Malicious Intent (38 page)

‘The previous owners had the security installed,’ Vaughan volunteered, holding the door open for her. ‘You’d be amazed how many people think you’re worth robbing if you live on an acreage out this way.’

Self-conscious, Anya took off her muddy shoes outside and pulled off her saturated jacket. A gust of wind forced its way in as she closed the door.

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‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ Vaughan said, disappearing toward the back of the house. ‘Bathroom’s third on the left.’

Pantyhose wet and dirty, she padded along the polished floor.

A series of paintings lined the corridor. One depicted two large women serving a table of Roman soldiers who were gorging themselves. Another showed naked women in a harem guarded by eunuchs. Not quite what she’d expected from Vaughan, but she had long ago decided that taste in art didn’t reflect much.

In the bathroom, she removed her pantyhose and towel-dried her hair, which had formed ringlets in the rain. In the mirror she saw the raccoon again, only this time it looked like she had two bruises under her eyes. Bags on top of bags. The last week hadn’t just taken an emotional toll. Her face had aged years, it seemed. She checked her mobile for messages. Nothing from Martin or Brian Hogan.

She opened the bathroom door as the kettle whistled.

Vaughan had a cooktop kettle, something she hadn’t seen for years. She wondered what else he was old-fashioned about.

Diagonally across the corridor, Anya could see inside a room lined with wooden bookshelves, stacked with books.

Vaughan reappeared and handed her fresh towels and a fleecy-lined jacket, which she quickly put on. He’d taken off his sweater and replaced it with a pale blue shirt he was buttoning from the bottom. The collar had twisted. Anya automatically leaned forward to turn it down, but Vaughan blocked her hand.

Immediately, he let go and she saw a series of grossly dis-tended veins on the left side of his chest.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –’

She stepped back and for a moment they stood in awkward silence.

‘I don’t like anyone seeing them,’ he said, and turned toward the kitchen.

Anya thought about the bulging veins. They were a classic sign of a mass inside the chest compressing blood flow in the superior vena cava. The tourniquet effect caused veins on the KATHRYN FOX

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chest wall to engorge and become raised. She hoped she was wrong. ‘Is it something you were born with, or . . .?’

He stood with his back to her. ‘I’ve got a mediastinal tumor blocking the SVC. It’s a lymphoma and I’ve had chemo and radiotherapy.’ He remained still. ‘But it’s grown again.’

Anya reached forward and touched his back. This time he didn’t pull away. Lymphoma. God. No wonder he’d been so short of breath at the Easter Show. The tumor must have been large to affect his lungs that much. She wished she hadn’t tried to grab his collar and exposed him like that.

‘Like you, I value privacy.’ He moved away from her touch.

‘Let’s forget about it and have some tea. I’ll bring it into the study.’

He disappeared down the hall. Rubbing her wrist, Anya wondered why he had been so upset about her seeing the veins.

He had nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. She would have to act as though nothing had been said.

Placing the towels on a chair in the hallway, she entered the study, and stood there impressed by the order and organization on the shelves lining the walls of the light-filled room. Psychiatric texts filled the shelves, grouped in topic and alphabetical order, according to the author. Unlike her former husband, this man was obsessively tidy. He liked to be in control of his things.

A dark blue thesis stood out: ‘Literature review of techniques employed by perpetrators of domestic abuse, by Vaughan M. Hunter.’ Lifting it down from the shelf, she carefully opened the front cover and flicked through the contents. The study contained so much of, and about, this man. Anya wanted to explore more.

‘How do you have it?’ he called from down the corridor.

‘Black’s fine, thanks.’

‘I’m making raisin toast, would you like some?’

‘Sounds good,’ she shouted.

Returning the thesis to its position, Anya surveyed the shelf. He was behaving as though nothing had happened.

Thank God.
Walden
by Thoreau, and
Walden Two
by B. F. Skin-312

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ner caught her attention. The back blurb on the latter said it was the fictional story of a utopian society. George Orwell’s
Animal Farm
and
1984
sat farther along, amidst a number of classic high school texts like
Lord of the Flies
. Anya remembered reading that, hating the inhumanity of the boys on the island.

