Fall (9 page)

‘Oh lord,' I sighed. ‘Stop.'

She shrugged. My face felt hot. I sipped the water nearest to me, tried to back down the angry stairs I was slowly ascending. ‘What are you doing going through my phone in the first place?'

You'll either bend to her command or snap her hand off one day.

‘Why shouldn't I be able to go through your phone? Going through your phone shouldn't worry you, Frank, because you should have nothing on there that you wouldn't be happy for me to see.'

Imogen rifled violently through her handbag, threw her phone onto the table so that it bounced dully on the cloth. People turned in their chairs.

‘You want to see my phone?' she snarled. ‘Go ahead.'

‘I don't want to examine your phone, Imogen. I'm not that fucking needy.'

And then when you do snap at her, boy, then she's really going to own you.

Imogen looked at me, broken. Then she got up and left. I tried to chase her, but she slipped through tiny gaps between the chairs of other patrons I just couldn't fit through. She was gone before I could see which way she went.

Tara liked Violet the moment she saw her standing there in the doorway of her bedroom, twirling a piece of her long white hair around a willowy finger. She didn't know how long the girl had been watching her at the desk, playing with her dolls.

Well, she wasn't sure ‘playing' was the right word. She was sure playing wouldn't have upset Joanie so much. When Joanie had found Tara's Barbies, with their cropped hair and their burned eyes, the hundreds of holes she'd dug into their breasts and crotches and stomachs with the heated needle, she had begun to scream. But to Tara, indeed, it was playing. Toying. She couldn't seem to leave the Barbies alone, the way she couldn't seem to leave a sore alone. Her father kept bringing them in their beautiful pink cardboard boxes, and they would sit on the shelves staring out at her from behind the clear plastic windows begging her to unwind the wire from around their wrists. Then once she had them free, Tara would feel the urge to play. The needles she found in the housekeeper's closet. The matches she found in the kitchen.

The way the Barbie's big, glossy blue eyes blackened and bubbled and sunk as Tara slowly inserted the needle made her mouth wet. She cleared her throat and shoved the dolls aside. Violet came right into the room and sat on the bed.

‘Hi,' the girl said. ‘I'm Vi.'

Sometimes, after that first day, Tara sat alone in her room and smiled to herself and whispered,
Hi, I'm Vi
, in the soft and lilting way the girl did, like a birdsong on a clear morning. Years later Tara would wonder if she had been in love with Violet then. Her first crush.

‘My mum's downstairs with your mum.'

‘Oh. Okay.'

‘She says we've got to hang out together.' Violet raked her fingers through her hair. ‘But I don't mind. This is a cool room.'

The girl reached out and jangled the string of Nepalese bells hanging above Tara's bed. Tara hadn't heard the word ‘cool' regarding anything to do with her ever before, whether it was her room, her things, her clothes, her self. She was the very definition of uncool. She caught a flash of herself in the mirror and twisted quickly in the chair, the wire back cutting into her flesh in a cross-hash pattern. It made her look like a rolled brisket. She pulled her cardigan over herself and locked her eyes on the Violet girl's impossibly thin ankles.

‘How old are you?'

‘Thirteen,' Tara mumbled.

‘I'm thirteen too.'

She said it like it was an achievement. She'd made it to thirteen. Tara smiled at the floor, scratched at her neck, leaving red marks she tried not to stare at in the mirror.

‘So what do you do?' the girl asked. Tara noticed that she was still touching her hair. Always touching her hair – raking it, pulling it, twisting it into ringlets that unrolled and fell impossibly straight, refusing to be manipulated. While the girl toured the room, Tara gathered a small ball of fallen hairs in her fingers
and rolled and rolled it in her palm, making it tight, a tiny snowy creature that she tucked into the pocket of her cardigan.

‘Do? Um.'

‘Yeah, like, what's your thing? What do you do?'

Tara scratched hard at her neck, felt her face flush. She clenched one fist, just one, by the side of the chair, feeling her knuckles crack.

‘Um. Um.'

What are you doing here? Why did she send you here? What do you mean ‘do'? I don't know what other kids do. I don't do anything. I hide. I hide. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to look stupid. I don't want –

‘I'm a ballerina,' Violet announced. Tara exhaled hard.

‘Oh.'

‘It's my career. Do you have a career?'

Tara breathed.

