Eden (17 page)

I showed Brook the emails I'd printed. He didn't ask me how I'd come by them.

He shook his head and said, ‘A girl like that.'

‘Like what? A girl
like what
?'

When Brook didn't answer, I said, ‘Maybe Jenny Bishop knew something about Lawrence that he couldn't afford for her to know.'

‘That flyer?'

‘Wouldn't have mattered so much on its own, I don't think. But because Jenny was so keen to get even, she nosed around and picked up something else.'

‘The weight of opinion will be on the side that she overdosed.'

‘Do a bit of leaning,' I said. ‘Change the weight.'

‘It's not our jurisdiction. You know that.'

‘Try and get someone from Glebe to follow up the Canberra connection. At least make sure they know about it. Something might have happened while Jenny was here. Something
did
happen.'

‘It's a weak connection.'

‘That can be my job then, to make it stronger.'

When Brook didn't reply to this, I said, ‘Jenny doesn't strike me as the type who'd sit home drinking on her own. Especially while her housemates were at a party.'

‘So?'

‘So someone may have kept her company. Her neighbour across the road heard a car start up just after midnight. I told her to get in touch with the police. Somebody should interview her.'

Instead of responding to any of this, Brook asked me if I was all right to drive home, and I said I was.

In the car, which felt like an old friend, I asked myself what prejudice had to do with love. I'd once put Brook in a box labelled sick and middle-aged, and he'd let me know how much that had hurt him. Yet I couldn't bear to think of him labelling Jenny Bishop and dismissing her, couldn't bear to think of him using phrases such as ‘girls like that'.

I recalled the Hansel and Gretel story, how the bread trail hadn't worked, but lifeless pebbles had. Pebbles couldn't be eaten, were no good to the birds, and so were left there to be followed. I thought of blood, and its absence from two violent deaths, how Jenny
should
have bled. It was an affront to the logic of death, of life abandoning a young body, that she hadn't.

Sixteen

Margot tried to slam the door in my face. She was a good deal taller than I was, and probably ten kilos heavier, but anger gave me strength. For a few minutes, we pushed against each other, balanced in a way that might have been funny in another context.

Margot was panting, her breath coming in gasps. She heaved the door shut.

. . .

I rang Gail and told her about being chased down the highway. She made sympathetic noises.

‘I could hide out at your place,' I suggested. ‘I could make a tent under your kitchen table and move in.'

‘Right,' said Gail. ‘Good thinking. That way, no one would ever find you.'

‘I'd disappear for good.'

‘What about that copper who's a mate of yours?'

‘I can't stay with him.'

‘I see. I found some clippings of that Sydney business—the other guy whose heart stopped.'

‘Yes?'

‘There's some pretty savage stuff. The press went after Margot, decided that she let him die. She was only twenty-one. Her name wasn't Margot then, by the way. It was Evelyn. Her working name was Eve.'

I told Gail I'd like to see the clippings and she said she'd bring them round the next day.

. . .

Brook rang to announce, ‘That Lancaster woman's threatening to charge you with harassment. Did you force your way into her club?'

‘I wouldn't say
into
, not exactly.'

‘Go and see Kevin Saunders. Now. Today.'

‘Right.'

‘It
is
right. And long overdue. Make a full statement, then leave it up to us.'

‘What will you do?'

‘For God's sake, Sandra. You could have been killed on that highway.'

‘What can you or Saunders do about that? I might be able to guess, but I don't know who it was. Anyone I point at will deny it.'

Brook spent a few more minutes lecturing me about the correct way to proceed, then we both hung up.

I sat outside. Layers of the hot day were beginning to peel off. Later, they would reveal a core of twilight. It seemed right just then that the approaching dusk should have a core, and that it should be hard.

I could still feel Brook's arms around me from the early morning, how he'd held me when I fell into his house. There was nothing I would have liked better than to sit beside him on my front porch, while the sun disappeared behind Black Mountain.

