Eden (11 page)

The flowerbed was moist underneath the kitchen windows, and the bathroom one above it. A pipe ran up the brick wall, vertically at first, then at an angle. Standing underneath and looking up, the damage to the bathroom flyscreen was obvious. A kitchen knife slid under in the right place could have levered it out. But the pipe did not look climbable.

‘Where do you keep your ladder?'

‘In the shed.'

‘Is it locked?'

‘Yes. We keep our bikes in there as well.'

‘Did you notice if anything in the shed had been moved?'

‘The police moved stuff around. I don't know.'

An intruder, if there had been one, would have been working in the dark. He or she would not have risked a torch. But there was no back light to worry about, and any slight noise would not be likely to carry to the neighbours.

Ian opened a side gate and led me to the front of the house.

He turned without warning, and said in a hard voice, ‘Jen was a dangerous person to be around. To herself, and to anyone who was fond of her as well.'

‘How was she dangerous to you?'

‘She could be charming. Fun.'

‘But?'

‘She let herself down. That's what hurts the most.'

. . .

I knocked on doors up and down the street, but found only one woman at home. She looked to be in her early seventies, and was wearing an old checked shirt over olive-coloured cargo pants.

I repeated my story, now sounding a bit stale, about how Jenny Bishop's name had come up in connection with an investigation I was working on in Canberra.

The woman stared at me, unsmiling, and asked if I had a business card, or other ID.

She studied the card I gave her for some time, then looked up, a glitter of curiosity at the backs of her hazel eyes.

‘Did you see anyone coming or going from Jenny's house on the night she died?' I asked.

‘I saw that tall one and his girlfriend leaving.'

‘When would that have been?'

‘Around eight-thirty. What is it you're investigating?'

‘To begin with, a computer software company. I'm trying to find out if there's a link between the company and an ACT politician who died recently.'

‘That one who dressed up in women's clothes?'

I nodded. ‘He died in a brothel where Jenny Bishop worked for a while last year. I'm guessing you know what Jenny did for a living.'

The woman nodded economically, and then, apparently deciding I was harmless, she observed, ‘You're hot. Come in out of the sun for a few minutes.'

I followed her down a corridor very similar to the one across the road, except that, instead of polished wood, the floor was carpeted in dark blue. A row of hooks held sunhats, a raincoat, gardening gloves.

She poured lemon cordial for me, and nothing for herself, remarking as she did so, ‘Canberra's a lovely place. My brother and sister-in-law live there. Mason is their name. Colin and Vera Mason.'

I said I was afraid I didn't know them. ‘Across the road—do they have many visitors?'

‘Not many.'

‘Did Jenny have her own?'

‘Single men, you mean? No, Jenny kept her work and home lives separate, so far as I could see. She was a friendly girl. She'd often stop for a chat if she saw me in the garden.'

I glanced down at the woman's hands. They were callused, with enlarged, roughened knuckles.

‘What did you and Jenny talk about?'

‘Plants. She loved my garden. She used to ask me the names of things. And she remembered them too. She used to say that when she went back to university she was going to get into some serious gardening for relaxation.'

The woman smiled. For someone who spent a lot of time outside, her face was pale, no pink in her cheeks, careful with her sunhat.

‘Did Jenny have women friends who came to visit?'

‘There was one lass. A fair-haired lass. Jenny was fair as well. And such a little thing—'

‘When did you last see her friend?'

‘About a month ago, it would have been.'

‘Did you see or hear anything unusual on December thirtieth?'

‘Nothing you could really call unusual.'

‘Tell me about the usual things, if you wouldn't mind.'

‘Well, I went to bed at around ten. I'm not up much after ten. Sometimes I read in bed. I didn't that night, though. The heat makes me tired.'

‘Where's your bedroom, at the front or back?'

‘The back. I wouldn't like to sleep close to the street.'

‘Did you hear anything during the night?'

