Death Delights (34 page)

‘Bob told me what’s happened,’ said my brother. He went to my cupboards. ‘I know you can’t,’ he said, ‘but I need a drink.’

‘There’s some brandy or something in the left-hand cupboard,’ I said. ‘Just near the soy sauce.’ Charlie rooted around among the containers and found what he was looking for.

He poured himself a good one and came to where I was sitting. ‘You look wrecked,’ he said. ‘Have you slept?’

‘I’ve tried,’ I said. ‘But I can’t. I keep thinking of Greg. What if Kapit’s locked him up in somewhere only he knew about? Now the arsehole’s dead, Greg might starve to death in some bloody dump.’ The last words broke me and I slumped onto a chair, leaning my head on the table while the tears flowed over my face. I could sense Charlie standing behind me, and could just feel the touch of his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything or do anything and I was intensely grateful for that. He just let the storm come and go and when I could, I sat up, fished for my handkerchief and blew my nose.

‘I’ve never really got to know my kids,’ I said. ‘I was just starting with Greg. I went in the other night and told him all about Rosie. And what happened the night Jacinta ran away. I even told him I’d seen Rosie standing in my bedroom. I felt we were just getting to know each other,’ I said, ‘and now he’s gone.’

There was a silence and outside I could hear a bul-bul saying over and over,
‘That’s so typical, that’s so typical
.
’
Charlie took a long swig of the brandy and I could smell it. ‘Jass is lying in hospital in never-never land,’ I said. ‘Genevieve says she’s lost her kids. So have I.’ I felt completely helpless and hopeless. ‘I just don’t know what to do next.’

My mobile rang and I grabbed it. ‘It’s Jane,’ said the caller. ‘State Forensic Services. Bob thought you’d like to know we’ve got a result from the knife he sent over to us. I’m surprised you didn’t take it with you to Canberra,’ she added, reminding me again of how I’d compromised my scientific objectivity. ‘I’ve heard your lab’s better than ours.’ I mumbled some reason as she continued.

‘As you know, it had been wiped down but you know how it is with blood—all those microscopic pits and crevices on a forged blade. We found Frank Carmody all over it.’

That was the connection. The knife I’d found in Iona’s laundry cupboard had been used to kill Carmody in Centennial Park. Despite the misery of my present situation, I felt something like interest.

‘And,’ she said, ‘we also got an FU. A bonus trace of someone else. In a seam on the handle. We’re amplifying it now. I’ll let you know how we go. We could have a picture of the suspect for you.’

‘Please fax me the result.’ For some reason, I really wanted to see this killer’s graph.

‘If there is one,’ she reminded me. ‘It may turn out NR.’

Even with not reportable results, the amelogenin sex marker, the smallest segment of DNA used in profiling, is sometimes the only marker that can be determined, especially with trace samples. ‘I’d give a lot to know whether you get a single or double peak,’ I said, thinking of the female and male graph respectively.

‘Like I say,’ said Jane, ‘we mightn’t even get that.’

I gave her my fax number, but my thoughts kept swinging back to my son and I turned to my brother. ‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘Greg could be anywhere.’

Charlie looked at me and between us some terrible unsaid fear arose.

I stood up again. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do,’ I said, ‘if Greg dies.’

The phone rang again and it was Bob. ‘We’re talking to a bloke who says he saw Kapit at Darlinghurst with a youth who matches Greg’s description at around five o’clock. I just thought I’d let you know.’

‘I’m coming in,’ I said.

‘You’re not,’ said Bob. ‘You stay right out of this, please. Let me handle it. I’ll let you know the second we get anything.’ He rang off and I told Charlie.

‘Come and stay at my place,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay here.’ He looked around. A fine spray of arterial blood formed a red mist on the wall near the entrance to the living area. But I felt I had to be here, in the place I’d shared briefly with my son. I shook my head. ‘I can’t leave,’ I said.

‘Is there anything you want me to do?’ Charlie offered. ‘Anyone I could talk to?’

I racked my brains. I couldn’t think of anyone. ‘Could you wait here?’ I said, ‘while I go and visit Jacinta? Just in case. Greg might come here.’

My brother nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said.

As I reached the corner of Anzac Parade, a pair of magpies, locked in a squabbling black and white swastika, spun under the tyres of the car turning in front of me. One rose shrieking, the other floundered, dying, in the gutter.

