Cemetery Lake (34 page)

I stand up. ‘I need you to take me to it.’

‘What?’ She looks at her watch again. ‘I don’t know — I’ll

have to check with my boss.’

‘Okay, do what you need to do. But you essentially just said

that whoever has the key can gain access to the box, that’s why you don’t label them. If you want, though, I can get the court order amended — that’s fine too. I can get the judge to sign it and be back here in —’ I glance at my watch — ‘an hour and a half.

Two hours tops.’

‘Two hours?’

‘Yeah. That’s what’ll it take.’

She gives it only a few seconds’ thought. ‘Okay. Since you

have the key I don’t see any problem. The room is this way’

And she picks up the key, and I follow her out of her office.

Most of the safety deposit boxes are a little bigger than a

phonebook, but there are perhaps a dozen or so that are two

to three times bigger. There are three walls full of them, each numbered. Erica approaches them slowly, still reluctant to be

doing this, but then she looks at her watch and remembers that it’s time to leave and Saturday night is waiting. She puts the key into one of the bigger ones, twists it, opens the door and pulls out a metal tray from within. She sits it down on the table, then points out three small rooms off to the side.

‘There’s privacy in there. Take your time,’ she says, sounding as if she doesn’t want me to take my time but to get in and out of there in under a minute. I intend to help her out there.

The room doesn’t have much legroom. I can reach out and

touch both walls at the same time without stretching. I put the tray on the table and open it.

Audio tapes are stacked side to side, the small microcassette

ones that take up less room. They are all labelled with numbers. I pull a large plastic evidence bag out of my pocket and start filling it up. There is also an accountant’s notebook, and I flick it open to see bunches of names and dates and figures before I throw that into the evidence bag as well. I step out of the cubicle and find Erica is back. She looks at the evidence bag but says nothing.

I’ve closed over the seal and signed it so it all looks more official.

I ask her to sign it too and she does, but she has to hand me the cardboard box she has filled with the printed bank statements

first.

She walks with me to the front door. The security guard is

waiting for me. “I always wanted to be a cop,’ he says. ‘Would’ve done it too, but I have a banged up knee that stopped me.’ it’s a story heard from plenty of security guards over the years. It might have been a banged up knee, or it could have been their or lack of motivation, or he failed the psych test.

The bank is almost empty now. The security cameras in the

ceiling have captured my image from a dozen different angles and I know this is going to come back and really bite me in the arse.

But that’s for another day. Maybe the same day they dig Sidney Alderman up. And today things are going well. Today my wife

hugged a photo of my daughter and I hit a lead that could take me straight to Rachel’s killer. When you get those kinds of leads, you don’t slow down for anything.

As the guard unlocks the door to let me out, Erica starts to

turn away.

‘Just one more thing,’ I ask her, and she turns back. She seems about to glance at her watch again but pulls herself out of the movement. ‘The photograph behind your desk, there’s you and

another guy — he looks around fifty, maybe sixty. He seems

familiar.’

‘He was the bank manager here for many years,’ she says. ‘You

would have seen him around if you ever came in here.’

‘Was?’ I ask, and I’m starting to figure out who it is.

‘Henry died a couple of years ago,’ she says.

‘Henry Martins.’

‘That’s right. You knew him?’

“I went swimming with him once.’

Outside, the rain is still thick and heavy, and so is the traffic.

I pass a guy scraping chewing gum off the footpaths and depositing his collections into a plastic bucket. He’s wearing a T-shirt that has a picture of the Easter Bunny up on a crucifix. It says Jesus had a stunt double, and I wonder how Father Julian would have reacted to seeing it. Another guy sniffing glue is leaning up against a bike rack watching the guy. I guess Saturday brings the crazies out a little earlier.

I get past them and run through the rain to my car.

I’m anxious to listen to the tapes but I have no way of playing them. I dump the contents of the evidence bag on the passenger seat. There are perhaps forty tapes inside it. I open the accounts book and seeit’s a log of some kind. The dates seem to match

up with dates scrawled across the sides of the microcassettes.

