‘
Deeply
involved?’
‘You heard me. I’m deeply involved with a woman I love very much,’ I repeated. ‘I’m not interested in playing up. Plus I’m acting chief and the woman at Olims is someone I might pass in the corridors a couple of times a week. She’s also someone I don’t consider to be particularly stable emotionally.’
Charlie chuckled. ‘Could make for some interesting moments in the lunch room.’
He was right. I sat and considered the possible consequences of my visit to Suite 12.
Now that Sofia Verstoek had recognised me, I realised, unless I made sure I was seen as a genuine member, the group would close ranks. If I wanted to get in, I’d have to leave my investigator’s hat right out of it.
I recalled other, classic unsolved cases concerning suspicious deaths where scientists and doctors had been involved: of lovers poisoned on a riverside bank celebrating New Year’s Eve, a doctor bashed to death by an unknown intruder while garaging his car late one night.
‘You missed your chance, bro,’ said Charlie. ‘You could have got laid
and
gathered intelligence.’ He stood up and went to the small bar I kept, pouring himself another brandy.
‘I can’t seem to get her image out of my head, Charlie. Every time I close my eyes, it’s all I can see.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘My guess is that it’s hardwired in the male brain. Earlier even than
Australopithecus.
’
‘Australo-
what-icus
?’
‘Early hominids,’ said Charlie. ‘Our primitive forebears back millions of years. Female squats and presents, male pounces and penetrates. Simple, beastly copulation. Easy.’ He sat down with his brandy, grinning like a chimpanzee. ‘And somewhere, hidden under layers of repression and civilisation, it’s still to be found in the modern male consciousness.’
‘Give it a rest, Charlie.’
‘But
my
brother is unique,’ Charlie teased, going out to the kitchen. ‘He’s given this great chance to do the manly thing. The
natural
thing! Talk about an investigator’s dream.’
‘Nightmare,’ I corrected him. How was I going to manage this at work? Pretend it hadn’t happened? Take her aside and tell her that, as far as I was concerned, the incident was closed and no further communication would be entered into? Get her shifted to another laboratory like Florence and the others wanted? At least that way, my dignity could remain reasonably intact. The idea was very tempting.
‘What are you doing out there?’ I called. ‘Come back and help me.’
‘I’m getting you something to eat. There’s no chicken left.’
‘I don’t need food. I need some advice! Do the psychologist thing. Make a helpful suggestion, for Christ’s sake.’
But he kept fiddling out there and I could smell bread toasting. He returned some minutes later with buttered toast and still-warm baked potatoes.
‘I haven’t mentioned that the female involved in all this is completely obnoxious,’ I said, taking a piece of toast.
‘With a fantastic arse!’ laughed Charlie.
‘It’s no laughing matter. What am I going to do about this woman?’
‘Don’t you think there’s a much more urgent matter involving a woman that you should be considering?’ said Charlie, suddenly serious.
Charlie had this ability to switch from mirth to gravity and I’d always found it disconcerting.
‘If you don’t do something about your relationship with Iona, you will lose her,’ he continued.
That shocked me and I put my toast down. ‘Did she say something to you?’
‘She didn’t have to,’ said Charlie. ‘I saw how distressed she was. But yes, I did talk to her.’
‘And?’
Charlie raised his hands. ‘You know I don’t do that—tell tales.
You
need to talk to
her
about this. About what you’re going to do.’
He came back to the chair opposite, sipping his brandy. ‘The males in our family are a pretty sad lot when it comes to making good relationships with women,’ he said. ‘Take me, for starters. I seem unable to get properly serious about a woman. They call me the playboy in my supervision group and it’s not entirely a joke.’
‘But you’re only a youngster,’ I said, taking a potato. For me, Charlie always feels perennially young.
‘I’m only twelve years younger than you,’ said Charlie. ‘And it’s high time I found a possible woman and became a father. But I have difficulties with intimate relating which we won’t go into right now. So that’s me; our father had a dreadful marriage with an impossible woman; your first marriage was to a borderline personality disorder—’
Charlie and Genevieve had never seen eye to eye, to put it mildly.
‘Who had no capacity whatsoever to grasp that there are other points of view than hers. So what I’m saying is, you have to face the fact that now you’ve been fortunate enough to have found a possible woman—’
I interrupted him. ‘That’s the second time you’ve used that term. What do you mean “possible woman”?’
