The Fourth Season (13 page)

I'd almost forgotten about Laila's second housemate. The fact that she'd suddenly popped into my head might mean something, I thought.

Phoebe answered her phone on the second ring. She said she was planning to pick up her stuff from the house next morning, and I could meet her there.

Sixteen

Phoebe seemed very young, younger than the Laila I was trying to understand, and almost a different generation from Tim, for whom grief built on a gravity I guessed had always been there.

She led me through to her room, while I imagined Ivan in the house with Laila. Jealousy welled up. I caught my breath and steadied it.

Apart from three cardboard boxes and a case in the middle of the floor, there didn't seem to be much sign of packing. Phoebe's room was neat. I'd expected clothes tossed on the bed and piles of books. But was Phoebe a reader? I had no idea.

She said over her shoulder, ‘I've got so little stuff. You'd think it wouldn't take me more than half an hour.'

When I asked if she'd like a hand, Phoebe was swift in her refusal. ‘Oh, no. Why don't you sit there and we'll talk.'

She pointed to a chair beside the window, then pulled open a drawer under the single bed and took out some sheets, explaining that none of the furniture was hers. The desk belonged to Tim's brother and the bed had been Laila's.

‘Laila had two beds?'

‘She bought a double bed and said I could use this one.'

Phoebe agreed to show me Laila's room, but looked nervous. I didn't know whether Tim had talked to her about my earlier visits. It seemed reasonable to assume he had, but she didn't seem suspicious, only concerned about the time.

‘I'm expecting Laila's parents, actually. They rang a little while ago. They want to come and get her things this morning. I'd like to be finished before they arrive.'

Since time was obviously short, I decided to dispense with preliminary questions and to jump straight in.

‘Did Laila have a boyfriend?'

Phoebe made a dismissive noise, bending to another drawer. ‘You're married to that Russian guy, aren't you?'

‘Not legally married.'

‘You live together, right? I'm sorry if it shocks you to hear it, but she blew him off.'

Phoebe wasn't at all sorry. I wondered if she'd been leading up to what she hoped would be a revelation. She projected sensitivity, but underneath I glimpsed an altogether harder person.

‘Was Laila a lesbian?' I asked.

Phoebe laughed, straightening up and squinting at me, as though grateful to discover that I had a sense of humour.

‘Anything's possible. But that? I really doubt it.'

Phoebe continued folding clothes into a case, while telling me she had not been close to Laila. She doubted whether anybody had. Laila had been a ‘very private person'. Tim believed that Laila had confided in him, but Tim was delusional. From the few times Tim had mentioned Phoebe in my hearing, it didn't seem as though he liked, or had a high opinion of her. Phoebe was giving me the strong impression that this low regard was mutual.

Laila had mostly talked to her about stuff to do with the house, Phoebe told me. They'd discussed music as well, both liking Radiohead and the John Butler trio.

When I asked Phoebe if she'd noticed a change in Laila over the last couple of months, she replied, apparently without needing to think, ‘Laila was excited about something. She quarrelled with Tim over it. Don't ask me what because I don't know.'

Phoebe's expression changed, becoming sad and inward looking. ‘I hate shouting and fights,' she said. ‘I had enough of them while I was growing up. One night I heard the front door slam. And then later on, when I went to get a cup of tea, Laila was standing in the kitchen staring out the window. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn't tell me. I made tea for her as well and we took it into the living room. What did we do then? Oh, yes. We watched this program on telly. I thought Laila might talk to me about what was going on with her and Tim, but she didn't. If Laila didn't want to talk about something, there was no way you could make her.'

When I asked what the program had been about, Phoebe replied, ‘Some shipwreck or other.'

‘What was the name of the ship?'

‘Mary something, I think. It was like really old. Oh yeah, that's right—it was when the English and the French were fighting. Anyway, like
hundreds
of years old and it was stuck in the mud in the middle of a river bed. And this diver or someone saw a bit of it sticking out, and then finally they pulled it up and it's in some museum.'

‘Mary what?'

‘I don't remember,' Phoebe said.

‘Did Laila ever talk to you about diving in Bass Strait?'