‘The possum. I heard the possum. He clatters on the roof. He's out foraging till twelve or thereabouts, then he clatters on the roof. He made a lot of noise. Hissing and, that kind of screech, you know. I took my torch and opened the door. He doesn't like the torch. Then I heard a car start up.'

‘Where?'

‘Up the street.'

‘On your side?'

‘No, the other.'

‘Did it pass your house?'

‘It kept on going up the hill.'

‘What time was this?'

‘Around midnight. Actually, it was ten past twelve when I went back inside. I checked the kitchen clock while I was getting myself a glass of milk. I was wide awake by then. I thought a glass of milk might help me to get back to sleep.'

‘Have you any idea whose car it was?'

‘I didn't see it. I just heard the engine starting up.'

‘Who are your neighbours on that side?'

‘There's Mr and Mrs Horowitz. It wasn't their car. It was further up, and anyway, they wouldn't be going anywhere so late. Then there's a young couple. He's a lawyer, I think. Leastways, he looks like a lawyer. He's hardly ever home. His wife has two little kiddies. One's starting school this year. It might have been him coming home, but not going out at that hour, unless of course they'd had a fight—'

She stopped and looked at me, head on one side, lips pursed, to see if I might be interested in speculating about this. Seeing that I wasn't, she went on, ‘Next there's a young man. I don't know his name. He has a very nice garden. He's just that bit further up the hill, you see, and the soil's less clayey.'

‘Have you told the police about the car?'

‘No.'

‘Has anybody been to question you?'

‘I've been away visiting my son and his family. I left on New Year's Eve.'

‘Ring Glebe Police Station and tell them about the car. Will you do that?'

The woman said she'd think about it. I thanked her for the cool drink, told her she could keep my card and asked her to contact me if she thought of anything else about that night.

. . .

Sans Souci the suburb stretched along one side of Botany Bay. From an esplanade of multi-coloured cement, a metre or so above the sand, I looked out at twin headlands, Cook's landing place on one side, La Perouse the other. From where I was standing, the cliffs appeared to be so close together that no
Endeavour
could have made it through. I thought of the Pacific pushing from the other side, squeezing bits of itself between the heads twice a day.

Other aspects of the bay seemed likewise set in balance, the jumbos taking off and landing at the airport, two oil tankers lined up at Kurnell. The afternoon had become overcast, the sea grey and choppy, smell of the tankers so close I felt that I was sitting on them. Botany Bay—funny how your mind scrabbled round for things to rhyme with it—breathed out, with a tired, congested sigh.

In the middle of the beachfront was a huge Novotel, complete with shopping mall and flyover, so hotel guests didn't have to bother with the traffic on La Grande Parade. I found the brothel without any trouble in a side street three blocks back from the sea. It was a white, double-storey terrace. Everything was white, including the iron lace around an upstairs balcony.

Sans Souci
, I repeated to myself, glancing up and down the street. Cars passed at regular speeds. All the pedestrians seemed to be minding their own business.
Not a care in the world.

I stood watching for a few more minutes. Nobody went out or in. Cars were parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the street, but they were parked that way on every street I'd walked along. How much custom should I expect late on a Friday afternoon? I felt quite comfortable standing there with the sea at my back—oil tankers and pier, commerce of a nation bending, as the sun was, towards a quiet horizon. But after a while I felt I ought to move, and began circling the block. From a distance, I watched two men in suits leave by the front door, making for their cars. A couple of minutes later, a young woman emerged, shutting the door behind her. The men hadn't done this. The door had been shut for them. The woman was carrying a large shoulder bag. She was tallish, with an athletic walk. Dark hair swung around her shoulders and partly hid her face. She turned away from me along the street, then round the first corner. I thought of Denise Travers, and what she'd said to me about providing for her daughter.

I lifted my head and smelt the wind. Botany Bay smelt like St Kilda and I was reminded of Port Phillip Bay, where I'd grown up—those fists of southern headland, rush of water at the ebb tide. I used to love swimming off St Kilda pier at the end of the day.