The phone rang again as I was getting into bed.

‘Hello,' I said.

Silence on the other end.

‘Who's there?'

Still no answer, then a woman's voice. ‘I saw Simon Lawrence with Jenny. A week before she died.'

‘Where?'

‘On the esplanade.'

The woman's voice was soft, and getting softer.

‘Did you ask Jenny about it?'

‘I was going to, but she—she was acting weird.'

‘How weird?'

‘Kind of obsessed.'

‘Who gave Jenny the heroin?'

‘Jen was clean. She planned to stay clean.'

‘Thank you for talking to me,' I said, and a few seconds later heard a click.

Had it been Rose? I couldn't be sure, but I was sure enough.

. . .

When I introduced myself to Detective Sergeant Kevin Saunders the next morning, he looked me up and down dismissively, though I'd made more effort than usual to dress for the occasion. His expression summarised his low opinion of security consultants in general, and the kind that hung around the edges of the police force in particular.

I swallowed an impulse to defend myself. After Saunders had switched on a tape and recorded our names, the date and time, I began going over the points I'd prepared. I'd rehearsed my statement, guessing that the detective might interpret hesitation as a form of weakness.

I started with the time Jenny Bishop had spent at Margot Lancaster's club, and pointed out that someone had to be lying over whether or not she'd had sex with Eden Carmichael. I mentioned the missing wig box, but didn't linger over it, aware that Brook thought I was making too much of a minor detail. As I spoke, it became clearer to me that those few weeks, from Lawrence's visit to the club, through to the end of December, had been crucial. I said I'd been told that Lawrence had been seen with Jenny on the Sans Souci esplanade about a week before her death and that I believed she'd been corresponding with Stan Walewicz by email.

Saunders listened without interrupting. His gaze was direct, intelligent and disconcerting. His tanned skin was marked by adolescent acne. He looked fit and gave the impression, deliberately I thought, that all his reflexes were super quick.

I summarised what I'd learnt about
CleanNet
, and everything Ken Dollimore, Chris Laskaris, Stan Walewicz and Laura had told me. Saunders continued to fix me with a stare that made me feel as though I was a junior player who'd stumbled onto a field reserved for the major league, and was too dumb to know it.

After I'd finished, he asked a few questions, though not nearly as many as I thought my information warranted.

I left with a feeling of defeat and anticlimax. The detective's manner was so effortlessly superior, it was impossible to guess what was going on behind it. I'd asked about the coroner's report into John Penshurst's death, and he'd told me he'd written to the court requesting a copy, and was waiting on an answer. He hadn't asked me how I'd learnt about Penshurst's death, for which I was relieved. I could not have referred to Ken Dollimore's statement without causing trouble for Brook.

. . .

Gail's appearance was a welcome break from thoughts that circled without moving forward. Neither of us felt hungry. It was too hot to cook. We drank draught beer instead. Gail wandered restlessly about while I read her clippings, struck first, then moved, by images of twenty-one-year-old Margot/Evelyn/Eve. The photographs were old, of course, and the reproductions grainy, but her long dark hair framed a pale, sad face. No matter what the camera angle, or caption underneath—and many of them were snide, or downright nasty—there was a dignity about her, and a youthful clarity of feeling.

Gail stopped her pacing, and sat down next to me.

She fingered the top photograph and said, ‘There's something about her that makes you want to respect her.'

I agreed. ‘I wonder if that's what the coroner felt, too.'

Gail made a face, meaning that it was possible, but just as possible he'd regarded Margot as a fallen woman, an unrepentant sinner, even if innocent of murder.

Gail got up to fetch more beer, while I went on reading. The articles displayed none of the superficial acceptance of sex work that the last thirty years had brought. Raw prejudice coloured every paragraph. The police doctor, and the coroner, both concluded that John Penshurst had died of heart failure, but there was no way the journalists were going to let a young prostitute off so easily. I found I couldn't think of her as Evelyn, much less Eve. To me, she would always be Margot.

