Death Delights (12 page)

Genevieve was about as bad as she could be, screaming down the line that I’d destroyed her life and taken both her children from her. What did I plan to do next? she shrieked. Completely destroy her? Because I might as well. She also had some choice things to say about Alix in Canberra. Despite the rules of never admitting to anything, I’d been stupid enough to admit to this once months ago, when she confronted me with mere hearsay from a mutual acquaintance. I remained icily polite, but my hard-won control only enraged her more.

‘When are you going to stop being so bloody superior,’ she screamed, ‘and join the human race?’

I said goodbye and that I’d ring her back when she was more able to discuss things rationally. I was very aware of Greg in the erstwhile spare room, making space for his things. And I was shaking a bit when I put the phone down. I know I’ve been often remiss as a husband and father, but the level of her venom took me by surprise. At least, I thought, the gloves are off in her corner now and I won’t have to endure any more of those awful visits with her in her slinky dress and perfume trying to get me into bed again.

Greg walked out as I hung up. ‘Why does she have to be like that?’ he said. ‘Why does she have to see everything in the worst light? Why can’t she just…?’

I walked over to my son and put my hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes. There was nothing I could say about his mother in that moment that would have helped. ‘How about I take you down the street and shout you a proper meal?’ I said.

We walked down the street to the waterside Italian restaurant where Greg became engaged with the blackboard menu. I was thinking of Genevieve’s accusation of superiority. Fifteen years in AA had taught me that I didn’t have to react with anger to an angry person. If Genevieve saw this as superiority, there was little I could do, so I dismissed the thought as we sat down at a table on the veranda. It was a still night and the canvas awnings were rolled up high, allowing a good view across the bay. The derricks and cranes of the airport were etched against the sky like crouching skeletal creatures. The conversation with my estranged wife had upset me so I didn’t feel hungry and ordered an entree which more than served me, but my son, with the endless appetite of seventeen, had a huge meal: lasagne with lots of garlic bread and a side salad that he didn’t eat. We didn’t talk much until my coffee arrived with Greg’s lemon squash. With the straw still in his mouth, Greg was checking out the other diners in the restaurant, and I saw him staring at a family at a table across the room, mother, father and two kids, almost the same as our fragmented family might have been. They were animated, talking and laughing, taking genuine pleasure in each other. I glanced away, heartsick.

‘I want you to tell me,’ Greg said, ‘exactly what happened the night Jass ran away. Exactly.’ He put the lemon squash down. ‘You can tell me now, can’t you?’

‘Greg, it was pretty bad. I can’t see much point in going over it. Why do you want to know?’

‘Because Jass is my sister and what happened is what happened. And I
should
know.’

I stared at him, the sound of his words echoing in my ears, activating memories I’d thought were lost forever. I remembered saying almost the same phrases, word for word once. About Rosie. I could almost see Charlie smiling his ‘told you so’ smile.

‘What? What is it, Dad?’ my son was saying, concerned. But I still wasn’t sure where to start, or how honest I should be. ‘Did Mum hit her?’ Greg was asking.

A few weeks prior to that night, Greg had grabbed Genevieve’s arm as it swung back in an arc to strike Jacinta across the face. I’d heard the altercation and walked in to see my wife clamped tightly by her strong son, screaming, ‘How dare you raise your hand to me!’ I remember thinking at the time that she’d come tops in drama.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘she didn’t actually hit her.’

‘What do you mean, “actually”?’

‘Your mother—,’ I started to say, when the mobile rang. I swore and grabbed it with immense relief, hurrying outside, aware of Greg’s eyes on my back.

I felt sure it would be Genevieve, conjured up by this conversation about her. But it was Staro, overwrought and over-excited.

‘Frank Carmody’s heading into the middle of Centennial Park,’ he said, speaking too quickly, ‘and I’m right on him. Hurry up and get here.’ He told me his bearings. He was approaching the straight palm-lined avenue that bisects the park into two hemispheres.

‘Staro,’ I said, ‘be careful. Wait outside for me or Bob to get there. I don’t think you should go in any further.’

‘But I can’t lose him,’ he said. ‘Deadset he’s meeting someone.’ His voice had a raw edge and I knew he’d be feeling strung out. I was concerned.

‘Remember what this killer does, Staro. I don’t think you should go in there. You’ve done a great job. Now go home.’