‘You've got to take care of a career like it's a baby,' Violet said, shooting up onto the bed, standing in the centre of the room suddenly like curtains had opened before a mattressed stage, like an audience had been revealed, had demanded her presence. She looked at herself in the mirror, did a series of little rises and falls, flattened her hands on her ribcage and pushed, hard, inwards until the whole upper section of her torso collapsed like a balloon, the air expelled neatly. She was like a fold-out. An origami girl of crisp white paper. She slid her hands down, did the same with her waist, seemed to want to squeeze herself dry like a sponge.

‘Your career is a little life that belongs to you. You love it. You care for it. You think about it every minute. You do your duty to it, because if you don't, it'll die. And you'll have
killed something. Killed a baby. You'll never forgive yourself. You know?'

Tara did know. Her own mother spoke of such things. Not of careers, but of killing.

You're killing me, Tara. You're killing me with this. Look at you.

Tara got up, stood looking at Violet squeezing herself in the mirror, and wanted to join in, but didn't know how. She loved Violet already. Loved her milky smooth skin and white hair and the smell of milk all about her like a newborn animal, pure and untainted. Tara thought if she touched her the girl would probably be cold, might feel like condensation on a bottle left on the counter in the kitchen. Violet turned to Tara and grabbed her forearms. The bigger girl felt a rush of electricity run through her, right into her chest, like stepping on a stair that wasn't there, the terror followed by the blessed relief. Violet squeezed her fleshy elbows, slid her fingers along until they were holding hands, the two of them, just standing there in the room where no one dared enter, where her own mother hadn't been in years. Tara wasn't alone. For a moment, she was wholly and distinctly not alone.

‘You've got to make sacrifices if you want a career,' Violet said.

‘Okay.' Tara nodded eagerly.

‘I'll show you my trick, if you want.'

‘Yeah. Great!'

‘Have you got a toothbrush?' The girl grinned.

 

Tara sat on the stairs afterwards while Violet brushed her teeth, gripping the banister with both hands. It was only when Violet had begun her routine that Tara realised how many bones the
girl had, and how very close they were to the skin. The girl gagged. She became, for a few minutes, a spiny forest creature, a thing filled with venom, expelling it, expelling it, so she could return to her natural milky newborn state. Down in the sitting room, Tara could see Violet's mother sitting next to her own mother on the Louis XV set, the set that no one sat on. Joanie was crying. It was rare that Tara saw Joanie cry, and she marvelled at how pretty it was, how her long nose became a rich pink and her eyes flooded crystal tears. Tara puffed up like a blowfish when she cried. Her face swallowed her eyes.

‘It can't be all that bad,' Vi's mother was saying.

‘It is. Oh, it is. Believe me. If this doesn't fix it, I don't know what in god's name will.'

‘Tell me,' the other woman crooned, gathering Joanie's hand in both of her own.

‘They call her …' her mother paused, swallowed. ‘They call her Nuggy.'

Vi's mother sat back in her chair, clasped her handkerchief at her chest. She gave a little jolt that could have been a suppressed laugh, a cough, a shudder. Anything. A quake of recognition that rippled through her bony frame, made her white hair shimmer like a mirror.

‘They what?'

‘They call her Nuggy, Marcey,' Joanie said. ‘They've always done it. It's shortened from Nugget. She's short, square. Thick. Like a nugget.'

Marcey laughed, just once, and then swallowed the sound under Joanie's glare.

‘Oh, Joanie. There are worse things, surely. Nuggy? Well, it's sort of … cute, isn't it? It sounds snuggly. It sounds sort of –'

‘It is not cute,' Joanie snarled. ‘It's not snuggly. It's not cute. It's humiliating. It's like a knife in my heart.' She beat her chest with a fist, once, twice, squeezed her lips shut.

‘Oh, Joanie.'

‘Look at you, Marcey. Jesus Christ. You don't understand. How could you? You and David, you've got a beautiful, graceful swan and I've got … a nugget. A fucking nugget for a child.'

Her mother bit down and growled angry tears, buried her face in her hands.

Tara retreated quietly to the bedroom.

Here's the problem. A lot of people watch crime shows. Not only are they rigidly formulaic, but they're fast. In minutes one to three you get the crime. Minutes four to five, the detectives are called onto the job. They express shock and horror and a heartfelt pledge to catch the guy – alongside hints at their intoxicating secret lust for each other. Then you get a parade of standard possible suspects: cheerful doormen, menacing drug dealers, local eccentrics, cherry-cheeked school teachers. A detective gets a seemingly innocuous phone call or tip-off or something, remembers another minor piece of information from the beginning of the episode and – whammo! They nail the victim's boss, mother, boyfriend. The sandwich shop guy. It's that easy.

