Medea's Curse (19 page)

‘She was one year and three hundred and sixty days. In Victoria, the age changed
to two years in 2005. The year Olivia died.’

Natalie stared at her. She had thought the state law change was more recent; certainly
in her forensic psychiatry lectures it had still been the subject of debate. Had
Georgia known at the time about the law? Then she realised that if Jacqueline was
wondering about the children’s father, there was another thing to worry about.

‘So,’ said Natalie slowly. ‘What about the youngest child?’ Paul had her in his care.
‘Has anyone thought about Miranda?’

Natalie was still thinking of her meeting with Jacqueline when she was checking the
Welbury Leader
online, waiting for Georgia to arrive. The journalists had finally
let loose; a two-page feature headed
Tragedy Strikes Twice.
They had resurrected
some old photos of Amber and her family and quotes from sources that were unclear
which wife and child were being referred to. The subtext was clear: tragedy might
strike twice but lightning sure as hell didn’t.

Amber’s words suddenly popped into her head:
one attack. Never came out of the coma.
Kay had lied. Made the whole thing up—but why? She thought of Kay’s tears when she
had talked about Travis not letting Glen die thinking his daughter was a murderer.
Travis confessing was what Kay
had
wished
happened. Like Liam and Damian, Kay wanted
Travis to be guilty. It didn’t mean he was. The Meadow’s Law fallacy.

The photo of Travis managed to capture a mix of slimy self-satisfaction and poor-little-me.
Natalie’s first thoughts were for Amber, but then she wondered when the mainstream
papers would pick it up and Declan would find out. She switched her iPad off angrily.
Why weren’t they concentrating on finding Chloe?

‘You guys didn’t encourage the arsehole reporter did you?’ she asked Damian.

‘Hardly.’

‘I’m sorry, just…I know Chloe’s got to be dead but somehow…it would be nice to find
her one way or another.’

‘We followed up on what you said.’

Natalie frowned. ‘What?’

‘The morning.’ Damian’s tone suggested a degree of respect; one she had yet to win
from Liam regarding her involvement on the case.

‘And?’

There was a pause. ‘She said she couldn’t remember. That she got her mornings mixed
up, that it was all the meds, that she was bombed out and maybe she hadn’t even given
Chloe breakfast.’

‘And Travis had?’

‘No. It was clearly bullshit.’

‘And you’re thinking what?’

‘She was scared. Told us Travis has been hounding her to go home to him.’

‘So,’ said Natalie slowly, ‘you still thinking she’s covering up for Travis?’

‘Yes. We’re putting the screws on. She’ll crack soon.’

Georgia arrived flustered and on edge, dressed in a slimline pink and black tracksuit
ensemble. On the way to the gym, presumably. Rather than sitting down, she walked
to the window and stared out. Natalie tried not to let her frustration show. There
were too many unanswered questions and even if she asked them she couldn’t be sure
the response would be genuine. How to even attempt therapy when she was still struggling
with diagnosis?

‘He sent another card.’

‘Paul?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything on this one?’

‘No. I mean, yes. A message.’

‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it.’

Georgia turned around, putting her hands in the pockets of her jacket, head down.

‘He doesn’t write anything,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t want to incriminate himself.’

‘So the message was conveyed how?’

Georgia looked up. She sighed, walked over and sat in the armchair opposite Natalie.

‘I told you he was attentive. We had an extremely close relationship. He always made
me feel special. Right from the start he sent me bunny cards.’

For once Natalie was grateful for the medication slowing her thoughts. It took a
few moments to formulate a neutral response. ‘Why bunny cards?’

Georgia shrugged.

‘What was the message this card gave then?’

‘The last one was an Easter one. Just meant he was thinking about me, knew I’d been
released, knew where I was.’

‘What about this one?’

Georgia picked up her bag. Hands shaking slightly, she pulled out a card and handed
it to Natalie.

It was blank: no printed or handwritten message. The picture was a scene from what
looked like an eighteenth-century painting. A hunter with a shotgun in one hand and
three dead rabbits in the other.

Natalie struggled to concentrate for the rest of the day. Was she seeing connections
that didn’t exist? Rabbits were commonplace, including on mass-produced greeting
cards. She shifted her attention to trying to make sense of Georgia. Was this the
Amber nightmare all over again? Or was Georgia working an angle, responding to conscious
or unconscious prompts from the lawyer? Even if Paul was toxic to Georgia, already
vulnerable from her background, would it matter in court? Would Natalie even be allowed
to mention it? Just what did Jacqueline Barrett think would be ‘helpful’?

She looked at her appointment book, counting down the time before she could leave.
Tiphanie’s parents had an appointment for Wednesday, but it was the message stuck
to the page that drew her attention.

‘From Liam O’Shea,’ Beverley informed her.
Please direct any questions re the Chloe
Hardy case to my colleague Carol Karnell.

‘What do I make of the cards?’ Natalie wasn’t sitting. Holding her glass in one hand,
she paced around Declan’s office, knowing she needed to demonstrate that she was
well and not quite able to achieve it. ‘I left a message with Paul and his lawyer
got back to me and said bugger off. So all I
have to go on is secondhand information.’

Declan viewed her with his usual level of calm. ‘Look at it as a fascinating array
of possibilities,’ he said.

Natalie paused. ‘Such as?’

‘My dear, there is a fundamental problem here.’ He paused and in the silence made
it clear she needed to sit down. How did he do that? She sat down.

‘You are being seduced,’ Declan explained. ‘By the dark side.’

Natalie suppressed a laugh, a picture of Liam naked in bed flashing into her thoughts.

‘By that,’ Declan continued, ‘I don’t mean the criminal element of your patients.
I mean the law.’

Now he had her attention.

