Dirty Weekend (33 page)

I was about to compliment her on her choice when she was interrupted and I could hear Wendy’s voice in the background.

‘Wendy wants to know when will you be bringing La Incognita back again?’

‘Very soon,’ I said. ‘Wendy can take her home after she delivers her talk to the Sydney police tomorrow. I won’t need her after that.’

It had been a long day, I thought, as I closed my notebook.

As soon as I could get away tomorrow, I wanted to go back to Alana Richardson’s place at Sparrows Ridge Road and take a closer look.

I swivelled round in my chair and stared back at the lifelike head, thinking about women, especially the first woman in my life, just as Charlie had suggested I should. Sitting there, doing nothing, just
being
, as Charlie had also suggested I do. I allowed the restlessness to build. He’d asked me to watch what happened if I didn’t take my usual habitual action, that was, get up and get
busy.
The restlessness grew and grew and changed into something much more unpleasant. I was aware of a creeping anxiety growing in my stomach and chest, an unpleasant shuddery feeling that lay hidden under the cover of always being busy. This is why I can’t lie around on river banks idling, I thought, spending aimless time with a woman. Because if I did, this was exactly what would happen.

I sat there staring at the come-hither expression on the sweet three-quarter profile of the unknown female. No wonder I didn’t want to spend time with a woman, because, out of the anxiety, the first part of the challenge Charlie had put to me was starting to form.
Why would you ever open up to a woman again
, it began.

I didn’t let it finish. I had work to do.

Early the next morning, skipping the first sessions of the conference proper, I was back at Alana Richardson’s cottage. This time, only the little blue hatchback was there. As she opened the door, I saw her expression change from polite surprise to puzzlement and then concern.

‘If you’ve come to talk to Jason, he’s not here,’ she said.

‘I noticed,’ I said. ‘But that will keep.’ I smiled to ease her worry. ‘What I’d really like to do is take a look around here. The grounds. The garden.’

Her slight frown betrayed her anxiety. She knew people like me didn’t look around houses and gardens because of aesthetic interests.

‘Of course. Please,’ she said as she ushered me in. ‘Whatever you need to do. I’ll be here in the kitchen if you should need anything.’ Before, in our brief dealings, there’d been just a hint of flirtatiousness underlying her manner. Now, however, she was all formal courtesy.

Alana led me through the house and out to the back garden—a wide, rambling area, with old fruit trees and various old-fashioned briar roses bordered by a photinia hedge. But it was the back fence I was interested in, the area where I’d seen Jason working, rebuilding a partly tumbled-down retaining wall. Behind this I couldn’t see much, just the odd native scrubby bush.

I walked right down to the end of the long garden to inspect the building blocks. It was clear that the newer ones didn’t quite match the old ones and it wasn’t just a matter of the accretions and dulling of age. The first five or six courses had been built at a much earlier time. I squatted beside the wall, took a small tool and plastic bag from my pocket and scraped the sides of several of the original blocks. I would have to test them, but I had the same sense of sureness about these as I’d had back in my office when I’d collected the coarse sandy particles from under my desk. I was willing to bet my career that the lower courses had been made from Universal Cement’s discontinued blocks.

I sealed the scrapings, pocketed them and stood up, looking around. Jason had been adding two new courses of a similar type of block along the top of what I saw now was quite a long retaining wall, sweeping around in a slight curve. The bushes just beyond obscured the valley view and I jumped up on top of the wall to get a better view of what lay beyond. The block I was on shifted a little, throwing me off balance. I teetered a moment then looked down on the other side of the wall. The shock made me swear out loud in terror as I realised I was swaying on the edge of a precipice. Less than a third of a metre of solid ground lay beyond the wall on the other side and the bushes had somehow curved their roots into fissures in a sheer cliff wall. If I hadn’t regained my footing, I could have fallen to my death on the rocks many metres below.

Shaken, I stepped down and walked the length of the wall until I found a place where I could more safely climb up onto the old blocks and look down. The drop must have been around fifteen metres or so. I jumped down on the wrong side of the fence and, holding on tightly to an old acacia, took another look. From this angle, I could see the dusty fire trail that ran below, hugging the cliff side. I stared down thinking, yes, things are falling into place.

