Death Delights (38 page)

‘He’s made it much easier all round,’ said Charlie.

Outside, I heard the noisy mynahs alarming again. Something was disturbing them. I walked into the garden. They were fussing around in the cypress trees, darting from the dark green recesses over my roof and back, and I stood listening. But I could see nothing untoward and I heard nothing apart from the swing of the sea and the hum of the distant airport.

Later, I was to wish that I’d taken more notice of their warning.

We watched the news bulletin and looked at each other as the newsreader mentioned Julian Bower whom the police were seeking ‘to assist them in their inquiries’ into the mutilator murders. The reporter was standing outside the Police Centre and I briefly saw Iona behind him, flanked by two detectives, being hurried inside. I hoped they wouldn’t be too hard on her. I was now convinced of her innocence in any complicity. As a brother myself, I could understand her unwillingness to believe the worst about a sibling. There was nothing in fact to lock her into being an accessory before, during or after the killings.

‘Do you think they’ll find him?’ Greg asked me.

‘I think they will but he’ll be a corpse. Iona told me he used to talk about jumping off Govett’s Leap. I told Bob and the Springbrook cops are going to have a look around the valley floor.’

I dished out the meal and Greg and Charlie set the table. It was good to have my brother and my son eating at my table. I invited Charlie to join us the next night as well. I could feel a cooking session coming on.

‘Was there really a masseur who used scented oil?’ Greg asked me later over dessert. ‘Or did you have a liaison with some woman?’

I was aware of my brother’s raised eyebrow.

‘Greg,’ I said, ‘there are some answers I don’t have to give you. But this time, I’ll tell you that both your questions have part of the truth in them. I have nothing further to say except that I might be seeing someone from time to time.’ It seemed best to mention it as the subject had been brought up, although I wasn’t feeling very confident at all that Iona and I had much going for us at the moment.

Greg shrugged. ‘I suppose you have to. But I don’t have to like the idea. It feels weird to think of you with anyone else except Mum.’

My brother put his arm around my son.

Later, I packed my briefcase, taking the last couple of outstanding reports. The DNA profile from the knife handle was still propped up in its envelope against the wall and I packed that away too. I didn’t want even this trace of the mutilator killer left in my home.

•

Next morning, with Charlie staying over to keep an eye on things at Maison La Perouse, I drove down to Forensic Services in Canberra and spent the rest of the morning finishing the reports, faxing them to the relevant investigators and putting in my application for six months’ leave. Karen, the department’s secretary, looked up at me from over the tops of her gold-rimmed glasses as I put it in her tray to go to the boss.

‘You look like you could do with a break,’ she said. ‘I heard about your son.’

I thanked her and took the profile that Jane had developed from the knife handle trace out of its envelope. I hoped by now that the reference sample from Julian Bower’s toothbrush which Florence would have received from Jane would give us the perfect match we needed to lock him inexorably into the murder.

I walked down the corridor with the profile in my hand, not looking forward to the upcoming encounter with Florence.

I knocked at her office door but she wasn’t home, so I took my white coat from the rack and gloved up in the lab annexe. When I entered the lab, I stopped in shock at the sight of the last person I ever imagined encountering in here. ‘She’s lost her job,’ I remembered her flatmate saying. ‘She’s moved in with someone.’ It had never occurred to me that Florence might have been the someone.

Both women looked up as I came in and stopped in my tracks. Alix’s jaw dropped and Florence looked equally stunned. This gave me the advantage and I grabbed it.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ I said. ‘Alix, a word.’ I beckoned and she came like a lamb to the doorway, gorgeous in a hot pink dress and earrings. ‘Down here,’ I said, backing out of the laboratory and down the hall a little way. ‘I don’t want everyone listening to this.’ She followed but I could see the anger in her eyes. She’d only ever shown me the sweetness and light before.

‘Don’t say anything,’ I ordered her. ‘I could have you charged. I have inside information about those threatening letters you sent me,’ I bluffed, ‘and physical evidence that locks you to them. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I never want to see you or hear from you again. If there’s any more malice from you in any form whatsoever, I’ll have you charged and convicted so fast you won’t know what’s hit you.’