So people are used to crimes being solved before it's time for bed. In almost every scene, something is being done towards finding the perpetrator. Samples are being taken. Suspects are being hassled or chased through rainy alleyways. No one eats or sleeps. They don't take toilet or smoke breaks. Or call their girlfriends and apologise for calling them ‘needy' or have make-up sex. They certainly don't stand around near the body talking with their hands in their pockets.

Unfortunately, that's precisely what Eden and I did when they found the second girl near Mrs Macquarie's Chair in the
Domain. She was sitting upright against a tree near a bike rack, in full view of anyone riding past. The victim's jacket was over her head. From a distance, an onlooker might have thought she was chilling out after a long run. The jacket, however, was hiding grievous facial injuries. A missing eye. The way her legs were stretched out, feet together, didn't suggest trauma. Whoever found her would have got a nasty surprise after pulling the hood back. The crime-scene techs had erected a tent around the victim, but Eden and I had taken a quick peek and stepped out to confer, to let the five people inside the tent do their thing. There was no phone this time but headphone jacks had been left behind, indicating that there had been one at some point. A good crowd of morning joggers and a few members of the press were gathered around the police tape, staring at us. I've got so used to their presence that I simply forgot they were there.

‘Jacket over the head this time,' Eden said quietly. ‘Some shame still there but we're rapidly growing out of it.'

‘Bit of a confused kind of display,' I nodded. ‘Wants the body to be found now. Clearly. But the killer's not particularly happy for everyone to know what's been done to the face.'

‘I don't think she can help what she does to their faces. I think that's the pure rage part. I think she just goes at the face before she knows what's she's done.'

‘She?' I frowned.

‘I'd say it's a woman.' Eden looked at the crowd. ‘Wouldn't you?'

‘Statistical probability would suggest otherwise,' I said. ‘But I'll hear your theory.'

‘Clothes on this one aren't tussled, the way they would be if they were removed and then put back on. I'm betting the rape
kit will confirm no sexual assault again. And then there's the facial injury. That's very feminine to me. Men go for the hair, the breasts, the wrists. The thin parts. They're objects for men. This –' she gestured to the tent ‘– this was personal.'

‘But we know it's not personal. We've pretty much ruled out anyone in Ivana Lyon's life, and now –'

‘Maybe it's personal by proxy,' Eden said. She took a packet of cigarettes from her back pocket and slid one out, put it between her lips, patted her pockets for her lighter. ‘Hence the face. She can't get at the person she's imagining her victims to be. They might be beyond her reach somehow. So she plays the fantasy out on random women. Once the face is messed up, she can imagine the victim to be whoever she's imagining she's killing. It's pure Bundy.'

Some bystanders at the tape near us bristled with excitement at the mention of Bundy. We took a step or two away from them and turned our backs.

‘That's the second time you've dropped the old Bundy stick,' I said.

It's always difficult to bring Ted Bundy into discussions about cases. The ‘poster boy' of serial killing is a perfect model to teach young homicide detectives about serial murder, so Bundy is drilled into you from the moment you transfer up from patrol. Bundy was responsible for the deaths of at least thirty-six young women in the mid-1970s, from schoolgirls as young as twelve to college students on the brink of starting their professional lives. He had a ‘type' – they all had long dark hair parted in the middle. Clever and beautiful girls who showed academic promise, women he lured into a Volkswagen Beetle with his charm and good looks. It was never revealed why Bundy was
so taken with long dark hair parted in the middle – but some speculate that he was trying to symbolically kill an ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Brooks, who had humiliated him by rejecting him. Bundy was driven to murder her ‘by proxy', to rape and mutilate and bludgeon and strangle women who looked like her as a way of enacting that same violence on Stephanie over and over.

I wasn't sure we had a Bundy killer on our hands here – as a homicide detective I'd heard the term mentioned plenty of times. It was thrown around a bit whenever violent crimes showed any kind of pattern. We had a second victim. I thought it was too early to bring out Ted.

Eden waved at me for my lighter.

‘What are you doing?' I lit her cigarette. ‘You don't smoke.'

‘I'd argue to the contrary.' She eased smoke through her teeth.

‘You're acting weird lately. The tattoo.'

‘I got a tattoo, Frank. Big whoop. The press are over there if you want to make an announcement.'

‘This thing with Imogen.'

‘I don't have a thing with Imogen.'

‘It's just not like you to let someone piss you off like that.'

‘She doesn't piss me off.' Eden gave one of her old half-grins, showed me a canine. ‘I just think she's a loser. I've got bigger fish in my life.'

‘Who?' I asked. ‘Is someone bothering you?'

‘No.'

‘Well,' I shrugged again, ‘I'm here if you need me.'