I pulled up near the hospital and sat there a few minutes. I was staring out the window, unfocused, when I saw Genevieve walk to her car and drive away. Something moved in me and I felt some sort of compassion for her. She seemed such a distant person to me now, but she was still the mother of our children and I knew that whatever her faults, she was going through hell. More so than I was, because it was she who’d slept with the monster. Or, I had to admit to myself, another monster. Neither of us had very good taste. Perhaps we’d deserved each other.

In the room, Jass lay small and still under the pale mauve cover, her slow breathing almost imperceptible. I took her limp cool hand between both of mine and squeezed gently. ‘It’s me, Jass,’ I said, in a low tone near her ear. I’d heard from nurses experienced in death and the dying process that hearing was the last faculty to go as a human being slipped away into the great mystery and I wondered if my daughter’s mind was already somewhere near the border. ‘Jass,’ I continued, ‘I need your help. More than anything. I need you to tell me where John Kapit might take Greg. He took your brother, Jass. And Kapit’s dead now, so you’re safe from him. But Greg is still somewhere only Kapit knew about. We’ve searched and searched. Nobody seems to know anything. Can you help me, Jass? Maybe you have an idea where he is.’ I waited. It was like talking to myself. There was no response at all. The pale hand lay inert between my warm palms.

‘Please, Jass. Help me. I need your help. Our Reg needs your help.’ Something inspired me to say the next few words, despite my scientific scepticism. ‘Maybe where you are you can see things, hear things, know things that we don’t know about. Maybe you can help me from where you are with a bigger picture.’

I stayed holding Jacinta’s hand, feeling hopeless and wretched. There was nothing more I could do. I don’t know how long I sat there, listening to the sounds of the other small wards around me, the footsteps going backwards and forwards past Jacinta’s half-closed door, the smells and occasional sounds of laughter coming from the nurses’ station at the end of the corridor. Outside, sparrows chirruped in their ordinary way and the world went by as it does. I’d been looking past my daughter towards the windows but something drew my attention back to her face.

I exhaled sharply with excitement. Something was happening. Jacinta’s lips moved, stilled, then moved again, but it might have been just a nerve twitching unconsciously. She exhaled and this time, I was sure there was movement that wasn’t just a spasm. I waited, tense with excitement. I seized her hand tighter. ‘Jass! Jass, I’m here, darling. Talk to me. Help me.’

Her long exhalation seemed to be shaping a word. Her eyelids flickered, and opened and her large blue eyes moved slowly around, unfocused. I seized her other hand. ‘I’m here, Jass. It’s me, Dad.’ Her focus moved up as if to settle on me but she passed me by, slowly scanning the room. Then my daughter smiled straight past me at someone near the door. I swung around to see who it was coming into the room, concerned about confronting my estranged wife. But it wasn’t Genevieve. In fact, it wasn’t anyone. There was no one there at all, just the empty corridor beyond the door. I turned back to my daughter who was now moving her lips, trying to say something. ‘Jass!’ I said. ‘Jass!’ I was so shocked and startled at this development that I nearly tripped over the chair leg as I jumped to my feet. Jass was saying something, very soft, just one long whispered word—a long soft monosyllable, topped and tailed by her dry lips. I put my ear down to be closer and I heard what she was saying. Then her eyes closed again. I jumped to my feet and ran to find a nurse. A pretty dark-haired woman in a polka dot blouse looked up as I skidded to a halt.

‘My daughter,’ I said, ‘in room 407. She just spoke to me.’ Together we ran back to the room and I stepped aside to let the sister through. But Jacinta was lying as still and silent as she’d ever been and the nurse looked at me doubtfully. I was stung. ‘As true as I’m standing here,’ I said. ‘She opened her eyes, smiled at something and whispered a name.’

‘Whose name?’ the nurse asked, picking up Jacinta’s wrist, checking her pulse against her watch.

‘A woman’s name,’ I said. The nurse looked expectantly at me but I shook my head. ‘No one I know.’

The nurse put the hand down gently. ‘She might be coming out of it. Or it might have just been some sort of reflex action. It’s not for me to say. I’ll tell Doctor what you told me.’ She had soft, kind eyes. ‘Don’t give up hope. She’s young. She can do it.’ Tears sprang to my eyes as the young woman left the room.

I sat down again, but nothing more happened. To look at my daughter now, I’d never believe it either. But she
had
opened her eyes, she had smiled and she had breathed a name I didn’t know.

