Malicious Intent (4 page)

She didn’t hear her secretary tap on the open door.

‘What’s it like being famous? A front-page girl?’ Elaine Morton walked in and sat on the padded arm, grinning at the photo of her boss.

‘I look like an old schoolmarm.’

Elaine scoffed and picked up the paper. ‘You look professional. Besides, the photo is quite touching; shows the public that the Barkers know how to say thank you.’ She poked at the apple. ‘Another health binge, or are you out of everything else?’

‘I had a big meal last night.’

Elaine sniffed the air. ‘Chinese takeaway, I’d say.’

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MALICIOUS INTENT

Anya prepared for another lecture on looking after herself, and the perennial favorite, how much weight she had lost since the divorce.

Kicking off her shoes, Anya lay across the calico-covered lounge. Bought at a second-hand sale, it was a temporary fix-ture until the business could afford a leather Chesterfield. In the meantime it was serviceable, as were the ex-government computer desk and swivel chair in the corner. The high ceilings and ornate plaster cornices gave the room an elegant feel, unaf-fected by the cobbled collection of furniture. Monet prints on two walls disguised a fading lemon paint job.

Back at her desk, Elaine switched off the answering machine. She replaced new cross-trainers with blue courts and pulled a bottle of perfume from the drawer. The sickly fra-grance was designed to obscure any smell of stale tobacco. Anya couldn’t decide which odor was worse.

‘Sperm Man paid another visit yesterday,’ Elaine said as she rummaged through her handbag.

‘The one with his wife’s underwear?’

‘That’s our man. This time he brought the bedsheets – red flannel.’

Anya rolled her eyes and groaned. ‘Is he still convinced his wife’s having an affair?’ She sat up and took the lid off a water bottle. ‘Why can’t he accept we don’t do that sort of work?’

‘I tell him every time he comes. He wants us to help catch his wife out. All we have to do is check the panties – and now the bedsheets – for sperm.’ Elaine combed her neatly trimmed ash-blond hair. ‘I don’t suppose we could do this one, and charge a consultant’s fee for passing it on?’

Instinctively, Anya touched the necklace her son had chosen and felt a lump rise in her throat. Only weeks ago Benjamin had beamed back at his mother in the jewelry shop as he picked the cheap gold chain for her thirty-fourth birthday. He proudly handed over the two dollars she had given him and hadn’t noticed when she paid the shop assistant the difference.

To afford another custody challenge, she needed more KATHRYN FOX

23

work, which meant improving her profile. Insurance cases paid well, but too many of them could ruin her reputation in legal circles. If things didn’t improve in the next few weeks, she’d have to reconsider
all
options.

‘We’re not taking on Sperm Man.’ Anya sipped the water.

‘Just keep giving him the names of the private testing laborato-ries in North Sydney and Lidcombe.’

Elaine walked to the doorway. ‘By the way, you have a nine o’clock appointment who should be here soon, a Mr. Deab. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about over the phone but kept saying how urgent it was that he see you.’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t bring underwear.’

Elaine chuckled. ‘Coffee?’ she asked, not waiting for an answer before wandering down the corridor to the kitchen.

Unable to afford a separate office, Anya lived at the back of the terrace house. She slept in an attic bedroom and kept a smaller upstairs room for Ben’s visits. A functional lounge room, bathroom and kitchen became common property during business hours.

At five past nine Elaine brought Anoub Deab from the waiting room into the main office. During a quick tidy up, Anya found under the lounge a Matchbox car, a LEGO block and a plastic road worker left from Ben’s last visit. She deposited the bounty on her desk just as the man entered the room.

Before leaving to answer the phone, Elaine offered freshly brewed coffee, which they both declined.

Anya shook the young man’s hand, which was bathed in perspiration. He must have been in his early twenties, with soot-black hair, olive skin and dark eyes. The neatly ironed jeans and an impeccably pressed white shirt meant he was either obsessively neat or still lived with his mother.

‘What can I do for you, Mr. Deab?’ Anya offered the chair opposite her desk, sat and opened a notebook.

He cleared his throat a couple of times and lowered himself into the seat. ‘I want to find out about my sister, Fatima. She disappeared seven weeks ago. No one knows where she went.

24

MALICIOUS INTENT

My father, he was angry – he thought she ran away with a boy.