‘I neither need nor want you.' She finished her cigarette and threw it on the ground, pushed it into the wet grass.

‘Hey!' someone shouted from the crowd. Eden and I turned. It was hard to know who'd spoken at first. All the faces, the eyes,
were examining us. A couple of people turned towards a man in his thirties in a full running skin-suit, black lycra, slippery looking like a seal. He had a belt strapped to his waist with tiny bottles of water on it, a set of keys, some kind of step-tracker device.

‘Yes?' I frowned.

‘What the fuck are you two doing?' He put his gloved hands out. ‘You going to catch this guy or what?'

‘Excuse me?' I looked around, tried to determine if I knew the man. Eden was playing with her phone.

‘I asked if you two are going to catch this guy,' the man said, folding his arms. ‘You're standing there soaking up the morning like you're at a fucking picnic. People are scared out here, mate.'

I laughed. I guess I was surprised and outraged and didn't know what else to do. I checked again to see if Eden was getting this, but she just looked bored. She took my lighter out of my hand and used it to light another cigarette. The man in the seal suit pointed at her first cigarette on the ground.

‘You're contaminating the crime scene.'

Crime-show fan.

‘The crime scene's in there, you idiot.' I jerked a thumb towards the tent. ‘Who the fuck are you?'

A couple of the press cameras had turned towards us. I heard clicks, realised my jaw was out and my shoulders were up. Eden waved her cigarette in my face and brought me back around to her.

‘I'm going to get onto the CCTV and get the tech heads after that phone. If you're done cavorting with the locals, you can join me.'

I glanced at her, but my mind was elsewhere – over the shoulder of the dickhead I'd spotted something odd at the edge
of the police tape. It took me a few seconds to put together what I was seeing. There was a camera crew and a reporter taking an interview from a woman just beyond the back of the crowd. I recognised the sharp ponytail, the muscled profile. It was the apocalyptic woman I'd seen at Malabar Indian. Immediately, the fight with Imogen came to mind and my stomach flipped. I ducked under the tape and worked my way through the crowd, then stood behind the cameraman and watched the woman giving the interview. She was wearing full running gear – the same kind of body suit the dickhead was wearing but without, somehow, managing to look like a seal. She looked ready to rappel down into a bank vault and steal a diamond. There was no belt, no nylon cap. She thumbed the straps of a high-tech little camel pack with a water hose. There wasn't a bead of sweat on her. She was wearing thick bronze make-up and dark gold eyeliner. I couldn't decide if she was going to a charity ball or setting out to run to Parramatta.

‘What we really need to do is recognise the message behind these killings,' the woman said, swishing her ponytail. ‘And that is that strong, athletic, assertive women taking charge of their own health and wellbeing are threatening the dominant masculine archetype that's so much a part of Australian history.'

‘The what?' I looked at the cameraman. He was focused on the machine in his hands.

‘Both these women were runners,' the woman continued. ‘They were both targeted on their daily run while they were out there trying to better themselves, better their health and their lives. They were taking time for themselves. They were being selfish, which is a misunderstood and demonised word applied by ignorant people to the women they want to serve them. I think
we need to take the message that this guy is giving us – that these women need to be punished for their self-empowerment, for their rejection of the simpering, weak, subordinate female mould – and we need to stick it where the sun don't shine.'

‘Who is that?' I asked the cameraman. The microphone guy emerged from behind him, leaning back as he lifted the furry mic hovering above the journalist's head.

‘That's Caroline Eckhart.'

‘Who?'

‘Caroline Eckhart.' He frowned at me like I'd asked him who Jimmy Barnes was. I shrugged helplessly. He went back to his mic with a shake of his head.

‘So what you're saying is that these killings are a distinctly feminist issue?' the journalist said.

‘Oh yes. There's a deep misogyny at work here, one that all Australians need to recognise, not just those horrified by these brutal murders. Domestic violence is a frightening epidemic in this country, and whoever this man is, he's –'

‘Who said the killer is a man?' I scoffed. Several people turned to look at me. The crew, the journalist herself. Everyone but Caroline. She was on a rant, and nothing was stopping her. Her eyes were on the skyline, the glass windows of the distant CBD. ‘What the hell is going on here?'

‘Mate, you're messing up my bite,' the mic guy snapped at me.

I felt Eden's hand on my shoulder. She was pulling me towards the tent. ‘Stop wasting time.'

‘Who is this chick?' I yelled as Eden tugged me away. ‘Woman, you have no idea what you're talking about.'

The crowd at the tape turned to look at me. Almost all of them with hateful glares.