Climbing back over the retaining wall, I walked back up the garden.

‘Did you see anything interesting?’ Alana asked, trying to sound light-hearted.

‘Hard to say,’ I said. ‘When will Jason be back?’

As if on cue, I heard the sound of a car slowing down out the front and wished I’d followed Adam Shiner’s example of parking outside another house. I heard the car accelerate and, although I sprinted as fast as I could round to the front of the property, I only caught a glimpse of Jason’s old panel van and his surfboard disappearing in an explosion of dust. I raced to my own vehicle and jumped in, gunning the motor and screeching off after him. But he’d had just enough time to take advantage of the T-intersection at the end of Sparrows Ridge Road. My guess was that he’d be heading right, driving north to Sydney, where the pond was bigger.

I took the south road and drove fast to Heronvale.

‘They must know each other,’ Brian said when I told him what I’d found. ‘Damien Henshaw and Jason Richardson. They
must
have been in it together. Somehow got Tianna there and pushed her over.’

‘It would take two of them,’ I said. ‘Then they dress her up in her party gear and dump her back at the Blackspot to make us think what we thought at first. That she’d met someone at the nightclub and been killed there in the car park.’

‘It’s a reasonable assumption,’ said Brian. ‘But they didn’t bother with the skirt because it was too hard to get on. They used another, easier-fitting skirt. She must have been dead in the car—’

‘We’ve no evidence of that from Henshaw’s car,’ I reminded him.

‘Maybe she was wrapped in something. And the evidence is pointing that way,’ said Brian.

‘We just need to discover the connection,’ I said, thinking of the unseen circuitry.

‘Tianna’s the connection,’ said Brian. ‘Stepmother to one, the other screwing her. I’ll get some people together and we’ll examine the area beneath Jason Richardson’s grandmother’s place. We’ll also put the word out on Jason’s vehicle. And I’m going to have another chat with young Damien and tell him that not only have we discovered that Jason Richardson was in it with him, but that Jason is now telling us everything, saying that
he
tried to stop Damien. But Damien did both killings. That should get him going.’

‘I didn’t hear that,’ I said, in a hurry to leave. ‘I’ve got some particles I want to analyse. I’m confident what I have here will lock in the physical evidence we got from the head injuries beyond dispute.’

Brian nodded, then frowned. ‘But I still don’t get how Albert Vaughan fits into this, how he comes to have the same coarse granite sand embedded in his head wound?’

I couldn’t answer that one. There was a lot I still didn’t get.

It didn’t take me long to demonstrate to my own satisfaction that the particles I’d scraped from the old Roman White blocks at the end of Mrs Richardson’s garden were indistinguishable from those found in the wounds of Tianna Richardson, Albert Vaughan and unknown female 17/2000. I’d arrived at certain conclusions about how the body of Tianna Richardson might have gathered these particles. As to the other two, I had not been able to form any conclusion. In short, I had no idea.

My head was aching and I needed a break. I walked down the corridor to the staff common room to make myself a coffee and have a look at the newspaper headlines. As I was stirring too much sugar into the cup, I became aware of a lot of traffic in the car-park area. I remembered the Sydney detectives were here for the conference lectures and guided tours of the labs and museum over the next couple of days. It would be a good idea, I thought, for people to stay out of town tonight, as carousing Sydney personnel would be piling into the Cat and Castle. For a split second I envied them. I couldn’t go and join them in standard operating procedure—getting wasted to take my mind off what troubled me. All I could look forward to was another early, lonely night back at the cottage.

I finished my coffee and went back to my office but, before going to my desk, I stood a moment, studying Ms 17/2000’s sweet face. How the hell, I asked her, did you get yourself mixed up with a rare orchid and granite sand particles?

And how did an old man living out on the Ginnindera Road get those particles in his head wounds too? In this game, there were always far more questions than answers.