I start looking through the bank statements. There are over two hundred and fifty of them, one for each month. Random amounts

and dates and names. I look in vain for Henry Martins’ name, but what seemed like a random connection between Rachel Tyler and

Henry Martins suddenly seems a lot less random.

I toss everything back into the bag and pull away from the

kerb.

I hit the mall and again struggle to find a car park. Late Saturday afternoon and it seems nobody in this city has anything better to do than come out shopping an hour before the mall closes. At the electronics store the only thing they have in stock for recording conversations is digital, but they suggest another couple of shops to try. I finally find what I’m looking for.

‘Last one in stock,’ the guy tells me. ‘Hardly anyone uses them any more. Even secretaries use digital.’

“I have a thing for old technology.’

I get back to my father’s car only to find that a trolley has

strayed from the flock and smacked into the back bumper, creating a small dent that I know my dad will spot around the time I’m

turning the car into their driveway. This is the reason, he’ll tell me, he didn’t want to lend me the car in the first place. If he realises that I’m driving without a licence, then that will confirm it. Fuck, if we can put a man on the moon, surely the digital age will reach a point where trolleys can guide their way back into the supermarket by themselves.

I load fresh batteries into the tape recorder and pick a tape at random. I’ve been pretty certain about what to expect, and when I push play my suspicions are confirmed after just a few seconds of hissing.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘How long has it been since your last confession?’ Father Julian’s voice is deep and clear. It makes me shiver to hear a dead man’s voice, and I feel sick to know he was violating all of the people on these tapes. The other voice could be anybody.

It’s a male. Could be twenty years old. Could be eighty. ‘I’ve done it again.’

‘Done what again?’

I look at the names Julian has neatly written into his log. The confessional is supposed to be completely anonymous, but I

suspect the reality is thatit’s not. I think at minimum the priest has a good idea who they’re talking to because it’s likely to be somebody from their congregation.

‘Cheated. On my wife. I know it’s wrong, Father, but the

problem is I can’t help it. It’s like another person takes over. It’s like I know what I’m doing is wrong but at the time I can’t consider the consequences.’

‘Maybe you do consider them but choose to ignore them.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. It would explain a lot.’

I push the stop button and fast forward the tape for a while.

When I push play I hear Father Julian’s voice.

‘.. . to realise you are hurting more than just yourself.’

‘
know, I know.” It’s a woman’s voice. ‘It’s just that, well, sometimes I can’t help it. It’s like a different person takes over.’p>

‘Perhaps you should look at it from another…’

I push stop. Jesus, is this everybody’s excuse? That they aren’t responsible for anything in their lives? That their actions are justifiable because another person takes over?

‘I’m a different person when it happens. I’m no longer me,’ Quentin James told me as he stood by the grave he had dug, waiting for me to forgive him.

Was that my excuse too?

Maybe. But I don’t think so. I wasn’t switching between

personae. Alcohol made Quentin James the man he was, and

he would live with a foot in each of those worlds, existing as two separate men. I’m different. Quentin James made me into a

different kind of man, and there’s no going back from that. There is only one Theodore Tate.

When I get home my body is exhausted but my mind is still

racing with excitement:it’s a weird combination that makes me

want to sleep but at the same time pace the room. I don’t get to do either, because walking from the driveway to my house I’m

brought to a stop by Casey Horwell and her cameraman. I don’t

see a van anywhere, and assume they must have been camped out

in a dark red sedan parked opposite. Again Horwell is wearing

enough make-up to look like the media whore she is. I can see

the thin lines and cracks in the foundation. She smells like stale coffee. I lower the bag of tapes and statements and hold it to my side, out of sight of the camera.

‘Mr Tate,’ she says, getting into my face. ‘It hasn’t taken you long to get behind the wheel of a car since losing your licence. You manage this, and you’re a suspect in the murder of Father Julian.