I rang Bob from the hospital to see if there was any more news. He told me no, and to calm down and go home. ‘We’re throwing everything we’ve got at this,’ said Bob. ‘We’re talking to everyone, searching everywhere. Get some sleep.’

‘You’re joking,’ I said.

‘Pam,’ was the word my daughter had whispered. And my mind had finally made the jump to remember who and where I’d heard the name from. ‘She’s the woman who comes for the rents,’ Renee had told me, way back then when life seemed relatively simple and I was just helping Bob out with an investigation. I’d taken the name to Surry Hills police to find that a Pamela Nyree Dobronski, who operated several leaseholds in the area, all used as brothels or parlours, was a person ‘known to the police’. She’d retired from the game herself, the young detective explained, but still had a lot of active interests in different establishments. She wasn’t what you might call sweetness and light, he added, especially since they’d locked her youngest up for armed robbery last year.

Now I was driving to an address in Albion Street. I was hanging on the hope that Jass, wherever she was, had heard my desperate request about her brother, and had brought something relevant to our search from the unknown place she drifted in. I had to hang on to this hope, because it was the only thing I had.

The Albion Street address turned out to be one of a pair of terraces given over to the oldest profession and I knocked on the door until it was opened by a vision in leopardskin and high-heeled black sandals.

‘Pam Dobronski,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for her.’ I was aware of a large woman coming down the hall behind the leopardskin girl, filling the narrow hallway.

‘Who wants me, Brenda?’

‘Some bloke,’ said the girl, turning away, her retreat blocked by Pam’s bulk.

‘I’m expecting the technician from Energy Australia,’ she said, ‘about that fucking excuse the language fuse in the kitchen.’

I mumbled something and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.

‘The same fuse your people fixed last month and now it’s blown again,’ Pam was saying, jerking a thumb that revealed too much gold on her fingers, eyes frowning under too much aqua eye-shadow.

‘I’m not from Energy Australia,’ I told her, ‘and I’m not looking for a girl. I want to talk to you, Mrs Dobronski.’ I was about to pull out my warrant card from sheer force of habit, but stopped. ‘My son, Gregory McCain, has been kidnapped and your name came up as someone who might help me.’

‘You’re a cop,’ she said. ‘I can smell you buggers a mile off. Get out of here.’ She pushed past me and opened the door. ‘Piss off.’

‘My son is only seventeen. A man called John Kapit took him and now Kapit’s dead and no one knows where my son is. Please. If you have any idea of where he might be, please tell me.’ Here I was again, talking to people like Pam Dobronski about a missing child. My child. My children.

‘Out,’ she said. ‘I don’t owe you any favours.’

‘If it’s a question of paying you for your time—’ I said, but she interrupted me.

‘Don’t insult me. You couldn’t pay for my time. You don’t have enough.’

‘Renee,’ I said, ‘who worked at the House of Bondage. She’s dead. I’m scared the same thing will happen to my son.’

But the bulky body remained motionless, indicating the door, adamantly set against me.

‘I’ve got a couple of fellows living next door,’ she said. ‘It only takes a coo-ee and they’re both here like a shot. They’ll throw you down the street. Just leave now if you don’t want broken bones.’

I remained standing there. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘if you know anything.’

Pam Dobronski put her fingers to her lips and came out with a whistle that nearly broke my eardrums. I heard thudding footsteps from next door and within seconds, just as she’d said, the doorway was blocked by two huge Tongans. I raised my hands in surrender and walked out, defeated again.

Back at my place, I couldn’t sit still after Charlie had left. The only lead I’d got had been futile and now the grief and fear I’d been holding at bay surfaced. Unable to be still, I walked outside, and cried like a baby, standing near my ruined painting, lying on the ground from the day before. I walked back inside, blinded by tears, groping around for something to wipe my nose with. For fifteen years I’d practised letting go of problems that were worrying me, and with good effect, but now I realised I’d never really had a problem worth the name until this moment. I groped around for a tea towel because someone was knocking on the half opened door. I turned to see a very embarrassed tradesman, and remembered that after the break-in I’d rung a Mr Camilleri to come and measure up wrought-iron grilles for the windows and door. He stood there, looking away, trying not to notice my emotional state.

I got myself organised while he taped and measured and finally left, assuring me of a quick job.