In my absence, a whole lot of new mail had been dumped on my desk. I was about to make a start on the paperwork but the mess on the desktop was dispiriting. I put the Venetian glass ball safely away on top of the filing cabinet, next to Ms 17/2000. Inside its fragile mysterious world, frozen coloured spirals, energy immobilised in glass, shone. Somehow I knew something similar had happened deep within me a long time ago, caused me to freeze up when it came to intimate relations, and this had driven Iona away. But I couldn’t just lose her like this. If I wanted to win her back, I knew I
must
find the way to change so that I could offer her what she wanted from me.

I made a start on the different trays, using my triage system of those that demanded immediate attention, those that could be left a while longer and those I could safely give to someone else to handle. I was making some headway, aware of all the noise in the building, of people moving around in the corridors and bursts of laughter. The Sydney boys were on their tour. Finally, I had cleared some space and could work with some dignity.

My desk phone rang and I grabbed it, relieved by the distraction.

‘Bob,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Sydney,’ he said. ‘I’ve just come away from a crime scene.’

‘No way am I involved in this one,’ I said. ‘Keep this case all to yourself. From now on, I’m keeping my nose right out of other people’s investigations. I’m way overdue for long service leave. Any news on young Shaz?’

‘Sorry, Jack. Sharon Lockhart was found dead in the backyard of her boyfriend’s flat.’

‘Shaz,’ I said, recognising the full name. ‘What
happened
?’

‘It’s a horror show,’ Bob said. ‘She’d tried to get away from him, but he’d followed her through the house, down the stairs and out into the yard. I’ve been picking up pieces of her all morning.’

Jacinta, I thought. This is going to be very hard for her.

‘We’re still trying to trace her family to inform them,’ said Bob.

‘What about the boyfriend?’

‘He’s wandering around somewhere with a nine-inch blade. We’re out hunting him right now.’

I rang off. I could feel the anger sweeping up my spine. Another young girl had died because nobody cared about her.

I called Charlie, grateful to hear his voice, and told him.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘Pick up Jacinta, wherever she is,’ I said. ‘Our address might be somewhere in Shaz’s personal effects. Don’t let her out of your sight till I get there.’

‘She’d better stay at my place,’ said Charlie. ‘Or her boyfriend’s.’

‘I’ll get going the minute I can get away,’ I said. ‘I hope they lock up Shaz’s family too. For not loving her.’

‘You’d have to lock up most of the world on that charge,’ said Charlie.

I sat still, lost in my thoughts. It came as a shock when I realised I was part of such a family system and that Iona could reasonably charge me with the same offence. But this admission didn’t quench my anger. I thought of my alcoholic mother, whose first and only love eventually was ethyl alcohol. I thought of Jason who shared the same birthday as my son Greg, and his absconding mother.

Armed with this information, I switched on my email system and found Interpol, London. Lily Richardson, née Meadowes, I decided, you’re going to have to show up. I’m going to make sure you know that your son Jason, whom you dumped when he was just a baby, is facing the possibility of being charged with murder. I want you to
know
that. I want you to have to face that.

I filled in a Missing Person file, listing her name and
the approximate year of her arrival in the UK. That amount of information faxed to Interpol would, I hoped, be sufficient for the authorities to track her down quite soon. Maybe my motivation for doing this was because of my own problems in this area, as Charlie reckoned. Maybe I was acting as fate in the life of an irresponsible woman. Whatever reason, I felt better after I’d done it.

The next thing was to be in Sydney with my daughter. I called her but the phone went straight to voicemail. I left a message saying I’d be at Malabar later that evening. It was unlikely that Docker would do anything more than try to hide. But I didn’t like the idea, no matter how remote, of a man with a nine-inch blade, whose girlfriend had been spirited away from him with the support of my daughter, discovering where Jacinta lived.

When I switched off the ignition, the swinging surge of the Tasman filled my ears, louder because of the silence of the night. In the living room, the lemurs, embracing tightly, swung gently from the central light fitting. I rang Charlie and then Jacinta from the empty house but both mobiles were switched off, which didn’t do anything to relieve my anxiety about my daughter.

I poured myself a drink of orange juice and rang Greg, who said he’d catch up sometime this week.