My mother . . .’ Anoub lowered his head. ‘Almost a month had passed since Fatima went missing. And then one night the police came and told my parents she was dead.’

Anya felt some of the young man’s pain. She knew too well what it was like to lose a family member. She wrote ‘missing 4/52, found dead 3/52 ago’ and underlined them in her book.

Anoub stood and paced the small room. ‘It was drugs, but I want you to find out what else happened.’

Anya spoke quietly. ‘Do you think there’s more to the story than you’ve been told?’

‘That’s what I want to know.’ He sighed loudly. ‘How can you understand what it is like, not knowing who to trust? You, with your pale skin and green eyes –’ His voice was so bitter.

‘Since September 11, we have been persecuted by police.

Before then we were tolerated. Now people despise us. The papers say we go around in gangs causing violence. Just because we are Lebanese the police pull us over, search and threaten us.

For no reason.’ He ran a hand through his hair and stared at Anya. ‘How can we believe anything they say?’

The man had a point. Radio shock-jocks had vilified Islamic immigrants since the devastation of New York’s World Trade Center towers, and, closer to home, the suicide bomb-ings in Bali.

‘What do you think happened to your sister?’

‘That’s what I need to find out! This has brought great shame to my father and our family. My father’s business is suffering because our own community disowns us. Many say she died of AIDS. My mother does not speak about it but I hear her crying . . .’ He stopped himself from saying anything more about his mother. ‘Fatima was promised in marriage to a man from our home village. Now my father is disgraced there as well. You cannot understand what this means for us.’

Anya wasn’t sure whether he was more aggrieved by his sister’s death or the social implications of the way in which she died.

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25

He reached into his back pocket and placed an envelope on the desk. ‘I want you to take this and talk to the police. Find out the truth. Did Fatima have AIDS, like some people are saying? Was she with a man when she ran away? Who gave her the drugs and left her to die?’

Anya opened the envelope. Stuffed inside were ten- and twenty-dollar bills, amounting to thousands. Almost unrecognizable were wads of old notes, which hadn’t been in circulation for about forty years.

She replaced the contents. ‘I am very sorry for your loss, but I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a private investigator.’

‘But Mr. Brody said he would ask you to look into it.’

‘Dan Brody, the lawyer?’

‘Yes. He handles my father’s affairs.’

Anya wondered what sort of ‘affairs’ needed a criminal defense lawyer. ‘As yet, he’s not asked me to be involved,’ she said.

The young man lifted his chin as though it gave him more authority.

‘I want you involved. You’ll work for me, not Brody.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t think I can help you.’ Anya stood up and pushed the envelope away. With a reputation to build and the custody fight for Ben, now more than ever, she couldn’t afford to be implicated in anything suspicious or illegal. And she didn’t like Deab’s attitude toward her.

Anoub refused to take back the money. ‘I am prepared to pay to find out what the police know.’

‘I choose whether or not to accept a client.’ Her voice was firm.

‘I didn’t steal the money, if that is what you think. My mother has been putting aside a little each week, in case anything happened to my father. She has it hidden around the house and asked me to give some to you. There is more if you need it.’ He sounded desperate, almost pleading. ‘If I can prove that Fatima didn’t have AIDS, it would help my family a great deal.’

26

MALICIOUS INTENT

Anya studied the grieving brother. He appeared so arrogant, but when he spoke of his mother he became surprisingly vulnerable. His defensiveness and paranoia didn’t justify his arrogance, but could explain why he came across as so abrasive.

She took a deep breath. ‘Presumably, if the police were involved, the coroner requested a postmortem, an autopsy, on your sister.’

‘The pigs would not let us bury Fatima when we wanted.

They defiled her body.’

Anya was aware of the Islamic tradition of burying the dead as quickly as possible. In a suspected overdose, screening for infections such as HIV prior to the autopsy further delayed proceedings, despite efforts by the coroner and pathologists to respect the family’s wishes. For families, the wait could be devastating and poorly understood.

‘If a doctor can’t complete a death certificate,’ she explained,

‘or the cause of death is unknown, the coroner requests a postmortem. Particularly if the circumstances surrounding the death are suspicious. It’s the law.’