My agitation and concern over my missing son kept me prowling. I walked down to the back fence, causing a pair of noisy mynahs to fill the air with their high-pitched alarm calls—
‘Help! Help! Help!’
I paused because I could hear the metallic sound that had teased me before, coming from the little park over the fence. Then I heard my name being called in a low voice. ‘Mr McCain, please come over here.
Please
.’

The urgent tone made me wary as I peered through the grevilleas and hakeas that grew against the back fence. That odd metallic squeak came from the little green-painted swing, sticky on its rigid supports, swinging back and forth. Every time it moved to its zenith, the bolts made the sound that had teased me earlier when I’d heard it, late at night.

‘It’s me, Mr McCain. Come over. I don’t dare be seen going into your place.’

A woman with platinum hair and far too much make-up sat on the swing. I swear I’d never seen her before. Thoughts of the twenty-six-year-old night club dancer who lured men to a horrible death came to mind, but the Colt was a steady companion of late so I climbed over and pushed my way through the spiky brush to emerge on the other side. I was ready for anything. I stood still, scrutinising the woman, Elizabeth Taylor on a very bad day, yet I felt she was familiar. Then I nearly fell over in shock. It was Staro, dragged out to the nines.

‘Mr McCain, you’ve gotta help me,’ Staro said, awkwardly getting off the swing, high heels digging into the bare soil.

‘Get inside,’ I hissed, making a way for him through the bushes like I would for a woman, helping his narrow backside over my fence, watching his wobbling big feet in the silly heels scrambling through the overgrown backyard. Together we hurried up to the house.

Staro dived inside the door and huddled in a corner in my kitchen, pulling out a cigarette.

‘Christ, Staro,’ I said, ‘the entire police service is out looking for you. What’s going on?’

‘You’ve got to help me,’ he said. ‘I want to turn myself in, but you’ve got to help me.’

He looked around wildly. ‘Have you got a proper drink round here?’ I looked around and found an inch or so of the brandy Charlie hadn’t drunk. I poured it over some ice blocks and handed it to him.

‘I know I shouldn’t,’ he said coyly, and I got angry.

‘Don’t go queeny on me, Staro. I don’t care if you bust or not. Just tell me what happened at Centennial Park.’

‘There was a three-quarter moon that night. I saw her face, clear as anything. And I’m nearly sure she saw me.’

‘
She?
’ I said.

Staro nodded. ‘Real tall and strong. Scared the shit out of me.’ He gulped his drink. ‘I took off. I was too scared. I couldn’t wait for you.’ He put the drink down and took the platinum wig off. ‘Drag is so
hot,
’ he said. Now he looked more like my poor informer, with his hair sticking up all over his head and a bad case of eye make-up.

‘We got your prints from Dr Jeremy Guildthorpe’s place,’ I said, ‘and too many people think you did all of them.’

He sat down suddenly and I remained standing, wary. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said, ‘what it would be like. Coming off the ’done. Not drinking either. No pills. There was nothing I could take.’ He looked at the glass of brandy and shook his head. ‘All these terrible things started happening in my brain. Like I had some crazy committee up there. All these worms squirming around. Sometimes I wanted to cut my head open and let them out.’

I nodded. I remembered only too well.

‘Voices screaming at me, telling me I was hopeless, useless, reminding me of all the times people had used me like shit.’ He covered his face with his big hands, false nails curved like talons. ‘All I could think of was that bastard, Guildthorpe.’ He took his hands away from his face. ‘When I was a kid I met him in a café up at Darlo. The lady there used to give me a feed. He was the first person in the world who took an interest in me.’ Sooty tears ran down his face, and he pushed them away with impatient fingers. ‘I didn’t have a family in Sydney. My stepfather kicked me out. Mum had a drinking problem.’ I waited till he continued. ‘I thought Dr Guildthorpe liked me. He was a teacher and he said he liked kids. I believed him. I thought he cared about me. He taught me some things. He helped me to read a bit. He gave me books. He took me out sailing a couple of times.’ Staro finished the last of the brandy and looked around.

‘There’s no more, Staro. I’ll go and get you something from the bottle shop.’

Staro shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to get used to it. Where I’m going there’s not going to be any brandy.’

‘But there’ll be heroin,’ I said.

He looked at the empty glass. ‘I want you to take me in. I won’t be so scared if you come with me. Do all the stuff, you know. Booking me.’