My phone rang and I pounced on it. ‘She’s here, and we’re both fine,’ Charlie said in answer to my questions.

‘So she doesn’t know about Shaz yet?’ I asked.

‘She just knows you’re coming over,’ Charlie said.

‘I’m on my way,’ I replied.

During the drive to my brother’s place at Little Bay I was nervous about how I was going to tell Jacinta about Shaz. The ringing of my mobile made me jump. Bob.

‘Have you got Docker?’ was my first question.

‘Not yet. But I’ve had a chance to talk to one of the girls who lives in the same building,’ said Bob, his voice heavy, and I knew something was troubling him. ‘Seems like Shaz got lonely at the motel. She rang Docker.’

‘Jesus, no,’ I said.

‘Then she packed up and went back to his place,’ Bob continued. ‘And he sure was waiting for her.’

Now I understood the reason for the quiet despair in Bob’s voice.

‘We can only offer people limited protection from the predators, Bob,’ I said. ‘And there’s no way on earth that we can protect people from themselves.’

There was a silence from the other end.

‘Gotta go, Bob,’ I said, ringing off, preparing myself in the few minutes I had in the drive to Charlie’s place for what I had to tell my daughter.

My brother was opening the door as I walked up the path and behind him I could see my daughter’s apprehensive face.

‘Jass,’ I said, putting my arm around her shoulders, pulling her to me and kissing the top of her head.

‘Something’s wrong!’ she said, hurrying ahead of me, turning to study my face as we reached the light of the living room. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Shaz,’ I said and her hand flew to her mouth to cover it, as if suppressing a scream.

I told her what had happened and she listened in silence until I’d finished. Then, with the tears running down her face, she sat slowly on Charlie’s lounge, hugging a cushion to her. ‘But why? Why did she do that? After everything we talked about. She knew what he was like! She
knew
!’

I shook my head. ‘That’s just it. She
didn’t
know. She was living in a dream, a delusion. You explained it to me earlier. She didn’t know what love looks like, feels like. She believed someone’s words more than the evidence of his behaviour. Shaz mistook violent attachment for love.’

My daughter came over to me and I hugged her, holding her lightly, letting her sob, trying to comfort her, but she pulled away.

‘We should have stopped it! Nobody did anything!’ she said.

‘Not true, Jass,’ I said. ‘You think about it. At least three or four people, including yourself, were so concerned they got together to remove her from a dangerous situation. Bob went out of his way. You did. I did. Bob’s motel mate.’

‘We should have stopped her! Locked her up!’

‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ offered Charlie, who’d been quietly standing near the entrance to his kitchen.

‘I don’t want bloody tea! I need something stronger!’

‘Do you think that’s really a good idea?’ I didn’t want to sound too censorious, but ex-heroin addicts were better staying away from alcohol—addiction to one substance seemed to automatically confer immediate addiction to another. I’d seen the way addicts ‘weaned’ themselves off one drug by taking on another.

My daughter didn’t answer; instead, she was weeping, hands over her face. When she looked up there were tears running down her cheeks. I passed her my big handkerchief and she blew her nose and wiped her eyes, shaking hair out of her eyes.

‘It’s so damn sad,’ she said. ‘I thought she would make it. I thought that by leaving him she’d break the pattern and make it.’

I thought of beautiful Shaz and wanted to cry too.

‘I want to know what happened,’ Jacinta said. ‘I want to know everything.’

I sat down beside her and put an arm around her, remembering not to pat her.

It was going to be a long night.

Before she went to bed, I did everything I could to convince Jacinta to come back to Canberra with me, but the best I could do was get her to promise she’d stay at Charlie’s place until Docker was locked up.

I left her writing a letter to Shaz.

Charlie had heated up some of the soup he’d made earlier in the evening and I was happy to eat a bowl of it while he read and relaxed in his armchair, a man at peace with himself and his world.

‘You look worried, bro,’ he said, looking up from his reading. ‘Not that you shouldn’t be. You sure blew it with Iona.’

‘Thanks a lot, Charlie,’ I said. But he was right.

‘I did,’ I admitted. ‘I find it hard to stop and just do nothing. Spend easy time with the woman I love.’