‘Darlinghurst whore stops heart of family man', was one heading. ‘Panic in massage parlour. Police called. Victim pronounced dead on arrival at St Vincent's Hospital.'

Much seemed to have been made of Penshurst's credentials as a good family man, as though Eve had first of all lured him to pay for sex against his honourable inclinations, and then killed him. The name was turned against her. Comparisons with the original were full of righteous condemnation.

‘It's no wonder she mistrusts the press,' I said. ‘But she needed someone to write a favourable piece about her club, or convinced herself she did.'

‘Because she's trying to sell it?'

‘Yes.'

‘What about that Lawrence guy?'

‘I think he's probably broken off the deal. If there was a deal to break off.'

‘So Margot fed him Jenny Bishop for nothing.'

‘Maybe. Don't you think it's odd,' I went on after a moment, ‘that no one's brought this up? It obviously made quite a splash at the time. There must be plenty of people around who remember.'

‘She's changed her name,' Gail pointed out.

‘I doubt if that would be enough. And Dollimore's so down on her, why hasn't he been on to the newspapers and TV? He said he promised Carmichael, but he's already broken that promise by alerting the police.'

‘It's an important distinction though, isn't it?'

‘Maybe,' I said again, ‘but he must be sorely tempted.'

We talked around the issue for a few more minutes. I photocopied the clippings. Another headline caught my eye. ‘Darlinghurst prostitute accused of callousness. Why did Eve wait before sounding the alarm?' Even the suburb seemed to be condemning her.

. . .

I wondered why it hadn't occurred to me to try and discover the name of the young man with the designer stubble I'd first seen reflected in a Castlereagh Street shop window. I thought of ringing Lawrence's shop in Parramatta Road, but decided that I'd first better give myself a reason.

Who did I know in Sydney who'd appreciate a bunch of flowers? After deciding that the most likely candidate was an elderly aunt who lived in Strathfield, and whose only contact with me was an exchange of cards at Christmas, I looked up the shop's number, hoping Lawrence wouldn't answer the phone.

A stranger's voice answered. After placing my order, I said I was wondering if he was the same young man who'd served me a couple of weeks ago when I'd bought some beautiful red roses, a tall young man, dark-eyed, growing a beard, as I recalled.

‘No,' the voice said, ‘that would be Brian. But Brian doesn't work here. He's based at the nursery.'

My call to the nursery was answered by a man with a strong German accent, who told me it was Brian's day off. Crossing my fingers, I asked if there was a mobile number for him. I wished there was somebody to clap me on the back and say well done when the German voice repeated it twice to make sure I got it, and I wrote it down.

Dialling the number, I realised I was sitting forward on the edge of my chair, experiencing again—they'd never been far from the surface of my mind—those moments on the highway, my hands locked on the steering wheel, foot jammed on the accelerator.

I'd planned who I could pretend to be, but at the last minute changed my mind and introduced myself as Sandra Mahoney.

A sharp intake of breath told me that I'd found my man, but Brian Picoult—he revealed his surname after only a second's hesitation—denied that he'd been on the Canberra-Sydney Highway. He'd been organising deliveries that night, and nowhere near Sans Souci.

‘How did you get my number?'

‘I rang the nursery and they gave it to me. What's Mr Lawrence like to work for?'

After a slight hesitation, Picoult said, ‘He's a good employer.'

I went on asking questions about Lawrence, the nursery, and Picoult's whereabouts at the times I believed I'd seen him in Sydney. His replies became progressively more guarded.

I made notes while the sound of his voice was fresh in my mind, thinking again of the highway, headlights speeding up behind me, those few centimetres between me and the concrete wall.

