The Fourth Season (7 page)

The university year had officially begun in the third week of February. At the front of the file was a dated set of lectures on marine biodiversity. I flicked through bricks and notes written in Laila's small, backsloping hand. A plain manila folder at the end, with no name or identification of any kind, contained two single sheets of paper. On one was a diagram downloaded from a website. My heart beat faster as I recognised a computer-generated image of an underwater canyon. Contour lines and depths were marked. Someone, I assumed it had been Laila, had drawn a circle with a red felt-tipped pen, not around the canyon, but a patch of seabed in the top right-hand corner of the diagram.

On the next page were the words ‘sediment flow' and the date 1836, followed by a question mark and a pencil sketch. This sketch comprised a horizontal line, underneath which a number of straight lines ran downwards at a forty-five degree angle, with a single line about the middle heavier and more distinct than the rest. On the left-hand side, the angled lines were overlaid by more horizontal ones, so that half the drawing appeared as a kind of crosshatch, and the other half not.

I turned both sheets of paper over. Nothing was written on the back of the first, but on the back of the second was a sentence in ­quotation marks.

‘In 1971 a springtide combined with a severe gale uncovered a layer of sediment leaving structural timbers visible.'

. . .

After Peter came home from soccer practice, he and Kat made a noisy, messy start to dinner, Kat thrilled to be sharing the responsibility. Neither asked where Ivan was, and I had the feeling that they'd agreed on this; that they'd talked about it and agreed not to ask me questions whose answers I couldn't hope to know.

Peter turned his music up full volume, while I shut my office door and went back to the reports Don Fletcher had sent me, mulling over whether Laila's diagram might be part of what was called a swath map, made from sonar beams that had been bounced to the sea floor and back.

I turned my attention to the red circle in the corner, wondering why it had been singled out. I studied the words ‘sediment flow' next to the date. Could they refer to layers of sediment under the seabed? I pondered the connection between the diagram and sketch, reminding myself that they didn't
have
to be connected, and noticed something else. The layers didn't match. It looked as though something had fallen in on top of something else.

‘Mum!' called Katya, her voice full of pride. ‘Mum! Dinner's ready!'

The three of us ate together, and I praised every bit of the dinner. Again, Kat and Peter were careful not to ask after Ivan. I saw the looks that passed between them and told myself I must respect their strategies for coping, even as I expected them to make allowances for mine. A tightening of Katya's black eyebrows signalled a determination ­comparable to her brother's and a decision to follow his lead.

Peter said he'd do his homework in his room, and Kat followed him, with her drawing pad tucked under one arm.

I was midway through the dishes when Rita Thomas phoned to say that Rowan had turned up at the cafe again.

I made sure that Peter felt comfortable about me going out, and that the doors and windows were all locked. Kat was quick to say they would be fine, too quick in my opinion, but I was keen to get to the cafe and swallowed my misgivings.

Nine

Rita was behind the counter, looking tired and worried.

Rowan frowned when he spotted me. I thought it best to wait until he'd finished whatever he was doing, but kept him in my line of sight while I asked after Owen.

‘He's taken poorly,' Rita said.

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘I should be home looking after him, but he wanted me to come in here and open up. He says we'll lose our customers otherwise.'

Rita pressed her lips together. I felt doubly grateful that she'd taken the trouble to ring me when she had so much on her mind.

Rita noticed my expression and gave me a thin smile. ‘Owen said to be sure and let you know. He has to go into hospital for an operation. He'll be there for at least a week. I'll have to close then. I don't see how I can manage, running back and forth.'

‘I could take over for you,' I said.

Rita gave me a startled look. ‘There wouldn't be much money in it.'

‘That's okay.'

‘At least we wouldn't lose our regulars.' Rita sounded a bit more optimistic. ‘I'll tell Owen. We'll have to talk about it. But thanks anyway for offering.'

I'd been forgetting to watch Rowan, who pushed his chair back suddenly, dropped some coins on the counter and made swiftly for the door.

I caught up with him to ask, ‘The car you saw Laila getting into, how big was it?'

Rowan walked faster, throwing back over his shoulder, ‘I don't know.'

‘Did you see who was driving?'

‘No!'