Her eyes narrowed and her pretty mouth turned into a thin white line. ‘You bastard!’ she hissed. ‘Men like you disgust me. All you can do is use people.’

I remembered how she was often in Sydney for her work as a corporate trainer.

‘It was you, wasn’t it, sitting on the swing in the park behind my place, spying on me, late at night?’ I felt a twinge of guilt as I thought of a man who followed a woman into a church, and who knifed a bag of oranges in a supermarket. ‘Don’t you have a life?’ I thundered.

She looked so shocked at that I knew I’d got it in one. ‘You used me just as much. You flirted with me, you made the moves, you invited me to your place, you phoned when you hadn’t heard from me in a while. You did everything to keep the association going. It suited you and you know it. You knew I was a family man. So don’t go judging me from some superior, victimised position. Whatever we did was mutual. We’re even. Okay?’

I walked back to the lab door where Florence was standing, pretending to fix a notice that had fallen off a board near the doorway.

‘Don’t you dare walk away when I’m talking to you!’ Alix yelled up the hallway.

‘I’ll walk away from you whenever I see you!’ I said. ‘I have nothing more to say to you and I don’t want to listen to you.’

I turned my attention to Florence. ‘Are you going out or coming in this door, because I’m about to close it.’ Florence stepped inside, still without a word, and I slammed the door shut. My heart was beating, but it was done and I was pleased that I’d had the chance to file that one away.

Florence busied herself at her work station. ‘I got a match for you,’ she said, still not looking at me.

‘Great,’ I said, barely listening. ‘But I cannot tolerate this childish behaviour any more, Florence.’ I could feel the hot flush of anger renew itself across my back. ‘I’m sorry I was insensitive towards you. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.’ I saw something soften in her face as I spoke. ‘We are professional people,’ I continued in a reasonable manner, ‘and we have to work together.’ Her earlier words started to sink in and the anger subsided. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘you’ve got a match. What match?’

She turned to face me this time, and her face was impassive. ‘Bevan Treweeke. From the tissue Bradley Strachan sent from the morgue.’ She passed me a printed profile. As I looked, my heart started racing again. I read the name at the top of the page. ‘Bevan Treweeke,’ I repeated. ‘This is from the morgue tissue sample?’

She nodded, passing me another one. ‘And this one?’ I said, glancing down at the name on the second profile, noting that it also carried Bevan Treweeke’s name.

‘That came from one of the other beer bottles in the Holden,’ Florence said. In the following silence, I stared at the two profile printouts in my hands. Identical peaks and troughs, identical colours. Identical tabulated numbers. Bevan Treweeke
had
been in the car when Rosie was taken. The chrome star from the Holden, like the star in the east of the Christmas legend, had led me to my sister’s killer. I could do nothing for a few seconds except stare.

‘Here’s the profile from the other beer bottle,’ she said. We put them together and studied them briefly, but apart from having identical twin peaks at the amelogenin locus, indicating another male, the second individual’s profile was quite different.

‘Two men were involved,’ said Florence, looking over my shoulder and voicing my thoughts. ‘Two men drinking beer. Two different results from the beer bottles.’

The odds were I’d never find out who the second man was. But that didn’t matter. I felt I had the story now. Bevan Treweeke had grabbed Rosie from outside our house. How or where she’d been killed I’d never know, but at least I knew now who was responsible. I thought of him hanging himself using the engine block as a counterweight and I was glad. It was a great pity, I thought, that Bevan Treweeke had ever been born.

I put the three printouts down on the desk, side by side, the two profiles of Bevan Treweeke and the other, unknown male result. I felt I’d never forget the shape of their graphical profiles as long as I lived. I felt I could close the case on Rosie now, knowing that Bevan Treweeke and another unknown male had taken her. I could live with that.