It was too late to drive all the way down the coast to Broulee. I didn't want to knock on Brook's door at ten o'clock at night. I had the number of a motel in Elizabeth Bay where I'd stayed before. It was pleasant, inexpensive, a short walk to the harbour. I rang them, sitting in my car with the door open, then drove back towards the city centre against the peak hour traffic.

My room had a stove and a selection of saucepans in a cupboard. I could have set up house. I almost threw the roses in the bin, then changed my mind and stuck them in a drinking glass.

The bed was big enough to lose yourself in, then spend a lifetime looking.

I rang Brook to let him know I'd be arriving the next morning, then plugged in my computer.

Simon Lawrence's website seemed, at first glance, to be boring. Flowers and more flowers. He specialised in roses. There were links with growers' clubs, prizes won at the Easter Show. I scrolled back to the beginning of the site. The business was a lot larger than I'd guessed from the shop in Parramatta Road.

You could click various blooms to move to different parts of the site. Their composition reminded me of something, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what. I clicked a white rosebud. Photographs of a nursery came up, a terraced hill with rows of plants. A gardener's shed at the bottom looked incongruous. I clicked it and found myself looking at a close-up of a woman's exceptionally large breasts. I tried the backspace. It didn't work. I moved over the woman's body. A border of rosebuds ran down the left hand side of the screen. I clicked one and was rewarded by a smorgasbord of couples having sex. I tried the backspace, got the breasts again. What I couldn't do was go back to the beginning.

I switched off my computer, which was the only way I could exit the sequence. Then I began again. Exactly the same thing happened. Once I'd passed the shed, I could not return or exit without shutting down. I'd heard of mousetraps, or webjacks, but this was my first experience of one.

That Lawrence was into net pornography should not have surprised me. It seemed he'd turned his interest into a joke against the censors. It required a bit of ingenuity, yet the ruse was simple, not something he could expect to get away with for long. But the site was still there. I wondered if he'd been ordered to take it down.

I cut the power, then began again for a third time. A single line at the bottom of the nursery's home page said ‘Web Design by Stan Walewicz'. Below the name was an email address and post-office box number.

I double clicked the word Walewicz, and my screen filled with a list of magazines and videos. I scrolled down. There were extracts from latest issues, new releases in bold type, discount prices, what looked to be a straightforward ordering system, and another feast of pictures. Stan Walewicz's website was neatly hidden inside Simon Lawrence's.

I recalled Walewicz's comment that there were ways around the new law. The trick increased my surprise that Lawrence's site was still up, and I wondered why his friend or business partner—for surely Walewicz had to be one or the other—would bother playing it. Not many new customers were going to find him by this circuitous route. Walewicz had his mail-order business, with its established customer base. No one was threatening to shut that down. The net was useful for attracting new customers, which brought me back to the question of how potential ones would find him. Unless he'd simply done it as a way of giving the authorities the finger. Perhaps he planned to advertise Lawrence's web address all over the place, as though it was his own.

I got myself a drink, then wrote to Ivan, including a summary of what I'd learnt in Sydney and my conclusions to date. I thought the rosebuds should be worth a laugh, but Ivan seemed so far away that I no longer felt confident of his sense of humour.

On impulse, I visited the
CleanNet
site again and found the balloons. I double clicked one. Nothing happened. I tried each one. The same. It seemed that there was nothing hidden under the striped beach balls either.

We had a couple of contacts in ASIC who'd been helpful in the past. I pulled one off my address book, and sent an email to a guy called Andrew Glover, asking if he'd do a complete archive search for
CleanNet
, looking for any mention of Carmichael, Dollimore, Margot Lancaster, Simon Lawrence and Stan Walewicz.

I spent some time typing up that day's conversations and sent a report to Lucy, thinking that her group could well get some mileage out of a porn merchant distributing his pictures and thumbing his nose at the censors, apparently with ease.