‘I’ll be right,’ said Staro too brightly and rang off.

I was aware of Greg standing behind me with the bill. I paid and we left, hurrying home past the street lights.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked as I unlocked the house and let him in.

‘Work,’ I said.

He gave me a very particular look and I realised that having my son living with me was not going to be straightforward. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this is urgent. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

‘Yeah yeah yeah,’ he said and I knew he was angry with me. To my astonishment, I felt a powerful rage rise up in me and for a second, I had to fight an urge to lash out at him. This shocked me so much that I went over and slammed his door shut and in the time that bought me, I was able to bring things under control again.

I drove up fast to the York Road entrance of Centennial Park, still rattled by the fury that Greg had provoked in me. The elaborate Victorian gates are closed to cars in the evening so
I hurried through the pedestrian gate, clutching my heavy torch.

Centennial Park was dedicated to the people of Sydney in the nineteenth century and although developers would love to get their hands on it, and there’s been some open land lost, in the main, it provides hundreds of hectares of parkland, native and exotic trees, wetlands and waterlily lakes with islands for waterbirds to nest on and raise their young with reasonable safety. There are also formal gardens and a central drive lined with ancient, dying palms. It’s a magic piece of Sydney by day, with large family groups enjoying picnics and barbecues around the lakes, and youngsters rolling the circuit on in-line skates, horse-lovers practising dressage and lunging in the central paddocks, or walking and trotting round the circuit, as well as walkers and talkers and babies in strollers. In the old days Bob and I had investigated some very nasty murders in the same park. All sorts of things go on—kids losing their virginity, married men having homosexual liaisons, adulterous lovers sneaking out to rendezvous while they pretend to walk the dog, and even the odd intrepid jogger who either doesn’t mind, or isn’t aware of what else is going on in the shadows around him. Or, more dangerously, her.

I’d rung Bob from the car to tell him what was happening.

‘I’ll be right there,’ he’d said. ‘Looks like he’s going to meet someone.’

So now I loped along as quickly as I could in the starlight to the place Staro had designated. I’m not easily spooked, but I had to admit that the blackness of the huge Moreton Bay figs with their buttressed and snaky trunks and the weird alarm calls of waterfowl disturbed by something made the hair on the back of my neck start to prickle. Staro’s whispered message on the mobile now told me that Carmody was standing, apparently waiting, near the stone summer house in the middle of the road that runs through the park’s centre. Further phone contact was out of the question because of my increasing proximity to the summer house and the deep silence of the night, and I wished I’d taken the time to dig out a certain prohibited item I knew was packed away in one of my cartons at home.

Above me, the sky was clear with a waning moon low in the west ahead of me. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could see reasonably well now, so I increased my pace, thinking of who might be in the long shadows and impenetrable blackness of the trees. I jumped with fright when a startled plover screamed, ‘
Shit shit shit!’
and its partner joined in, their high-pitched calls shattering the silence.

So when the first of the terrible screams started, I didn’t recognise them for a second. When I did, I froze for a moment, immobilised by fear, shock and uncertainty. The shrieks were coming from the central area where Staro had said Frank Carmody was waiting. An eerie night breeze rustled the leaves of the palms above me and I started running as fast as I could. Never in my life had I been at a crime scene while the offence was being committed and it was years since I’d been to one at all. And back in those days, I had an armed partner with me and the knowledge that back-up was available. Here, I was apparently alone in the dark in the middle of deserted parkland with Bob probably just pulling his trousers on a good five suburbs away.

I raced across the car bridge over the central pond, flashing my light ahead of me. At first, I could see only innocent lawns and garden beds, then the summer house and the closed-up ice-cream vans. ‘Stop!’ I called out as I ran closer, ‘police!’

The words sounded empty and stupid in the dark. I was close enough now to hear the sounds of a struggle and horrible choking noises.

‘Staro!’ I yelled, ‘Staro! What’s happening?’ There was no reply, just the dreadful sound that had fallen away to gasping sobs and, further away, the thud of running footsteps. Then the beam of my torch turned the corner of the northern side of the summer house and my body stopped automatically in shock at what I could see. In the same automatic state, I whipped out my mobile and dialled emergency. Carefully, I moved closer, finally squatting beside the wretched man, the smell of blood thick in my nostrils. I registered the sound of a motorbike revving up and then fading in the night. I stood up. ‘Staro?’ I yelled again.