‘Bass Strait? Isn't it too deep? Laila had some weird ideas, but I don't think that was one of them. Actually, she went on one trip that I remember. To Lake Jindabyne. Apparently there's a whole town up there got buried underwater.'

Laila had gone to Jindabyne with ‘one of her greenie friends'. Phoebe said that Tim would probably remember who. ‘There was some sort of accident. I know that they had words about it. Tim and Laila were always having
words
.'

‘What about diving instructors?'

‘What about them?'

‘Did Laila ever mention any?'

Phoebe screwed her nose up. ‘Well, she did her training in Victoria. She would have done, wouldn't she? Sorry I'm so vague. Is all of this because of your partner? Is that why you're asking all these questions?'

I said it had begun with that and asked if Laila had referred to any diving instructors by name. Phoebe couldn't remember if she had.

The doorbell rang. ‘Shit,' she said. ‘That'll be them.'

Phoebe disappeared and returned leading a woman with Laila's delicate, strong bones, and a man so pale his face looked blue.

The man cleared his throat, then said, ‘Excuse us, please. We've filled in a form at the post office, but if any letters do arrive for Laila, can you please forward them to this address?'

He thrust a slip of paper towards Phoebe, adding, with a swift glance in my direction, ‘Come on, Belle.'

I could see that the woman had made an effort, put on a certain kind of armour, but her lipstick was smudged and some had transferred itself to her teeth. Her eyes looked like two muddy puddles that some small child or dog had run through, making shapeless footprints. Though Laila's mother had painted her face bravely, now she didn't care if two strange women, who might, for all she knew, have been close to her daughter, saw the ruin of it.

As Phoebe was showing me out, I turned back to ask where she'd spent the night of Laila's murder.

‘You're not the police, you know,' Phoebe said crossly, shutting the door with a small sharp click.

. . .

I tried Tim's phone, but it was switched off. I made notes, bolding the points I wished to raise with him.

I hadn't warmed to Phoebe. It was partly the sense I had that she interpreted Laila's death only in terms of her own responses to it. She'd been jealous of Laila and remained jealous of her. But didn't that apply to me as well?

I googled ‘shipwrecks Mary' and came up with the four hundred and sixty year old
Mary Rose
, pride of Henry VIII's fleet. The story of her sinking in Portsmouth Harbour in 1545, and her eventual discovery made interesting reading. The ship was first found in 1836 when a fishing net got caught, and a diver by the name of John Deane recovered timbers, guns and longbows; but the location was forgotten after Deane stopped work. Then in the mid 1960s a Professor Edgerton found an acoustical anomaly using a device called a side-scan sonar. That anomaly eventually revealed the warship.

I got out Laila's diagram and sketch and pored over them again. Anomaly was a good word. To my mind it well described the mismatched layers Laila had sketched, under the top horizontal line which I took to be the seabed.

. . .

‘I already told you,' Tim said when I finally got him on the phone. ‘I never went diving with Laila. Never had the opportunity. Scuba diving was for rich kids, not inner-city rats like me.'

I sighed, annoyed with Tim for always bringing the question back to himself, then asked why Laila had chosen to study in Canberra.

‘Good university, good courses. And it was only for three years. She grew up on the coast. On a wild bit of the coast, in Victoria. That's what got her interested in conservation.'

‘I guess Laila made use of what diving opportunities she could. Like that weekend at Lake Jindabyne.'

‘What?'

‘Who took her up there? Who did she go with?'

Tim made an exasperated noise in his throat and said, ‘The old prof could dream, couldn't he?'

When I questioned Tim about the accident, he told me Laila had come back from Jindabyne with a cold that had turned into bronchitis. That didn't sound like an accident to me, but I let it go when I realised that Tim couldn't explain any further.

‘Old Abenay should have taken better care of her,' was his summing up.

Then Tim said it had occurred to him that Laila wanted to meet someone at Lake Jindabyne—that's why she let her old besotted ­lecturer take her up there.

‘Meet her lover, you mean?'