The school curriculum had numerous books on repressive and inhumane regimes. True crime books such as
Helter Skelter
sat next to texts on ancient Rome and Greece. Vaughan seemed to have eclectic taste.

On a walnut desk sat a black Bakelite telephone, a microcassette recorder and wire in-tray. It struck her as odd that there were no photos in the room. No qualifications framed, or personal touches. She realized she knew nothing about his background, family or friends. He’d always done the listening.

Vaughan appeared in the doorway with two china cups, milk and sugar on a tray. The smell of the buttered toast made her stomach gurgle.

The in-tray contained galley proofs of scientific papers pending publication. She picked them up.

‘THE EFFECTS OF SENSORY DEPRIVATION ON

PERCEPTION,’ ‘COGNITIVE DISSONANCE – MAKE

OR BREAK TIME,’ one yet to be titled, and ‘WHEN BELIEF

SYSTEMS ARE SHATTERED AND THE WORLD

DOESN’T COME TO AN END.’

‘I see you found my most recent works.’

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘This room is amazing.

When it comes to being tidy, are you sure you’re not obsessive?’

‘People use that word to medicalize what I prefer to think of as conscientious organization.’

‘Or, you may just lack insight into your obsessive behavior,’

she joked.

‘Touché.’ He placed the tray on the sideboard beneath the window.

Anya flicked through the papers. ‘What exactly is cognitive dissonance?’

He became serious again. ‘When people who, for example, KATHRYN FOX

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believe the teachings of a cult and are convinced the world will end, say, at midnight on a particular day. When that day comes and goes, one of two things happens. Firstly, they might modify their beliefs, which they realize were rubbish. This inevitably leads to depression and what lay people describe as a ‘breakdown.’ Alternatively, they can justify what happened and reinforce their beliefs. The smart cult leader tells followers the world was saved by their devotion. They are with him for life after that.’

‘How bizarre. I think that’s what happened with one of the women in the cases I mentioned to you. She committed suicide in hospital.’

Vaughan poured the tea through a strainer. Anya stepped forward to take the cup and trod on something under the desk.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, bending down to pick it up and unrolling the glossy paper. The poster looked familiar.

‘Don’t worry, it’s an old one, about to be replaced by another version. We’re trying to convince people to seek help when they’re being abused. That’s part of my work with volunteer programs.’

Anya sipped the piping-hot drink, cupping it in both hands for warmth. She gestured with her eyes toward a pile of papers shoved between two books on the bottom shelf. ‘Good to see you’re human.’

‘I didn’t expect you this early.’ He put his cup back on the tray, removed the out-of-place papers and rolled them into a cylinder. They looked like lists of numbers.

Anya recalled the e-mail from Kate mentioning the Crisis Center that each of the dead women had called. Vaughan might be able to help work out who the women spoke to. ‘Do you know much about phone counseling centers?’

He squeezed the papers in his hand. ‘They come under the mental health unit’s control.’

‘How anonymous are callers?’

‘What do you mean?’ he said, sounding defensive. ‘Staff aren’t at liberty to divulge callers’ names to a third party, unless someone’s safety is compromised.’

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She blew on the steaming tea. ‘Is there a facility for finding out where someone is phoning from in an extreme emergency?

What if, for example, a counselor was talking to a caller who was about to kill her children?’

‘Our centers have caller identification and our counselors are obliged to document phone numbers of callers. That way if someone threatens to kill him- or herself, or anyone else, we can immediately notify the police and mental health crisis teams. It’s also helpful for identifying the demographic and doing case reviews. It’s pseudo de-identified data, you could say.’

So much for anonymous phone calls. Counselors had information on and access to vulnerable women, revealing their innermost secrets in times of crises. At least the police should be at the Central Crisis Center by now, trying to find whoever spoke with the dead women.

‘How are counselors screened?’

Vaughan frowned. ‘I can only speak for how we do it in the Central Health Service. Candidates go through rigorous testing procedures and routinely debrief using a selection of cases.’