I waited, but there was nothing. Just the now distant sound of the motorbike and soft, tentative night sounds returning after the explosion of violence.

Now all my attention was concentrated on the man slumped against the wall, his head and upper shoulders propped up, the rest of his body splayed out along the ground. His blood-soaked trousers revealed terrible gaping injuries and the dark flood surrounding his lower body was pooling and thickening. Eyes stretched wide in terror and shock and his mouth also gaped in a silent scream. I could see a slight rippling movement in his neck, but I knew it was all over for Frank Carmody. His body slumped in the deflated collapse of death. I stood, looking around, picking up the odours, the slight movements in air, the ambience of this red-hot crime scene. My skin prickled with goose bumps. A sense of dark and heavy hatred swirled around me like a miasma, infecting me, so that I swung around. But there was nothing to see, just the dim outline of the dark island in the middle of water only slightly less dense and black, the city stars above me and the distant hum of the traffic.

It seemed only minutes before that same dark place of death was brilliant with police lights, the video unit, photographers, paramedics, the scrambled voices of police and ambulance radios and one or two people from the papers. I’ve always said you can believe two things in the newspapers, the date and the price. But the press can be helpful in certain investigations and this was one of them. In the distance I could see Bob squatting beside the corpse, deep in conversation with Bradley Strachan. Journalist Merrilyn Heywood saw me and came over. ‘What can you tell me?’ she asked, with her notebook and pen ready.

‘I’m not the person you want,’ I told her. ‘You need to talk to the officer in charge. I’m just a blow-in really, doing a mate a favour.’

Merrilyn winked at me. She’s a nice woman and there’s always been a bit of chemistry between us. Merrilyn and another journalist had collaborated on a successful book a few years ago,
Portrait of Murder
, about a painter turned murderer, and I’d helped her with some of the scientific research. ‘Come on, Jack,’ she said. ‘Off the record. You can just be “reliable sources”.’

I shook my head. ‘I haven’t been back in town very long. I’ve got to keep sweet with these people. Give me a ring tomorrow and we’ll chat.’ I scribbled down my details and she took them, thanked me and walked away. I called after her. ‘And Merrilyn!’ She turned. ‘Make sure you do something to kill that wolf-man nonsense once and for all!’

She nodded and started walking away. I was on my way to catch up with Bob when it was my turn to swing round as I heard Merrilyn call my name. I turned straight into a flashlight. As I swore and blinked, she lowered the camera. ‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said. ‘You’re a darling.’

Staro, it seemed, had vanished into thin air. I borrowed a police car and drove around for a while looking out for him and calling his name. But apart from the pool of brilliant light in the middle of the park, there seemed to be only the darkness of the night. I drove out to where he lived. His insomniac landlady let me into his room and I left a scribbled message for him on his bed to ring me as soon as possible and went home at three.

When I crept in, I saw that Greg had made a bed up for himself in the spare room and was sound asleep, curled up as he always was, on his right side, his hated curls springing everywhere. I covered him with a light open-weave blanket because the night was cool now, and stood looking down on him for a few seconds. I fell into my own bed, still in my underwear. I’ve been to too many violent crime scenes to let the images from the park keep me awake. I had no doubt Bradley Strachan would tell us it was the third killing in the series; I’d seen enough to know that. Then I was asleep.

•

Next morning, after giving Bob my statement about the night before, I drove to Staro’s address. The newspapers were having a field day with huge headlines about the third murder. I grabbed the
Telegraph
and glanced through it in the car. A photograph of the group around the covered body and a close-up of Carmody’s sister closing the door on reporters took up the bottom of the first page. Merrilyn Heywood’s by-line showed under a ‘Death Targets Sex Predators’ article. I’d read it later, I thought, as I knocked on Staro’s front door but he still wasn’t in and when the landlady let me into his room again, it was clear he hadn’t been there since my visit last night. My scribbled message lay where I’d left it, so I placated the landlady whose main interest was the rent, leaving another message for Staro to call me urgently. I felt some concern for him. But I reminded myself that he’d been looking after himself on the streets of Sydney for the last twenty-five years, starting from an age when most kids are still playing with Lego.