‘A woman who is not so emotionally and psychologically disfigured by the events of her childhood that she’s able to connect in a reasonable and mature way, with compassion and understanding. A woman who can be part of a shared experience—a couple—without trying to dominate the other. Iona Seymour
is
possible. So don’t bugger up this wonderful chance—the Great Experiment—because of
your
character defects.’
‘Exactly which character defects do you mean?’ I said, knowing I had quite a few, although I thought I was continuing to deal with them. ‘Tell me.’
‘There’s really only one to be concerned about. Your persistent inability to slow down—to stop and just be.’
‘Be what, for Christ’s sake? What am I supposed to be?’
‘That’s such a typical workaholic’s response!’ Charlie laughed. ‘You don’t have to be anything. Just
be.
’
I stared at my brother. At least the stunning incident of earlier in the evening had receded from my memory as I considered Charlie’s words and proceeded to defend myself.
‘I know how to do that. What about when I just lie on a blanket on the river bank and look up at the willow leaves and the sky? Isn’t that just being?’ I countered.
‘It certainly is,’ Charlie said. ‘So tell me, how often do you do that?’
‘Come on, Charlie. You know how busy I’ve been lately.’
‘How often do you do it, Jack? Honest answer now, please.’
I cast my mind back. I remembered a time last year when I’d waited for Jacinta and Iona to meet me for a picnic at the river bend and how the air had been filled with drifting white blossoms that turned out to be tiny butterflies. Then there’d been another occasion with just Iona and me, not long after she arrived here. I told Charlie about these.
‘So there you are, Jack. You can do it once a year. That’s about it, isn’t it?’ He stood up and stretched. ‘The rest of the time you’re racing around like a hairy-nosed wombat.’
‘Wombats don’t race,’ I reminded him.
‘You need to think very seriously about what your priorities are, Jack. Presumably, you want this woman in your life?’
‘Of course I do!’ I said, pissed off that he should question me.
‘Then you’ve got to
make
space and time for her. You’ve got to learn to open up to her, to let her in. Show her who you really are. You can’t wait until things quieten down at work. It’s that simple. When was the last time you had any quiet time at work?’
I tried to think of some quiet time in the last few years, but there’d been none. Every time we thought we were getting across the workload, another homicidal martyr, with his head full of hell, would detonate something somewhere and half my staff would vanish for weeks, only to return with more work and their backlog to catch up with as well.
Greg bumped into the lounge room lugging his overloaded backpack and a long batik carry bag. ‘I’m heading off tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a lift with Jass.’
‘Is she going?’ I asked, disappointed. ‘What happened to the time we were going to have?’
Greg pulled his head back, looking at me. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked. ‘You’re never here. I’ll come back when
you’ve
got some time.’
‘Okay,’ I said, chastened. ‘Did you open any of those?’ I gestured to the books.
‘Who’s asking, old man?’ And Greg, grabbing me in a bear hug and lifting me out of the chair I was sitting in, would have taken me down straightaway except that I remembered a piece of fancy footwork designed to interfere with any plans a superior attacker might employ. Eventually, we tussled to the floor and this time, when Greg won, it wasn’t because I’d let him.
As he helped me up, I felt every year of my age.
When at last I slid in beside Iona’s warm body, I lay listening to her gentle breathing, pondering Charlie’s words. He was right. It
was
that simple and somewhere I knew it. Then why, I asked myself, did I constantly take on more and more work? Why did I feel so responsible?
I couldn’t find the answer and so I turned my mind to my other concern. The thought of Sofia Verstoek making herself sexually available to any man who walked through the door of Suite 12, then donning her scientific white spacesuit and frowning around a crime scene, would give me no peace. How could I ever look at the blonde down of her eyebrows again without thinking of her shaved mound? Then I tried to imagine her seeing something at venue sixteen, something that made her so angry she could murder a scientist at the Ag Station. Jealousy was a common human emotion. Claire could have let her in and Sofia would know how to leave no trace evidence. But although I could imagine Sofia as a murderer, I couldn’t see how she’d give a damn about anyone except herself.
Finally, at about 3 a.m., around the same time as a storm broke overhead and heavy rain suddenly started to pelt down, I slept.