Then I pulled out the profile from the knife handle that Jane had faxed me from its manila envelope. I straightened the paper with the unknown beer-drinker’s profile on it and in doing so, brushed Florence’s computer mouse accidentally. On her colour monitor, the screen saver vanished. A profile she’d been working on filled up the screen. I glanced at the peaks and troughs, the tabulated numbers underneath and then looked more closely. This profile was familiar. My puzzlement didn’t last long because I almost immediately saw that its perfect match was lying on the desk beside the two Bevan Treweeke profiles. I looked again at the profile from the trace on the knife. On impulse, I held it up next to the profile showing on the screen. My eyes flickered between them. I’d done this thousands of times. Troughs and peaks, colours, tabulated numbers all identical. The DNA profile from Julian Bower’s toothbrush must have already been emailed to Florence by hard-working Jane. I felt elated. Sometime in the future, if Julian Bower ever came to trial, Florence would be called to testify about what she’d found when she compared the profile taken from the knife that killed Frank Carmody with the sample Jane had developed from his toothbrush. I felt pleased that two such disparate investigations were both well on the way to being beautifully wrapped up. Now, all that remained for us to do was attach the relevant certification to the profiles and send them to Bob. I looked again at the profile drawn on the screen and its identical twin in my hand. This was the sort of visual evidence that a jury could immediately evaluate as identical. No complex scientific explanations were required. Perfect match. Snap.

‘Come and have a look at this, Florence,’ I called, keeping my voice neutral. ‘Jane must have worked overtime last night to get this through to us.’ Florence came over frowning and I noticed she had new glasses with dark frames and that her eyes looked bigger behind them.

‘What are you talking about?’ she snapped, peering at the graphical profile on the screen. ‘What’s Jane got to do with it?’ My heart sank. I knew things were going to be awkward between us for some time but this bridling hostility wasn’t what I needed right now. But when I looked at Florence, I realised that she was genuinely bewildered rather than hostile.

‘I gave her a sample from the suspect’s toothbrush yesterday,’ I explained, remembering the hideous contents of the fridge underneath Julian’s toiletries, ‘and here it is already.’

Florence studied her screen, looked at me and shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I pointed to the screen. ‘Jane’s profile here,’ I said, pointing from it to the printed out version in my hand, showing her the perfect match.

‘That’s not Jane’s,’ said Florence, pointing to the graph on her screen. ‘That’s mine. I ran it on the CE yesterday.’ The Capillary Electrophoresis machine runs the DNA molecules through an electric field, separating them by size, lining them up with a camera that detects the blue, green and yellow dyes that have been added during the Polymerase Chain Reaction, the replicating process that allows the analyst to amplify even the tiniest fragment of DNA into testable quantities. ‘And then I ran it through Genotyper,’ Florence continued, referring to the software. ‘Jane’s had nothing to do with it at any stage.’

Now it was my turn to be bewildered. ‘What is it then?’ I asked. ‘Where
did
it come from?’

‘It’s the trace I got from the top of one of the beer bottles. From the Holden.’

Now I was completely confused. ‘The beer bottles?’ I said. ‘But you told me that’s where you found Bevan Treweeke.’

‘And I found this one as well,’ she said, pointing to Julian Bower’s profile on the screen. I still didn’t understand. ‘Hasn’t Jane sent you anything?’ I asked.

Florence shook her head. ‘Not for weeks,’ she said.

We stood there and I suddenly felt sick at heart. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got a contamination.’

It had never happened before, but I hadn’t been involved in an investigation like this one either. Things were already complicated enough without more reruns, re-amps and possibly having to recut original samples again. ‘That’s all I bloody need,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to run the whole thing again. Julian Bower’s sample has somehow got itself mixed up with Bevan Treweeke’s from the Holden.’

Florence stared up at me through her new glasses, her face white. ‘That has
never
happened in my laboratory,’ she said, as if she had personally forbidden it.

‘Yet somehow,’ I persisted, ‘there’s been contamination.’

Florence shook her head slowly, and I could almost see the analytical mind ticking over. ‘That’s not possible, Dr McCain,’ she said, her voice so polite that I hardly noticed the distant formality. ‘There hasn’t been the chance for contamination to take place,’ she said. ‘I personally did the whole process that resulted in the Bevan Treweeke result. From cutting the samples right through to the final profile. I ran the results through Genotyper myself late yesterday. You’ve just arrived here with your own Julian Bower result and Jane’s reference sample is still in another state. There’s been no chance of interference with the tubes. In this case, contamination is a logical impossibility.’