Your friends in the department you seem exceedingly proud of

must really be working overtime to keep you out of jail.’

‘I thought reporters liked asking questions, not giving

statements,’ I say, immediately wishing I was saying nothing.

‘Actually we do both.’

‘Just not accurately.’

I start to move around her, but she side-steps into my way.

She probably wants me to push her, and that’s exactly what

I feel like doing. I want to grab her by the arm and escort her off my property, but then I change my mind and go with a different tactic.

‘Would you care to tell us how the murder weapon came to be

found in your garage?’

‘What murder weapon?’ I ask.

‘The hammer.’

‘What hammer?’

‘The one that killed Father Julian.’

‘Who’s Father Julian?’

She frowns a little, unsure of where I’m going with this. ‘The man whose church you have been parked outside of for the last

four weeks.’

‘What church?’

The frown becomes a deeper crease and breaks a line into her

make-up. ‘Is this a game to you?’

‘What game?’

‘People are showing up dead and you’re the only

commonality’

‘What’s a commonality?’

The creases deepen. Her smirk fades, quickly replaced by her

annoyance, and beneath the surface of her make-up a different

Casey Horwell is simmering.

‘Where is Sidney Alderman?’ she asks.

‘What’s an Alderman?’

She turns to her cameraman. ‘That’s it,’ she says, and the

camera is lowered.

‘You’re fucked,’ she says. ‘We got you on tape driving into the street, and that makes you look bad.’

‘You think that’s the best you can do?’

‘Actually no. You haven’t seen the best I can do, but you will.

Come on, Phil,’ she says, turning to her cameraman, ‘let’s go.’

‘Wait,’ I say.

‘What for?’

‘Your source. Who is it?’

Are you that fucking stupid? You think I’m going to tell

you?’

‘Just tell me this. Is it a cop?’

“I’m not telling you anything.’

‘Is it a cop?’ I ask, and this time I yell it at her.

She takes a step back, and the cameraman swings his camera

back up and starts to film me again.

“I suggest you back down, Tate.’

And I suggest you think about what you’ve got yourself into,’

I say. ‘This source of yours, if it’s not a cop, then who can it be, huh? Who else can possibly have fed you all that bullshit about the murder weapon, huh? There’s only one possibility. You’re

being played, Horwell, and you’re too stupid to know it, and

when you figure it out you’ll be too arrogant to admit it. But you’re responsible for anything that happens now, you get that?

If you keep that name to yourself and it turns out to be the guy who killed those girls, and he kills again, then that’s on you. You get that? You keep your mouth shut and don’t go to the police, you’re as good as helping him.’

‘Fuck you,’ she says. ‘You don’t know a damn thing. You’re

some washed-up private detective who thinks he can do what the hell he wants and get away with it, just because his daughter got herself killed. You think her death is going to keep people feeling sympathetic towards you even after all of this? You’re the one who’s arrogant and stupid, Tate. Your career is fucked and I’m going to make sure of it. You’re a piece of shit murderer who isn’t going to keep getting away with it. And you’re going to see me every single day of your trial and I’m going to expose you to the world as the man you really are.’

I feel like jumping on her and slapping her until she gives up the name of her source, but that’s not going to happen, especially with the cameraman standing here probably hoping I do. I just

have to trust that the tapes and the statements will tell me what she won’t.

I move past her and shut the door. I stand in the hallway, my

heart rate up, feeling angry at her and also angry at myself for letting her get to me. I go into my office and sit down, but I can’t focus on anything. I leave the tapes and the bank statements on my desk and I head out to the lounge. I switch on the CD player and turn the music up and walk around my kitchen, opening

up cupboards looking for something to eat, and end up making

myself some coffee. I need something to calm me down, and I

decide coffee isn’t it, and I let it sit on my bench and watch it go cold. The anger starts to fade. I do what I can to push Casey Horwell from my thoughts, and when she is far enough in the