Rowan was young and fit and pissed off, but I wasn't going to let him get away. ‘Did you notice anybody else in the street?'

He stopped and faced me. ‘What?'

‘Think back, please. The street can't have been deserted.'

Rowan stared at me, a pointed stare for someone with such ­cushioned features.

‘What was the weather like?' I asked him.

‘What?' he said again, sarcastically this time.

‘The weather. Was it raining? Fine?'

‘I don't remember.'

‘Do your parents know where you are?'

Rowan made a strangled sound as though he was trying to say ‘yes', and took off in the direction of the shopping centre.

His legs were longer than mine, but I was used to pursuing people who didn't want to be pursued. ‘Do your parents know how much time you spend at the internet cafe?' I called out. ‘Do they know why?'

The street light accentuated Rowan's angry frown. Shadows squashed his eyebrows down into his cheeks. He looked suddenly much older, a man got up in boys' clothing, a deceitful person who hid his age beneath a teenager's preoccupations.

‘It was nine-thirty on a fine evening,' I said patiently, catching up to him. ‘You stood on the footpath. Laila had just left the cafe. You saw her get into a car.'

Rowan cleared his throat. ‘People were going in and out of the
Tradies
.' I knew he was at last trying to remember. ‘The lady who brings Owen his hot chocolate. I saw her.'

The woman Owen had called Pam had been walking slowly up the
Tradies
steps. Rowan described her as ‘old and small with frizzed up hair.' I asked who else he'd seen, and he replied that he wasn't thinking about other people.

‘Which way did the car go?'

After a moment's hesitation, Rowan said, ‘Towards Civic.'

‘Maybe someone else was watching. Maybe one of the guys who came out of the cafe just after you did saw it too.'

Rowan stared at me in silence in response to this.

‘Which one was it?' I asked.

‘Not from inside. But you're right. Somebody
was
watching. He was staring at the car like I was.'

‘From the footpath?'

Rowan nodded. He'd caught no more than a glimpse of the figure, but was confident that it had been a man's. He'd been of average height and build. It was his attitude of careful watchfulness that struck Rowan as he re-created the scene for me, the man's stillness caught by the outer reaches of a street light. Rowan didn't know whether or not he'd followed Laila. He hadn't seen him get into a car.

I walked with Rowan till we reached Dickson swimming pool. He turned right to circle it after I'd thanked him and said goodnight. I felt bad for pestering him, but only for a moment. He'd brought me a step closer to the man who might, just possibly, have been Laila's lover, and her murderer as well.

Walking home, I thought about phoning the police, knowing that I should, but worried about being grilled about Ivan all over again. I put the decision aside to think about in the morning.

. . .

When I got home, there was still no sign of Ivan. Kat was sitting up in bed and Peter was reading to her. I kissed my daughter goodnight, then spoke to Peter in the kitchen, keeping my voice low. Would he mind if I went out again, for an hour or so?

Peter said he wouldn't. ‘We'll be fine, Mum.'

I knew I ought to tell him I'd spoken to Rowan again, to prepare and warn him, but I put this decision off as well, for another day.

. . .

Every light in the house that had been Laila's blazed out through uncurtained windows, or windows whose curtains had been pulled right back. A Radiohead CD was so loud you could hear it from half way up the street.

The kitchen sink was full of unwashed dishes. The tape was still across the doorway to Laila's room, and Tim leant against it, staring over my left shoulder as though he suspected that I hadn't come alone. You're putting on a show for me, I thought, but you've been in there recently. You go in and out when it suits you.

There was still no sign of Phoebe, and Tim seemed to have adjusted to living in the house alone, to have acquired a jealous and possessive attitude to it.

Tim made me impatient; that night he made me feel that I couldn't be bothered with a diplomatic approach. He gave no sign that he knew two pages were missing from the file hidden in the laundry. Perhaps he hadn't checked it, or perhaps he hadn't been the one to take the file from Laila's room. But if not Tim, then who?

He spoke through dry, cracked lips. ‘You know, Laila and me—we'd been friends since first year. We were as close as—as any friends could be. But she used me, just like she used Ivan and all those other men.'

‘What other men?'

Tim shrugged. ‘That old guy, her lecturer, for one.'