When I woke up alone, I felt sad that Iona had already left for work, but somewhat relieved that I didn’t have to talk about last night. It would take time, I knew, for the previous night’s scene to settle down in my mind and I really needed to think about Charlie’s words.
I breakfasted alone—neither Charlie nor the kids had emerged yet—and, after I’d cleaned up, I sat at the desk Iona used near the window of the lounge room and wrote a note.
Please forgive me for taking so long to learn a few simple truths. Let’s talk soon. I love you.
I signed it, left it propped up in an envelope where she’d find it, locked up and climbed into my wagon, thinking of the busy day ahead of me. I’d decided to try and arrange a meeting at the Ag Station with Kevin Waites as well as everything else.
As I drove to work, a couple of grey kangaroos bounded away, startled from their feeding on the roadside grass, vanishing into the scrub. Even they were doing it hard in this long drought, trying to find feed so close to the dangerous road.
Focusing tightly in on work was a survival mechanism that had kept me going through my darkest hours. But now, the searing vision of Sofia Verstoek presenting herself for sexual action kept flashing into my mind. As well, the conflict with Iona underlay everything and Charlie’s questioning of the previous night only served to destabilise me further. I’d heard lots of old cops talk about post-traumatic stress disorder and how flashback scenes appeared in their minds, unbidden, to torment them. I’d witnessed awful murder scenes, crash scenes, bodies fused in incinerated automobiles, children dead in toilets, but things I pushed out of my mind generally stayed put, in some underground archive where they could not trouble me. Not this time, and it was adding to my unbalanced state; as if the crowded contents of that archive had been tipped out of their accustomed places and then just tossed back in again. I didn’t know how long it would take for things to settle back into the usual patterns. Blue’s bold manner of greeting me had created a psychological Trojan horse, penetrating and undermining my domain of focused reason. I needed all my energy for Iona and me and I cursed Sofia Verstoek out loud as I drove, willing her to get back in her box.
It wasn’t until I was sitting at work, sifting through the internal and external mail trays, that I remembered Tianna Richardson’s funeral was that day and would be starting soon. I arranged for the particle samples to be sent express courier to Ellis Smith and then grabbed my jacket, hastily leaving a message with the secretary. I wanted to put in an appearance at the funeral, not only because I had known Tianna, or because of my professional connection with her, but also because the life of this woman and the manner of her death had touched me. I had helped her put on her brand new skirt, the one she’d not been wearing when she met her chilling fate. There was another reason, too.
I got to the church just in time to see the pallbearers carrying the coffin out to the hearse.
‘Jason Richardson’s here,’ Brian said as I joined him near his car and he indicated a battered Holden panel van with a surfboard on racks on the roof. ‘I’m going to the cemetery for the burial and, after that, I’ll bring him back with me,’ he continued. ‘Meet me at the station in an hour or so?’
He walked over to the wide entrance with its Norman doors and I followed as he made his way past the people flowing out in the other direction. Earl Richardson, in a dark suit and black tie, was accompanied by a brown-robed and sandalled Franciscan—Father Basil, I imagined. As they came closer, I realised Earl’s tie wasn’t black but dark purple. The man had no taste. Trailing behind him was the youth who had to be his son Jason, awkward in a black suit, white-blond hair and dark tanned features, eyes squinting against the glare of the skies. Earl saw me and his eyes lit up. Damn, I thought.
‘Jack!’ Earl said, stepping forward with his hand out to shake mine. ‘How kind of you to come to this sad occasion.’
I took his hand and, while Brian busied himself with the Franciscan, Earl introduced me to a woman nearby.
‘Deirdre Delaney, meet Jack McCain, one of my oldest friends. Deirdre is a bereavement counsellor—she’s been a tower of strength to me in all this.’
‘Earl is so brave,’ said Deirdre, shaking my hand then imprisoning it with her other hand. Looking at her black lace mantilla over her yellow hair, her brows wrinkling in professional concern, I found I’d taken an instant dislike to her. ‘I simply don’t know how he’s managing to stay so calm and centred despite his loss,’ she said.
I retrieved my hand and she reached up to brush dandruff off Earl’s black shoulder. I excused myself, watching Earl as he shook hands with other members of the funeral, while Brian took Jason aside, leaving the bereavement counsellor and the Franciscan to each other.