‘Maybe it suited him,' Tim said. ‘Maybe he rented a unit up there, or they met at a motel. It's far enough away from Canberra for him not to be recognised. Look, I'm only guessing. But if he suggested it, then she needed someone to take her, or borrow a car. Laila didn't like driving. She hardly ever drove.'

But she'd borrowed Bronwyn's car the night she was killed. Another anomaly. I wondered if Tim was thinking the same thing. I also ­wondered if the ‘he' referred to Brian Fitzpatrick.

Laila had been nervous before she left for that trip to the lake and happy as a lark afterwards, Tim said, even though she'd become quite ill.

‘I bought painkillers and Strepsils and made her a hot drink.' Tim's voice softened as he recalled these details, how, for once, Laila had needed him and welcomed his attentions. ‘She slept on and off all day. The next morning she was worse and I persuaded her to ring the doctor.'

After I'd let Tim reminisce about his nursing care for a couple more minutes, I asked if Laila had ever mentioned a TV program about the
Mary Rose
.

‘What?'

‘A program Laila watched with Phoebe, one night after the two of you had had an argument.'

‘What
bloody
right has Phoebe got to—'

‘Phoebe didn't tell tales or complain. I'm just interested in knowing if Laila talked to you about the program. According to Phoebe, Laila got quite excited about it.'

‘That'd be right,' Tim said savagely.

‘What would be?'

‘Phoebe would know what pressed her buttons and I wouldn't.' There was a noise in the background, and he said, ‘I have to go.'

. . .

I made some more notes. Tim had sounded genuinely ignorant of Laila's interest in the
Mary Rose
. Why hadn't Laila been blessed with a housemate who took notice of details, and asked pertinent questions? But perhaps it was pedantic of me to ask myself this. An observant housemate couldn't help her now. If Tim's suspicions had firmed up regarding Senator Fitzpatrick as the most likely candidate for Laila's secret lover, then he might have made up his mind and passed these suspicions on to the police. If Brook wasn't furious with me, I thought, I could call in and give him an update. It would be like old times.

I walked over to the pool, recalling DC Erickson's warning to stay away if I knew what was good for me. Clearly, I did not.

I stood still, staring through the fence. There didn't seem to be anyone about. Superimposed on that flat brownish water I saw the comma shape of Laila's body, the slight, abbreviated curve of it, form of a question mark without the dot, the red waistcoat that in daylight would have shouted, ‘Look at me!'

A strong woman could have killed Ben Sanderson, with the advantage of surprise. Odd how I had no trouble picturing Laila's body in that murky water, while Ben Sanderson's eluded me.

Suddenly, the question of timing seemed crucial, and one I'd never properly considered up till then. Two corpses in dark water, one found at nine PM, the other not until the morning after it had been dumped in the pool. Did this mean that the second time the strategy had worked, giving the killer time for whatever task needed to be completed before the body was discovered? But why go to the trouble of murder? Why not steal instead, if it was documents the killer was after? Because despatching these two had given their murderer pleasure. Whoever had wielded that weapon, or weapons, had enjoyed it, enjoyed robbing two young people of their pride and beauty, and would enjoy killing again.

. . .

Brook rang as I was walking home. I realised I'd been waiting for his call.

What did I think I was doing? Wasn't it enough that Ivan was a suspect? Did I have to go and take money from
another one
?

I wanted to shout at Brook, belabour him with a different question. Where else was money going to come from? Was it going to fall out of the trees?

Brook lectured me, while I looked around for somewhere to sit down, my knees suddenly feeling watery and weak.

He stated the obvious, which was that I was far too close to the case as it was, and that it could well be in Don Fletcher's interests to immerse me in it further. He called my behaviour irresponsible and stupid.

I felt dirty after Brook had hung up on me; scared and dirty and bedraggled.

A black-fingered wind, that had been gathering strength since the night of Laila's death, drew closer; I felt its fingers on the back of my neck. I knew that, if it was within Brook's power to take my children from me and put them somewhere safe, he would. He would go to those lengths and say it was his duty. I tried to hate him then, just for a moment, but I couldn't.

Asking questions was the fence I built against panic and despair. But how could Don have known this? How could he have known that his proposal would be attractive to me, while a person with a tad more common-sense would have said no right away?