‘Brian Fitzpatrick?'

Tears came to Tim's eyes. ‘I don't know,' he said.

‘Did Laila talk about Fitzpatrick?'

‘Not much, just that he was a good person, stuff like that.'

‘Do you think they were having an affair?'

‘Maybe. I think she
was
having an affair with someone. I mean a married man.'

Tim sounded angry and I sensed that, though he didn't like me any more than I liked him, he wanted to talk, to get some of his anger out.

It was little things, he said, the build-up of little things over a period of time. There'd be a phone call. Laila's voice would change. Her phone would ring when they were doing something together, and she'd move away to answer it.

When I asked why the calls had to be from someone she was romantically involved with, Tim didn't answer straight away. Once, he told me, Laila's phone had rung in the middle of his birthday dinner, and she'd left the table. He made this sound like the worst of insults. Another time, in Phoebe's car, she'd said, “I can't talk now” and then “me too”.'

He'd seen Laila and Brian Fitzpatrick together at demonstrations and social functions. He'd seen the way she looked at him. Other men's attentions Laila had ignored, or else she'd strung them along while they were useful to her. Fitzpatrick had been different. But he didn't want to think it was Fitzpatrick, not a man whose politics and courage he respected.

‘It wasn't Ivan, anyway. Laila wouldn't stoop that low.'

The insult didn't touch me. I was beyond feeling insulted.

‘Other men?' I asked again.

Tim shrugged again and said he didn't know of names. When I asked if he'd ever gone with Laila to an internet cafe in Dickson, he looked blank and shook his head.

I felt that the two of us were balanced on either side of a steep drop. If I could cause trouble for Tim over the hidden folder, he could cause trouble for Ivan, playing up his quarrel with Laila the next time he spoke to the police.

‘You went into Laila's room the night she was killed,' I said.

Tim looked as though he was going to deny it, then he nodded briefly, as though telling me no longer mattered. ‘I didn't find anything.'

‘What did you expect to find?'

‘I don't know. Her smell, some
feeling
of her. I don't
know
!'

I waited. ‘If you must know, I was looking for a note,' Tim said. ‘Of course I didn't find one. I picked up the mouthpiece of her—you know, of the tank. I—I kissed it.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it was her—because she'd—I was frightened! What's the matter with you, Sandra? Don't you even
care
? Ivan and I spent hours waiting at the lake, not knowing whether Laila was alive or dead, whether it was really her, or some other girl. Then we had to wait again for hours at the station. They let us go home finally, but every minute I kept expecting a knock on the door. It was my last chance!'

When I asked Tim if he'd taken anything from Laila's room, he shook his head; but I knew for sure this time that he was lying.

He told me he wanted me to leave, and I didn't argue. I wasn't afraid, or even nervous in Tim's presence, but I knew I'd get no more from him just then. Maybe when he discovered that the sketch and diagram were missing, he'd come after me.

. . .

That night, I got out of bed to check on Katya twice, then told myself to stop it, or I'd wake her with my fussing. I didn't risk going into Peter's room, but listened at his door.

I lay awake replaying first my conversation with Tim, then the scene Rowan had described to me. If Rowan had noticed a man watching Laila get into a car, then others might have spotted him, including, for instance, whoever had picked Laila up.

I wondered if Laila had used her time on Don Fletcher's computer looking for particular facts or references, and if discrediting the government had been a kind of side benefit. It was a possibility I hadn't considered before. I wondered if she'd targeted, or attempted to target, all those organisations who'd been involved in the marine park proposals; CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, the National Oceans Office: not to mention the conservation groups, the oil and gas and fishing industries. I imagined the response I'd get if I started ringing them and asking if they'd had problems with a hacker. It occurred to me that Don might have kept drafts of the reports whose final versions he had sent me, versions that might be different from the final ones. Bill Abenay had said he'd help me with the technical stuff—at least he hadn't said he wouldn't. But did I want Bill Abenay to know what I'd found?

Ivan woke me up by turning on the bedroom light, bringing in the cool night air.

There was a flush along his high Russian cheekbones, a strong smell of alcohol on his breath. Ivan didn't drink. His father had died an alcoholic.
Ivan didn't drink.