‘Fatima’ – Anoub faltered for a moment – ‘died with a needle in her arm in a filthy toilet block.’ He sat again and stared at a bookshelf of medical texts before speaking.

‘My parents came here as teenagers. They wanted us to have a better and safer life but made sure we followed Islamic law.

After Fatima left school, my father allowed her to work as a medical secretary in Merrylands. This made her see how much trouble Western immorality caused. She despised women who came to the practice with pregnancies and diseases caused by debauchery.’

Anoub took a deep breath, and tightly clasped his hands.

‘She looked forward to marrying my father’s cousin until that last night.’ His facial muscles tightened. ‘She said the train was late but my father did not believe her. He says she had a boyfriend and forbade her to return to that workplace.’

‘How did Fatima respond?’ Anya gently probed.

Anoub was matter-of-fact. ‘She cried and went to her room. In the night, she left and no one saw her again – alive.’

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27

‘I’m very sorry about your sister,’ she repeated. The way her brother spoke, Fatima’s life couldn’t have been easy. It was not surprising she ran away if her father forbade her to have freedoms other people took for granted. ‘But I don’t know how I can help.’

‘Did the person who left her give her an infection?’

Anya wondered why Brody hadn’t discussed the case with her. Anoub Deab’s motivation seemed odd. He seemed far more worried about infection than how or why his sister died.

Reputation meant more to his family than she’d appreciated. It occurred to her that he might have wanted to pursue his own version of justice for the person who left Fatima in the toilet.

She hoped she was wrong.

‘Do
you
think she had a boyfriend?’

‘That’s part of what I want you to find out,’ Anoub snapped.

‘You must realize I can interpret the pathologist’s report and find out what I can from the police, but that’s about all I can do. Like I said before, I’m not a private investigator. I review medical evidence.’

Anoub straightened. ‘Because of Fatima, people think we are drug dealers. My father is being followed and we have had threats on the phone.’

Anya suspected the man was paranoid, but then again, his father required the services of an expensive criminal lawyer. ‘I know some of the police investigators who cover western Sydney. If you’re being threatened, you can tell them about the calls. They may be able to trace them.’

‘We cannot do that. My father forbids it.’

Anoub’s attitude made Anya uncomfortable, but his request was straightforward. She looked at the small car on her desk and thought of Ben and the lack of work offers. Anoub would obviously pay for her time, and she didn’t
have
to like him or the way his family treated women. She felt sorry for the mother, wanting to know what had really happened to her daughter and the anguish of unanswered questions.

‘Okay. I can talk to the police about the circumstances of 28

MALICIOUS INTENT

Fatima’s death and look through the postmortem report. Then we can speak again.’ Anya stood up and pushed her chair back.

‘I may not find out anything you don’t already know, but I’ll keep your family informed.’

Anoub stood up. ‘No! You will report to me and no one else. Not even Brody.’

His authoritative outburst annoyed Anya. ‘Does your father know you’re here?’ she said, sounding like her own mother.

Anoub straightened and lifted his chin. ‘No, he would not approve. My mother agreed, but my father is not to know.’

‘Fine, I respect confidentiality. I’ll see what I can do.’ Anya moved from the desk. Handing back his mother’s savings, she explained that Elaine would take his details and discuss a schedule of fees.

Dan Brody, she thought, had some explaining to do. Why had he mentioned her name, and what was really going on with this case?

For a moment she studied her volatile client, wondering whether he had disclosed everything he knew. Gut feeling told her he hadn’t.

4

Senior sergeant John Ziegler had been on call the night Fatima died. Anya’s only chance to catch up with him was on a job. He’d postponed their meeting once already and she wanted to clear up the details of Fatima Deab’s death quickly.

With Dan Brody tied up in court for the rest of the week, she decided to find out what she could about the Deab girl’s death.

Crossing the station footbridge, Anya was jostled by school-age voyeurs straining to get a view. Exhaust fumes and diesel from the adjacent main road clouded the air. She pushed to gain a position at the handrail. Blue and white police tape cordoned off the far end of Platform 1. Parallel to the railway sleepers, a gray blanket covered the remains of a body. As a train pulled in to Westmead station, a lanky figure in dark blue police overalls and baseball cap moved away from the tracks and was immediately obscured by the carriage. A couple of minutes later the city-bound train continued and the head of the crime scene unit resumed his examination.