I sat down opposite him. ‘Tell me the rest,’ I said.

Staro ran his false nails through his hair, pressing it down. ‘You’re the only person in the world who doesn’t use me,’ he said. ‘You’re my only friend.’

I stood up, uncomfortable with his pathos. You poor bastard, I thought, if that’s the case.

‘I thought Dr Guildthorpe was a friend. Then, one night at his place… He’s got this ritzy place—Roman swimming pool, marble floors, arty stuff.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been there.’

Staro took that in. ‘Right. Well, one night years ago at his place, we got real drunk. We’d been smoking a lot of dope, too. I didn’t use heroin in those days. He raped me. There was nothing I could do.’ Staro looked up at me and his face under the make-up was that of a lost child. ‘That was the end of me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t care what happened to me after that. I started working the Wall. Anything anyone wanted. I just didn’t care. Heroin helped a bit. In the beginning.’

‘Staro,’ I said, remembering the other times I’d heard the swing creaking at night. ‘Have you sat in that swing other times? At night?’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘never been here before today. I wanted to contact you often, but I was too scared.’

He collapsed over the table and I could see that he was doing everything in his power to stop himself from sobbing out loud. I walked around behind him, putting my arm on his heaving shoulders. In that moment, I was just another fellow addict, albeit with many years’ recovery, sharing my experience, strength and hope with a fellow sufferer.

‘I’ve been running all my life,’ sobbed Staro. ‘I’m so tired of being scared all the time.’

I nodded, remembering.

‘I went back to his place,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know why. I wanted him to see what had become of me. But he didn’t want to know me now. Not all these years later. He only likes them young and pretty. He was telling me to get out and I saw that CD cover,
The Last Castrato
, and that was the last straw. I knew that’s what he’d done to me.’ Staro shuddered, remembering what he’d done to Guildthorpe. ‘Look at me now,’ Staro was saying. ‘I thought I’d hit rock bottom when I started on the streets. But I went even lower. Now I’m a murderer. I’ve killed a man.’

‘Even that, Staro,’ I said. ‘You can come back from even that.’

He looked up at me as if I were mad. ‘This’ll finish me,’ he said.

‘Others have done it worse and harder than you and come back. You’ll have to face the consequences of your actions—we all do, eventually. But it’s up to you how you do your time. You can go further down in hell, or you can make the decision to turn your life around. There are programs available in prison. It’s up to you.’

Staro looked at me, and I could see in his face that he almost believed me, because he knew I’d been there and back.

I looked directly into his eyes. ‘You can become the person you were supposed to be before all the shit happened to you.’

He covered his face in his hands.

I rang Bob. ‘Is there any news on Greg?’ I asked and I was aware that Staro was listening intently to me.

‘The lead we got about Greg,’ Bob said, and I waited, willing him to give me good news, ‘it’s fizzled out. Now we’re acting on a report from Campbelltown.’

‘Campbelltown?’

‘Kapit has… had… a small property there. The local boys are searching it at the moment.’ I turned back to Staro, my mind miles away, searching a hobby farm. Then I told him about my visitor and rang off. ‘Bob’s sending a car for you, Staro. He’s a decent man.’

‘Come with me,’ Staro pleaded.

‘I can’t,’ I told him. ‘I have to wait here in case my son Greg turns up.’

I saw Staro pay some attention, dimly aware that there was other pain in the world apart from his own.

‘What’s happened?’

And I brought him up to date with my situation.

When the squad car arrived, Staro made a pathetic figure. I’d lent him a shirt and some trousers but they were far too big, and with his not quite washed off make-up and bare feet he looked like a walk-on from
The Pirates of Penzance
. As they led him away, I felt like Judas Iscariot.

Inside, I went through the motions of tidying up, my mind full of my son, wondering what he might be doing, how frightened he’d be feeling. I’m thinking of you, Reggie, I told him. I’m praying for you in my way, willing that you be safe from harm.

I noticed a fax lying in the tray and I picked it up, frowning, wondering how long it had been there, not realising for a moment what it was all about.
Jack, I’ll give you the full report when I see you,
I read.
But briefly, the metallic traces on the anonymous letters you gave me to test come from a cosmetic made by Pretty Woman, a subsidiary of Colgate Palmolive. They make all sorts of glitter gels and sprays. Didn’t know you were into such things!
It was from Nigel, the other particle man.