Seventeen

As a piece of scenery, Lake Burley Griffin was undemanding. Tourists' eyes passed over it, looking for distinction, perhaps lighting on the Parliament House flagmast, close as the crow flies, yet by road circuitous. The flooding of the valley floor had taken months, and still seemed incomplete.

I felt this incompleteness most at nightfall in the summer, after a day's intense evaporation, the water flat and weak against a fresh-baked band of soil, a sense of urgency and resignation at the same time. Rain would come, a thunderstorm, or at any rate the autumn, but until then the artificial lake would continue to recede, leaving more of its bed uncovered at the end of each hot day.

The lake foreshore was an uncomfortable place for a meeting, yet I'd suggested it to Denise, knowing she would need to be somewhere she could smoke, and realising that she would not agree to meet me again if she thought there was a chance that she'd be recognised.

I'd wasted the afternoon, chasing after details no one I spoke to would, or could supply. I was glad to be driving to the lake at dusk—a clear night it would be—heat leaving the ground in gulps, while pelicans folded their wings and settled on an offshore roundabout.

Denise was there before me. She stepped out of a red Valiant as I pulled up. I locked my car, and we walked towards the water.

In the small light from her cigarette, her eyes were tired and wary. She flicked ash on the ground. A spark flared and died.

But then she looked straight at me and spoke in a decisive voice. ‘Ed never saw Jenny Bishop. He only saw me.'

‘What happened between Jenny and Simon Lawrence?' I asked.

‘Lawrence is a pig.'

In the near darkness, I could feel Denise reacting against this now she'd said it, wishing she could take it back.

‘I heard you helped Jenny, got him off her.'

‘What else was I supposed to do?'

‘Did Lawrence threaten her?'

‘Why would he do that? What that bastard wants, he takes.'

‘What did he take from you?'

‘I never let him near me.'

‘Margot?'

‘You've got the wrong idea. It was just—what he did to Jen.'

‘Do you know about the flyer she had made?'

‘What flyer?'

I described it, while Denise shook her head.

‘Did Jenny get into a fight with Margot?'

‘No.'

‘Did they argue over money?'

‘There wasn't any argument.'

‘How was Jenny paid?'

‘By cheque.'

‘All that she was owed?'

‘Margot may be hard sometimes, but she's not stingy, or a cheat.'

‘Even when she doesn't like a girl?'

Denise began to protest, but I persisted. ‘She didn't like Jenny. Even before the incident with Lawrence.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘I worked it out. Did Margot ever tell you about some trouble she got into when she was young?'

Denise's cigarette made fireworks. ‘What trouble?' she asked with a catch in her voice.

‘With a client. He died while she was with him. The coroner's verdict was a heart attack, but she got done over by the press.'

Denise didn't answer straight away. She smoked and stared out over the lake. Finally she said, ‘The guy died of a heart attack. It wasn't anybody's fault.'

‘Is that what Margot told you?'

‘It's what happened.'

‘What about Stan Walewicz?'

‘What about him?'

‘Did Jenny ever talk to you about a movie he made? She and Lawrence were in it.'

‘No.'

‘But you know who Walewicz is.'

‘I'm not stupid.'

‘I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression,' I said. ‘I think you're far from stupid.'

The night was stripping layers of heat off itself, flinging them up and outwards, with a carelessness that made me want to shout. Denise strode forward, then stopped, her stillness more impatient than her movements.

I caught up to her and asked, ‘Have you ever been to Jenny's house in Sydney?'

‘Why would I? We weren't friends. We never saw each other outside work.'

‘Where were you on December the thirtieth?'

‘At the club.'

‘Who with?'

‘Margot.'

‘Just the two of you?'

‘Yes.'

‘What time did you start?'

‘Round eight.'

‘And leave?'

Denise hesitated, then said, ‘Shortly after two.' I could feel rather than see her shrug. ‘I know what your game is,' she told me. ‘It won't work.'

‘I don't have a game. I just want to find out what happened to Jenny.'

We started walking back towards the cars.