Little more than an hour later, I was at Heronvale Police Station, sitting at a table with a bad coffee in front of me, watching on a colour monitor the proceedings in the next room where Brian was taking a formal statement from young Jason. Except for his long, narrow face and nose, something like an anteater, Jason reminded me of Damien Henshaw. He was a similar age, with the same blond hair and rangy, tall physique. I tuned out as Brian went through the formalities with the young man and wandered over to the window. From there, I could see Jason’s van. I stepped outside and went over to the vehicle. It was a Holden, about eight years old and due for registration. I walked right round it and then noticed that the passenger door was unlocked. I couldn’t resist.
Pulling on a pair of gloves, I opened it and looked inside, picking over the assorted mess on the floor—girlie and surfing magazines, takeaway food containers, the odd beer can, an empty plastic sandwich envelope which I sniffed. The scent of dope was unmistakeable. I pulled open the glove box and several items fell out onto the mess on the floor, including a fancy and well-used bong, packets of cigarette papers and a circular tin of tobacco, almost empty. It was the last item to slide out that mesmerised me. Carefully, I picked it up and slipped it into an envelope, then closed the door and went back inside, making a call to Brian in the next room as I did.
‘Come outside a minute. I’ve got something you might want to use in your interview,’ I said. ‘I found it in young Jason’s car.’
‘Jack,’ Brian started to say, his tone a warning.
‘It’s okay. It was unlocked.’
I watched Brian on the monitor as he excused himself and, moments later, he was with me.
‘Look,’ I said, fishing out what I’d found, letting it hang from my still-gloved fingers.
Brian frowned for a moment before light dawned. He hooked it closer with his pen and studied it. ‘This necklace goes with those earrings,’ he said.
‘Nineteenth-century Victorian rose gold in a distinctive design of interlinked hearts set with green peridots and seed pearls,’ I quoted, remembering the gist of the jeweller’s certificate. ‘Just like this necklace.’
‘She must have had a matching set,’ said Brian as I dropped it back into the plastic bag and handed it to him. ‘How come Jason’s got this?’
‘Good question,’ I answered.
A few moments later, I watched on the monitor while Brian presented the necklace in its packet and laid it on the table. I studied Jason Richardson as closely as I could under the circumstances. He stiffened, clearly shocked.
‘You’ve got no right!’ he cried. ‘You’ve been going through my things!’
‘Not
your
things, Jason,’ said Brian. ‘This doesn’t belong to you, does it?’
Jason, who’d been leaning forward against the table that stood between him and Brian, pushed himself away.
‘Just relax, Jason,’ I heard Brian say. ‘And tell me about how this comes to be in your glove box.’
Tianna had been wearing the matching earrings when her body was found and, unless we had a coincidence of the greatest magnitude, Jason Richardson must have taken this necklace from his stepmother.
I watched as he twisted awkwardly in his chair. ‘Can I have a coffee or something?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ said Brian. ‘I’ll go and get one, and while I’m gone I want you to think about this: your stepmother’s just been murdered and in your glove box we’ve found a gold and pearl necklace that matches the pair of earrings she was wearing when she was killed. You can see what people might think.’
‘Shit! I never touched her! I wasn’t even in the bloody state! Gran gave me that necklace.’
Brian’s face was a picture. ‘Gran? Your grandmother gave you that necklace?’ he said, all eyebrows. ‘What? To wear to impress your mates?’
Again, I watched the monitor closely, but Jason’s face was half-hidden by the way he was sitting.
‘You just wait here and think about what you’re telling us, Jason.’ Brian stood up and went out the door and I watched Jason sitting there, hunched over, staring at the wall while Brian left him to stew.
Brian was back a few minutes later with two steaming styrofoam cups.
From somewhere I could hear a butcherbird carolling his call sign and another, more distant bird answering.
‘Tell me about the necklace, Jason.’
Jason sipped his coffee and grimaced. ‘I usually have sugar,’ he said.
‘We’re all out,’ Brian said. ‘Sorry.’
‘You ask Gran,’ Jason said.
‘I will,’ said Brian. ‘In the meantime, we need a little cheek scrape from you. A DNA sample.’
Jason spluttered in his coffee.
‘Just to put you in the clear,’ added Brian.
After Jason had provided his sample, I accompanied him and Brian back into the interview room.
‘So how do you spend your time, Jason?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Work a bit. Surf a bit. Travel a bit.’