Merrilyn Heywood rang while I was driving to the Collins Club in Flinders Street. ‘I can tell you this much,’ I said, responding to her questions. ‘Looks like it’s the same person who killed Gumley and Nesbitt.’ I described the wounds I’d seen on the dead man the night before. ‘Same pattern of attack. Excision of the external genital organs.’

‘What was he doing at Centennial Park at that hour?’ Her voice was incredulous.

‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ I said.

‘An assignation?’ she suggested.

‘Quite possible,’ I said. ‘But not quite the assignation he was expecting.’

‘Do you think it could be a woman?’ Merrilyn asked. ‘Someone reclaiming the night?’

I considered. ‘Almost certainly it’s not a woman,’ I said. ‘The knife in general is not a woman’s weapon. Unless the first blow renders the victim inoperable, and that’s very unlikely with a stabbing injury, she’d have to deal with a very pissed-off person who is now also in pain and shock as well. Perhaps if there was evidence of bludgeoning first, knocking the target down and then using a knife, it might be possible. Or working with a partner. But there’s no evidence to suggest that.’

‘Surely the attacker would get blood all over himself in the process?’

‘I would think so,’ I agreed.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘There are steps he could take to prevent that.’

‘Like what?’

I shook my head. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘the crims are smart enough these days. I’m not going to give them any tips in the daily press.’

There was a silence as Merrilyn changed tack. ‘And anyone might come along and interrupt?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘He’s certainly a high-risk operator.’

‘I want to finish this story for tomorrow,’ she added. ‘Is there anything else? I heard a rumour that this last victim was being kept under surveillance.’

‘Oh?’ I said casually. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘You see,’ she said, ‘a lot of people out there think this killer is more like an agent of justice and not just the usual evil bastard.’

‘You’ll write a great story, Merrilyn,’ I said. ‘Good luck with it.’ And I rang off.

I was pulling up outside the Collins Club when Bob rang. ‘Can you come to the morgue?’ he said. ‘Bradley’s found something you should most definitely see.’ As Bob was speaking I suddenly saw Pigrooter’s bright aqua Bufori sports car, notorious around the Sydney traps, parked in a laneway. My target was here. I couldn’t leave just now.

‘Half an hour,’ I said to Bob, ‘I’ll be there.’

The Collins Club, for all its pretensions, bore the same stink of stale beer, stale cigarettes, disinfectant and last night’s perfume and chunder found in any bloodhouse. I looked around. Only hardened drinkers and shift workers were there at this time of day, but then I saw the massive figure of Pigrooter sitting at a table probably checking his shares in the newspaper. Another of his interests was hunting feral pigs. I’d heard it said in the old days that when the wild boars heard that Pigrooter was after them, they just rolled over and died of fright, to be gathered up like nuts in May. Pigrooter had a phenomenal memory bank. Which made his dismissal some years previously from the New South Wales Police puzzling. He’d been charged with accessing confidential government records, and thereby sinning against the Privacy Act. This was odd, because the way I’d heard it, Pigrooter didn’t need to break into records. He had the dirt on everyone and everything in town and I wondered why he hadn’t simply sold his memories. But right now, this nemesis of renegade pork was sitting with his customary eccentric drinks—black tea with cognac chaser—applying himself to the stockmarket report. He looked up as I approached and I saw in his shrewd eyes that he was searching his memory, and then locating me. Marty Cash made to get up, but the effort was too much. Instead, he put out his hand and pulled a chair out for me.

‘Jack McCain,’ he said. ‘Well, root me.’

I ordered a lemonade and we chatted a bit about the old days before he’d blotted his copybook and I’d become a scientist. And then I got to the point.

‘I was told,’ I said, ‘that she’d been working at the House of Bondage in Darlinghurst. I checked it out. Nothing doing.’

‘That was a bad business,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘losing your daughter like that. A lot of coppers’ daughters get into strife.’ There was a moment’s silence as we both got back on track. ‘So who gave you the info?’ Pigrooter wanted to know.

‘Anonymous tip-off,’ I told him, keeping Iona Seymour to myself.

‘Someone said your lass was working at the House of Bondage, eh?’ he said, looking away from me and out the window. I nodded. Pigrooter suddenly took a long drink of his tea, finished it, wiped his mouth and came in close. ‘Of course you know,’ he said, ‘that there are two establishments in Darlinghurst that cater to those hooked on the pleasure–pain complex? One of them much more extreme than the other. And they both go by the same name?’