‘Did Margot ever say anything to you about a company called
CleanNet
?'

‘Who?'

‘A computer company. They make filters for blocking out stuff on the Internet.'

‘No.'

‘That afternoon Carmichael turned up—did he tell you where he'd been?'

‘At work, wasn't he?'

‘Is that what he said?'

‘I don't remember what he said exactly.'

I felt sorry for Denise. I liked her, and she was doing her best.

We were almost at the cars. ‘One last thing,' I said, ‘if you could please tell me again what was in the room when you came back and found him?'

Denise sighed, getting out her keys. ‘There was the bed, the side table, the chair.'

‘What was on the table?'

‘What's usually there.'

‘The wig box?'

‘That was on the floor.'

‘Under the table?'

‘Yes.'

‘What happened before you and Carmichael went into the room?'

‘Nothing,' Denise said. ‘I mean nothing special.'

‘Did he bring his dress in as usual?'

‘Yes.'

‘What about his underwear?'

‘It was in the bag.'

‘Did you help him put it on?'

‘I—yes.'

‘Margot handed him the wig in its box and he brought that in too?'

‘I don't remember every single detail.'

‘People don't, when things are where they expect them to be. Did you help him to get dressed?'

‘I started to.'

‘How far did you get?'

‘Rebecca rang,' Denise said, unlocking her car.

She got into the driver's seat and said emphatically, ‘Jenny Bishop overdosed.'

She started the engine before I could say anything more.

. . .

Walls mocked me—the relentless heat that the house had absorbed all day, and was now throwing back. I saw car headlights where there couldn't possibly be any. In shadowy corners, I caught glimpses of a badly shaven jaw. Hostile brown eyes looked back at me, reflected in my windows when I threw them open to let in the cooler air.

I filled Fred's water bowl, and he lapped and lapped. We sat side by side on the front step. There was hardly any traffic. A few cars passed at an ordinary pace. The sky was clear, and the stars were the best that you could hope for in a small inland city.

I hoped Denise would be all right. I shouldn't have pestered her to meet me. The best thing for Denise would be to report back to Margot that I'd swallowed her lies about Jenny Bishop, and have nothing more to do with me. But Jenny was dead, and so was Eden Carmichael. A person couldn't walk away from that.

The blue of the upper air was the same colour as Carmichael's dress. It seemed that Jenny's death had left a space in the sky for his dress to slide into, a garment empty of its wearer. His death lay next to hers, but so much more public and flamboyant. A politician's death made waves, while Jenny's, if a certain logic, already set in place, was allowed to take its course, would sink without a ripple. Carmichael's heart would have got him eventually, but the embarrassment could have been avoided—this was emerging as the consensus. And Jenny's death—predictable for different reasons, in a different way? A dead man could be pulled in many directions, and a dead woman too. Undertows and currents kept on moving round them. Everyone seemed confident that they could explain one or the other.

. . .

I made myself a late meal of hard-boiled eggs and salad, then sat in front of my office windows, opened as wide as they would go, and typed up my conversation with Denise. I was washing my plate and drinking glass when there was a knock on the front door.

Ken Dollimore stared at me with the demeanour of a man who'd set out with a clear purpose in mind, but had lost his way. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocussed. His hair was less than perfect. I invited him in.

Dollimore blinked, getting his bearings, glancing round my house. It was very late to be paying a social call, but this was a man more capable of surprising behaviour than I'd given him credit for.

He swayed back and forth on the balls of his feet, and licked his lips, which looked slightly swollen. I asked him to sit down, and offered to make coffee. He shook his head at the latter, but lowered himself awkwardly into a chair.

I sat down opposite him and leant forward. ‘One night, Ed Carmichael saw a different girl at the club,' I said. ‘Not the one he usually saw. Do you know her name?'

‘Ed did whatever Madam told him to.'

Dollimore's speech was slurred, but I could smell no alcohol.