That wasn’t quite what I meant and Charlie recognised it straightaway.

‘You mean if you did such a thing, you’d have to talk to her about
yourself
—eventually,’ he rephrased. ‘About your hopes and fears, your feelings. And you don’t really want to do that, do you? You don’t want to have to examine why you feel obliged to work rather than enjoy the activities that bring pleasure and happiness into our lives.’

‘Obliged?’ I said. ‘I’ve already explained that to Iona—that I have an obligation to the dead—’

‘Which dead?’ Charlie interrupted. ‘Your mother whom you couldn’t save? Rosie who you still somewhere believe was taken on your watch?’

I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. ‘Why are you saying these things to me?’

‘Because they’re questions you should be asking yourself and you’re not!’

‘Look, Charlie. You’re way out of line. I can partly understand why you questioned me when I said I wanted to spend time with Iona—’

‘—but you didn’t really want to,’ he interrupted with a smile. ‘Did you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, unsure.

‘If you do ever get round to looking at some of these issues, what are you going to do? What changes
could
you make?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you,’ I said.

Charlie smiled. ‘You seem to have found the answers to my earlier questions yourself, bro,’ he said. ‘Keep working on these.’

‘Just tell me what you think,’ I persisted.

‘It’s not about what
I
think,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to find the answers for yourself. Jeez, Jack, you insist on doing that in every other area of your damn life. Why can’t you do it in this one?’

Next morning, early, after a restless night on Charlie’s lounge, where thoughts of what my brother had said to me circled my mind all night, I finally got up and put the coffee on. I checked on my daughter—a lump with tousled spiky hair under the doona in the spare bedroom.

After a quick breakfast, I knocked on Charlie’s door to say goodbye and he grunted back.

Then I loaded myself and my briefcase back into my wagon, all the time wondering whether Charlie was right. That I felt obligated to ‘save’ these women because I hadn’t been able to help those nearest to me. I wondered again why I turned to work instead of the pleasures of companionship and relating with Iona and my children more. What was I avoiding by doing so?

I’d failed Iona because of these hungry ghosts and the parts of my heart they’d eaten; it was these very missing parts that Iona wanted—and now it was too late. Hell, I thought as I turned the ignition. Here I was driving to Canberra. Again. I’d had enough of this.

Before I was clear of Sydney, I rang Bob. He wasn’t at work but he hadn’t heard any news about Docker, who was still out there with his nine-inch blade. I told him of my concern for Jacinta and that she’d be staying at Charlie’s place.

Bob knew the address and, although agreeing that it was highly unlikely Jacinta was in any danger from Shaz’s killer, promised to keep an eye on her.

First thing I did when I walked into my office at Forensic Services was nod a greeting to Ms 17/2000. From her position in the corner, she gave me her customary sideways glance. I stood a moment, admiring her, and noticing that if I moved just a little out of her direct gaze, the position of her lifelike eyes gave the illusion that she was looking sideways at me. I came up close and studied the face of the unknown woman. Again, I was sure she wasn’t unknown to me. In fact, the sense that I knew her was growing stronger every time I looked at her.

I called Brian. Jason Richardson had not been found, but he was confident the youth was still in the area and that it was only a matter of time before he showed up. Brian had someone keeping a discreet eye on Alana Richardson’s house on Sparrows Ridge Road and it was fine with him, he said, if I wanted to go and check out the bottom of the ravine. The crime scene people had finished with the area. ‘The samples we took are probably with you already,’ he said. ‘Or they’ll be arriving today.’

‘Did the Kiwi Krait turn up?’ I asked, smiling as I used his term.

‘She was there. And she was much less officious today. You know,’ he added after a pause, ‘she’s not a bad-looking woman.’

I set about tackling another pile of paper that had somehow found its way onto my desk in my absence.

Some time later, while I was immersed in trying to make the next month’s roster work, a knock at the door caused me to swing round.

‘Come in,’ I said.

Before I’d finished speaking, the door was flung open to reveal Earl Richardson. Of all the people I didn’t want to see, he headed the list.