Declan leaned forward, hands as expressive as his face and voice. ‘In law, everything
is black and white. You think the decision is between good and evil, but it is a
far more basic duality. Win, lose. Ms Barrett has a client she is representing and
she needs to find a way for her to be innocent. She has less interest, if any, in
whether she
is
innocent. A narrative will emerge in court. It may or may not resemble
what actually happened but it will be the basis of the judgment.’

‘Fine; I get that sometimes criminals get away with it. But there’s an innocent child
in all of this. What if Miranda is actually in the care of a murderer?’

Declan shook his head. ‘When you’re my age you will know there are degrees of justice
and they don’t always bear much relationship to the truth. We can only do our best.’

‘That’s what we must do isn’t it? Find the truth. Protect the innocent?’

Again Declan shook his head. ‘Truth? You know people
can have very different recollections
of exactly the same event. We filter our memories, see things as we want to through
our own lenses.’

‘I know all that,’ said Natalie, ‘but there’s still facts. Either Georgia and Tiphanie
killed their children or they didn’t.’

Declan took a sip of wine. ‘Are you sure it’s that simple? What about intent? Society
is often unsympathetic and sees the woman as Medea. Is that really what infanticide
is?’

‘Medea,’ said Natalie, trying to remember the Greek classic. ‘Killed her children
to save them? Like Andrea Yates?’

‘You’re referring to the Texan woman who drowned her five children during a psychotic
episode?’

‘She believed she was saving them from the devil.’

‘
Let it never be said that I have left my children for my foes to trample on.
But
I suspect Euripides had a lawyer’s mind, not a physician’s. Medea killed her children
to punish her husband.’

‘That’s usually more the male thing,’ said Natalie. The classic murder–suicide associated
with family breakdown: sporadic weekend access and new de facto replacing the father
in the home.
If I can’t have them, nor will you.
‘I don’t think that fits most of
the cases I see.’ It could fit this one, though.

‘Think about Amber Hardy,’ said Declan.

Natalie started at the mention of Amber’s name. He couldn’t possibly know that she
had seen Amber, could he? She willed herself to calmness, not breaking eye contact.

‘She was technically responsible.’ Natalie was starting to feel weary with the angst
of these women and the weight of their cases. ‘Certainly guilty from a legal point
of view.’

‘As far as we know. But was Travis innocent?’

‘No. Most definitely not. He’s a weak bully. Leeches his strength from those more
vulnerable. She did it for him as much as if it had been his hand, yet he got off
scot free. She didn’t do it out of vengeance.’

‘No,’ agreed Declan. He was looking at her carefully. Natalie looked away. ‘I wonder
what he then takes with him through the rest of his life. Into other relationships.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Natalie.’ There was a warning edge to Declan’s tone.

‘Yes?’ said Natalie willing herself to stand up, not able to meet his eyes.

‘Take your medication.’

Natalie didn’t bother with the speed limit. Her mind was ahead of her, already wondering
if someone would be outside her house. She cut the Ducati’s engine half a block before
she got there. The street loomed before her, eerily silent, the shadows holding nothing
but a couple of cats that were as startled as she was when they leapt off a bin and
sent it teetering and falling, rubbish spilling out across the road. Her doors and
windows were intact. The new locks were un-breached. She went back, got the bike
and resolved to put aside the niggling anxiety. She wasn’t paranoid, she told herself.
She was normal, felt fine. Maybe he’d achieved what he wanted, getting under her
skin, and now would give up.

She didn’t believe it. She was alone and isolated. The cops couldn’t help her without
her telling them everything, and even then she had more faith in her own abilities.
She knew she could call Tom but hated the weakness that would impute. Declan couldn’t
be told the whole story; Liam had ditched her as too much trouble. There was only
her, at
the end of the day, same as always. She looked at her pills. Thought of the
green and gold filaments and Declan, and took the full dose. But it wasn’t enough
to stop the wind across the rooftops interrupting her sleep.

Chapter 17

Tiphanie’s parents were fifteen minutes early for their appointment. Natalie watched them from the doorway, wondering why they were there. To help Tiphanie? To help them
deal with the loss of their grandchild? Or to defend themselves?

Sandra Murchison was probably mid-forties. She looked uncomfortable in a brown jacket
and skirt that didn’t fit. Her hand went under the waist band to try and ease the
squeeze, exposing the pantyhose beneath. She made a striking contrast with Beverley,
who today was in a spectacular leopard-skin pantsuit.

Her husband, Jim, looked equally lost. Long skinny legs, a beer-gut and rounded shoulders,
jeans with shirt half tucked in and a sense that life weighed heavily on him.

‘She spells her daughter’s name with a
ph
,’ said Beverley to Natalie in a loud whisper.
‘And an
ie
. I’m surprised there isn’t an
h
in
Sandra
.’

Natalie met their smiles as she introduced herself, and hoped they didn’t think she
was laughing at Beverley’s take on bogan spelling. The Murchison’s smiles were markers
of a social code that stipulated politeness to doctors you didn’t
want to see and
a pretence that all was well, no matter how bad things actually were. Australian
country folk at their stoic best. Through a decade of drought, the men had done what
they always did, not asking for help, drowning their sorrows at the local pub. And
in epidemic numbers ending their lives with a rope or a gun.

They wanted to come in together, which was fine by Natalie, at least to begin with.

‘Things must be pretty difficult,’ said Natalie.

‘Impossible,’ Sandra replied, sitting on the edge of the chair. ‘This has been going
on for over two months now. We’re all under enormous pressure and the police seem
to be no closer to finding our Chloe.’

Our
. Interesting.

‘Poor Tiph’s beside herself,’ Jim added, patting his wife’s hand. She didn’t seem
to notice.