‘I'm trying to find out what your friend told this girl that turned out to be dangerous. I think I know who she was, but I need confirmation.'

‘Ed betrayed a confidence,' Dollimore said, reaching his tongue around the syllables with difficulty. ‘A promise he'd made to that woman. I made a promise to Ed and I broke it.'

‘You told the police about John Penshurst.'

‘The police had better do their job.'

‘You reminded Margot Lancaster about Penshurst too.'

‘No one else was going to. She got away with murder.'

‘How did she do that?'

‘Don't tell me it's not easy enough to take a man whose health is failing, and to harass, or frighten him to death, then dress it up to look like a heart attack.'

‘What was Carmichael's promise to Margot Lancaster?'

‘He wouldn't tell me.'

‘But you guessed that it had to do with
CleanNet
.'

‘Why else would Ed suddenly turn round and start promoting the company?'

‘You told me all he did was attend the presentation.'

Dollimore glanced at me the way a tiger might consider a mouse, too small to be a meal unless he was desperate.

He swallowed as though the movement hurt and said, ‘There's all those missing years, you see, years when Ed and I lost touch. Madam dis­appeared after that business in Sydney, or Ed believed she'd disappeared. He couldn't get anyone to tell him where she was, except that she was supposed to have gone overseas after the coroner's inquest. He tried to find out where. And then he went himself.'

‘Where?'

‘Wherever he thought she might turn up. Europe, anyway, I found out later. She hadn't left Australia at all, as it turned out, but she'd changed her name, and her appearance. Become a blonde. She'd told him she was going to Europe before it all happened. Perhaps she was intending to. He used up his savings searching for her.'

Dollimore swallowed again, then winced.

I brought him a glass of water, asking, as I handed it to him, ‘Why would Margot want to kill Eden Carmichael?'

‘Money. I'm sure he told her he was leaving her his flat.'

‘Do you have a key?'

‘What makes you think that? No, Ed had areas of his life that were completely private. His flat was one. In all the years I've known him, I could count the times I've been there on one hand.'

Dollimore read my expression and went on, ‘Ed knew his days on earth were numbered. If he kept newspaper clippings, letters, anything like that—I'm not saying she did write to him, but I've wondered—I think he probably burnt them after his first heart attack. However much Ed might have acted as though he didn't care, he was afraid of dying.'

‘What about his office? Could he have kept letters there?'

‘Too public.'

‘A safe-deposit box?'

‘There'd have to be a key. I asked the police about it when they interviewed me. They wouldn't say, but I doubt it somehow. I think if the police had found papers, letters, that threw some light on what had happened, then they'd have asked me about them.'

I agreed that it was likely, then pointed out, ‘Margot must have known Carmichael was in Canberra when she bought the club. Do you think that's why she moved here?'

‘I don't know, but once she
was
here, she set out to trap him.'

‘She wouldn't have sex with him.'

‘That could have been Ed's salvation.'

‘How?'

‘It could have been the moment when the spell was broken.'

‘Is that what he told you?'

‘It's what I believe.'

‘My problem is that I can't connect Margot Lancaster to
CleanNet
,' I said. ‘Can you?'

Dollimore stared at me without replying.

‘That's what you were looking for when you rang me the first time, wasn't it?'

Dollimore still didn't reply, but I knew that I was right.

‘The other girl Carmichael saw, was her name Jenny Bishop?'

‘Ed never told me. I wouldn't have forgotten if he had.'

I pictured Dollimore going from one bar to another on that Tuesday, searching for his friend. I felt that I'd misjudged this proud, censorious man, and underestimated the lengths he might go to once his natural inclination to obey the law had loosened, or a hole had been gnawed in it wide enough for another Ken Dollimore, a more impulsive, less predictable version, to slip through.

‘It was you who warned Senator Bryant's office that something was wrong, wasn't it? You phoned and said you thought it might be better if the meeting with Carmichael was postponed.'