‘Jack! God bless you! It was so good knowing you were on the job at such a dreadful time!’ said Earl, looking very dapper in an expensive Italian suit. ‘So this is where you hide away, eh?’

Moving fast, as if I’d been on the way out as he knocked, I grabbed my briefcase, intending to head him off at the pass, make him a coffee and abandon him as quickly as I could. I extended my hand to match his, trying hard to smile, about to make some comment about the pressure of work when a loud burst of laughter made us pause in the doorway where we were standing. A noisy group had turned the corner and immediately I recognised one of them—Adam Shiner—flanked by two laughing women.

‘Come on, Earl,’ I said, nodding to the group, closing my office door behind me so that Earl Richardson couldn’t go in any further. ‘Tea or coffee?’

Then I noticed the expressions of the three people in the group.

‘Earl?’ I looked back, wondering at his silence.

Earl Richardson was turning like a robot and staring, open-mouthed, at them. The hand that he’d suddenly withdrawn from my greeting was flailing around near his throat. His colour was terrible, a dark purple red. He clawed the front of his expensive shirt, his eyes shocked and staring. I grabbed for him as he began to keel over but he would have hit the floor, except that Adam Shiner had darted forward and grabbed him first.

‘Undo his collar!’

‘Airways clear?’

‘Anyone here good with CPR?’

‘It’s a coronary.’

‘Roll him onto his side.’

I had the ambulance on its way in minutes. I didn’t hang round but I heard them arriving and dealing with the collapsed man.

As they stretchered him, I couldn’t help thinking: so much for the health-giving powers of religious faith.

The shock of Earl Richardson’s heart attack had permeated the building. It didn’t take long for everyone to hear about it and the predictable appalling jokes were circulating within a few hours. Even though I didn’t like the guy, his collapse at my office door had connected me to him and, later, I phoned Woden Hospital. He was out of intensive care, I was told, in a stable condition and although medical staff were surprised at the speed of his recovery, they wanted him to stay until the test results came back.

It was a sobering thought that Earl Richardson was my age and that the stress he’d been through with his marital problems was similar to my own just a few years back. I became aware of my heart and its measured beats. Measured was the right word; an allocation was given each of us. Nine o’clock on a Monday morning was the time most heart attacks occurred, I thought, and I’d been working non-stop for too long. Men died because of this. More importantly, I had to build a life for myself that wasn’t just work. Until Iona, my emotional life over the last few years had been a barren landscape. And what had I done when I’d been offered the wonderful chance that Iona brought to me? I’d failed to grow into a mature relationship with her. I hadn’t been able to change. I was a scientist and I knew that species that couldn’t adapt to changed circumstances simply don’t make it in the evolutionary stakes. No wonder Iona had walked out. Who wanted to live with a man who still believed somewhere that his first duty was to the dead rather than the living?

I stood up and walked to the window, watching the movements in the autumn-flowering grevillea bushes as the honeyeaters probed their blossoms before winter stopped the nectar flow. The dark gunmetal sky with its threatening clouds that never rained was suddenly pierced by a ray of sunlight, making the whole world outside my window fill with a menacing brilliance. Do something, Jack, I told myself.

I called my boss in Sydney, outlining my situation and pointing out that I had far too much accrued leave and needed to take some. He agreed and said he’d approve my application as long as I could organise someone else who’d be willing to take over my position for a month. I thanked him and rang off, opened my bottom drawer and took out a leave form. I rang Florence and made her an offer, which she was happy to accept, then I filled out the form, starting with next Monday’s date and taking a whole calendar month. Then—and this was about the only good thing I could say right this minute about being acting chief—I signed my approval of leave at the local area level with a flourish.

Pen down, I found myself wondering why Richardson’s heart had attacked at the moment it had, with the three Sydney detectives coming into view. I wondered if there was unknown business between Earl Richardson and Adam Shiner. Maybe Earl
had
known that Shiner was shafting his missus and this had resulted in a sudden surge of angry blood. I found I was looking again into the serenely sideways gaze of 17/2000.
I know you,
my memory insisted. I’ve seen you recently.