‘Bit of a nomad, are you?’ Brian asked.
Jason didn’t answer so I decided to engage him a little. ‘Nice sort of life,’ I said. ‘I’ve got two kids—not much younger than you. I’d love to be able to do that. No bosses. Just work when I need to and keep driving all round Australia.’
‘Not just Australia. I’ve been to England too,’ he said proudly. He hadn’t achieved much else in his life so far, I thought.
‘Not much surf there,’ said Brian. ‘Why England?’
‘I was trying to trace someone,’ Jason said, his voice wavering. I remembered Earl Richardson’s first wife had, quite wisely, I thought, gone back to the UK. Must have been hard for Jason—feeling dumped by his mother when he was just a youngster.
‘Your grandmother bring you up?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘That must have been hard sometimes.’
The grunt he answered with might have covered a lot of ground. It could have meant my mother didn’t want me, nor did my father or his new wife.
We sat in silence for a while.
‘So did you trace your mother?’ I asked.
Jason looked away and shook his head. ‘She didn’t want to be found,’ he said, voice sad, muted. ‘At least, not by me.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I just know it. Okay? She didn’t answer any of my letters. I found an old aunt who said she’d had a letter from her and that she’d run off with some man. She was entitled to a new life,’ he added.
‘And a baby is entitled to his mother,’ I said. ‘You must have resented Tianna Richardson for replacing your mother.’
He shrugged again, either with bravado or genuine indifference. ‘I did okay.’
‘So how were your relations with Tianna?’ Brian asked.
‘They were fine. How often do I have to tell you?’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to have a chat to your grandmother.’
Jason sat back and looked at me. ‘That necklace,’ he said. ‘I should tell you. Actually, Gran didn’t exactly give it to me.’
‘You pinched it?’ I asked.
‘It’s not like that.’
‘Then how is it?’ Brian said.
‘Gran was going to give it away anyway. It’s not like she wanted it.’
‘You still haven’t answered me,’ I reminded him. ‘Did you pinch it?’
‘Tianna loved that set. She was always on about it.’ Another of his shrugs. ‘I took it. I thought it might have been valuable if she was after it.’ He looked at me. ‘It was my mum’s.’
I frowned. ‘Why would your mother give it to her mother-in-law?’
‘How would I know? I took the necklace last time I visited Gran’s. From the drawer.’
‘We still need to talk to your grandmother, Jason,’ said Brian. ‘We need to confirm if you’re telling the truth now.’
‘She’s not here at the moment,’ he said.
‘Let’s check that out, shall we?’
Brian left the room to make a call and came back a few minutes later. ‘No one’s answering at her number, but I’ll be sending someone over later to check it out,’ he said.
‘See? I told you. She’s away for a few days. Visiting a friend. She’s often away.’
‘Okay, Jason,’ said Brian. ‘You’ve already tried some bullshit story on me. We’ll be checking to make sure if the necklace was in the possession of your grandmother. What if you didn’t get it from her at all? What if Tianna already had the stuff? And you had a big fight with your stepmother? Or maybe you were pinching it from your stepmother except she returned unexpectedly and you killed her. Is that what happened?’
‘No way! Like I told you, I pinched it from Gran’s place!’
‘We have a witness who recalls you having a terrible fight with your stepmother,’ Brian said. ‘And your father too. You didn’t get on with either of them, did you? You better stay in town, Jason. Until we’ve checked that what you’ve been telling us is true—that the necklace came from your grandmother’s place,’ he added.
‘How’s your father?’ I asked.
Again the shrug.
‘You don’t get along with him, do you?’ I said.
He didn’t answer me, remaining silent.
Brian told him he could go. ‘But don’t leave town, son, until we’ve spoken to your grandmother,’ he said.
Jason got up and hurried outside and over to his van. I watched through the window as he jumped in and slammed the door shut, long blond hair shining. I felt sorry for the kid, abandoned by his mother, neglected by his father, lost and wandering around surfing.
I stayed with Brian and had an instant coffee with him in the meal room while he organised notes into various folders. I flipped one open and glanced at the contents: photographs, print-outs of statements signed by those who’d made them. I pulled out Earl Richardson’s and glanced at it.
I spent the evening watching television until about ten o’clock then I went to bed. I did not know anything about my wife’s death until I was woken by the police at four-thirty in the morning.