cops arrive to see the horror show. Little Lynette still had her school lunch money clutched in her hand.’ ‘Jesus,’ I gasp. ‘I turned up to the house that morning to report on it all,’ he says. ‘I saw that whole sick mess up close.’ ‘You did?’ ‘Yep,’ he says, walking hard. ‘And still I haven’t seen anything more disturbing than that tie you’re wearing.’