He put down the rolls of paper and offered his guest toast from a floral china plate.

Wondering how Vaughan would feel if one of the staff turned out to be a murderer, Anya selected a slice and decided not to mention it right now. The smell of cinnamon gave the room a homely feel. On the desk, the rolled-up papers un-raveled to reveal the lists of numbers. Judging by the length, they were phone numbers. The top page had a greasy stain on it.

She began to feel uneasy. Didn’t Central Health Service cover the Central Crisis Center, which Kate had identified as linking the women? The same center that was advertised on Vaughan’s poster. Anya suddenly remembered where she’d seen the poster before – on the wall at the Merrylands doctor’s surgery. Fatima Deab had sat staring at it as she worked. Obviously, she’d called the Crisis Center and someone there had identified her phone number. It would have been easy to pay KATHRYN FOX

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an investigator, or phone company worker, to find out the address where the call had originated.

‘Everything okay?’ Vaughan asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost again.’

‘Just this headache from the accident,’ she said, putting down the toast on an empty plate.

Whoever took the women had a good knowledge of manipulative techniques, patterns of abuse and, almost certainly, anechoic chambers. She glanced at the research on the desk and back to the list of numbers. Her head throbbed. Like segments of a jigsaw puzzle, a picture began to emerge. Vaughan understood all about behavioral modification and had access to each of the dead women’s phone numbers and problems. She remembered the conversation they’d had about being taken out of your comfort zone. Was that some kind of veiled clue for her benefit?

Her neck ached and her temples throbbed. He’d said he knew her father, too, and what the family had suffered. The pieces fit.

And all the art in the hallway depicted women in servitude.

The pain in her neck felt like hot rods driving up to the base of her skull. She had trusted him. He’d even helped with the investigation into Fatima’s death.

Anya felt her face and skin on her neck flush as she moved closer to the door. She had to get out of there, without letting him know why.

‘I’m not feeling very well,’ she told him. ‘It could be whiplash but I have a shocking headache.’ She put down the cup. ‘It’s probably a good idea to get it checked out, for insurance reasons.’

‘There’s no reason to leave.’ Vaughan moved toward her. ‘I want to help you.’

Her chest tightened. ‘They’ll probably need to X-ray it, so I might just go to Casualty.’

His face seemed to harden. ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said.

She walked toward the door, clutching her head, but he was 316

MALICIOUS INTENT

too quick. He slammed it, shoving her back against the bookshelf. Her head hit a vertical support and a bolt of pain shot through her neck. He squeezed her arms so tightly her hands tingled, then began to lose feeling.

‘Sit down before you hurt yourself.’ He loosened his grip and she flexed her knee, hard. He sidestepped and avoided the contact with his groin.

‘Play nicely,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘You still don’t know where your friend is.’ He yanked her by the arm and pushed her into a chair in front of the desk.

It
was
him. Her body felt numb.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she stammered. She could feel his hands behind her, hovering over her shoulders.

‘There are two types of people in this world – those with fixed beliefs and those who live life flipping from one thing to another, unable to commit to anything. Let’s call them spine-less, amorphous beings, if you like. I am a purist, a behavioral scientist faced with the challenge of instilling backbones into moral invertebrates.’

She listened for noise in the house and tried to remember what she’d seen as they drove in. ‘You think you’re just social engineering?’

‘That sounds so theoretical. What I do has so many practical implications for the subjects as well as others.’

‘You keep people in an anechoic chamber, deprive them of sensory stimuli, distort their perception and then blame them for complying with your sick requests. That’s not exactly rocket science. People would do anything to survive.’

His fist slammed against the side of her head, jarring her teeth and jaw. She fell sideways into the arm of the chair, striking her ribs hard against the wood.

‘I give people choices. They choose how to react.’

Anya held her breath, determined not to show weakness.

That’s what he preyed on. Her face ached and a piercing sound filled her right ear, but she wouldn’t let him know it. She had to keep him talking. Slowly, she sat upright.