Death Delights (17 page)

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said, attempting to pick them up. ‘The bag burst.’

While the proprietor clucked and grabbed the oranges on his counter, Iona Seymour fished some out of her trolley and handed them back while I picked up the ones I could see on the floor. ‘Here,’ she said, in that voice. ‘I think that’s all I’ve got. Oh no. There’s one under the checkout.’

We both stooped at the same moment, and our faces were very close and at eye level. I wanted to know who or what had caused the terror I could see hiding in her eyes. We straightened up together.

‘You were at that meeting,’ I said, pretending surprise. She smiled.

‘Yes. And so were you.’

We were so close that I could feel the tension and the strength of her well-built body. Her shoulders and upper arms showed well-defined muscles, and the hand collecting the runaway oranges was square and powerful. She reminded me of Charlie’s latest girlfriend, Siya; this woman had the same sinewy strength. I took the orange from her and added it to my purchases.

‘Can I buy you a decent coffee?’ was out of my mouth before I had time to think. ‘This bag bursting has been the latest in a series of domestic disasters.’ It sounded pathetic and I regretted the words the moment I said them.

Her smile was a surprise because it lit a face that seemed created for seriousness, even sternness.

‘They’re the worst sort,’ she said. Her dark eyes looked straight into mine. ‘A decent coffee would be good,’ she said.

I was feeling stupidly self-conscious and I had to deliberately reason with myself as I carried the two coffees back to where Iona was sitting, in the cosy little weatherboard café next to the supermarket that seemed more like some dear old auntie’s front parlour than a commercial enterprise. Just for a while, I left behind my failed marriage, my lost daughter, my vanished sister. I knew they were all safely waiting for me and I’d be picking them up soon enough, but just for this hour or so, I was a man with an attractive woman and I was feeling as awkward as hell.

I put the coffees down and went back for the sandwiches I’d ordered. Iona sat gazing out the window. She seemed miles away, but turned and there was a slight smile as she looked at me. I got the sense she was really trying.

‘Please have a sandwich,’ I offered, moving the plate closer to her. She shook her head. ‘It’s a really nice double smoked ham,’ I said, feeling stupid. Iona recoiled.

‘I’m vegetarian,’ she said, with some distaste. I’d have to do better.

I bit into the sandwich and little pale green streamers of lettuce fell onto the tablecloth while Iona watched the steam swirl from her long black.

‘Have they helped you?’ she was asking me and for a minute I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. ‘The meetings?’ she said. I nodded.

‘Very much,’ I said. And because of my past, it wasn’t a complete lie.

‘I haven’t seen you before.’ She was looking intently at me and I revisited that powerful moment when our eyes had connected over her old blue Mercedes in the radio station’s parking area, and I prayed she wouldn’t remember. Avoiding eye contact with the target is the golden rule. I felt guilty for what I knew about her: that I’d read her desperate prayer, that I’d followed her like a stalker. If she’d known any of this, she wouldn’t be sitting here with me now.

I was creatively evasive. ‘I don’t live round here. I just came to this one for a change of scenery.’

That seemed to satisfy her, and she sipped the coffee, still looking at me with her steady dark eyes. The fear I’d seen earlier was no longer obvious as she leaned behind her to pull a white cotton jumper around her. I saw the muscles move in her arms and shoulders.

‘And you?’ I said, remembering the old days of AA meetings and intimate conversations with strangers that were only made possible because of a mutual, dangerous obsession. ‘Do you go to other meetings?’

She shook her head. ‘Just this one.’

I’d forgotten how to be social and light with a woman. Things had been so difficult with Genevieve for so long, and conversation hadn’t been a priority with Alix. Also, I had to admit to myself that I’d been very shaken by the apparition, or whatever it was, of Rosie in the night. Whether or not she was a figure of my imagination, or whether she had somehow ‘materialised’ in time and space, hardly mattered. Nothing like that had ever been in my experience and there was a new place created in my mind because of it.

But I knew well enough from my years in the job how to make others feel either relaxed or threatened. So I asked her harmless questions about music and books, what films she’d seen lately, and we were able to have a discussion about a film we’d both seen. But I wanted more than that, so after a bit of this sort of talk, I tapped the chromed steel name plate attached to her keys.

‘It’s an unusual name, Iona,’ I said. ‘Is there a story?’ Again, the slight smile moved her face. Her beauty was very fragile; some times her face lit up, at other times she looked anguished and her features stern and forbidding.

‘Oh yes,’ she said in her rich voice. ‘It’s an island high up the west coast of Scotland—only a few miles long and about a mile and a half wide. My mother met my father there. He was studying for the priesthood but meeting her changed all that.’ She frowned momentarily and sighed at some memory of her own. Then she came back to the subject in hand. ‘The island of Iona is in darkness from October to February. The sun barely touches the horizon. So most of the inhabitants go to the mainland then and everything closes down. It’s very beautiful in that windswept way. The north wind blows without ceasing and summer is about three weeks long.’

I repeated her last sentence silently to myself. The words flowed like a poem. I knew a lot about her already, although she knew nothing about me. I knew she lived alone, but had no doubt that there was a man somewhere in the picture. She’d as good as said so at the meeting. Some difficult man who was causing her grief. Most people live in couples, I thought, with singleness only occurring when something goes wrong.

‘And you?’ she was saying, putting her cup down. ‘Tell me something about you. What did you do today?’

I couldn’t really say right now that I’d looked at marks on a timber beam caused by a suicide’s rope, or that I’d checked out the car in which my sister had been taken to her doom twenty-five years ago. ‘Me?’ I said, buying time. ‘I’ve driven up and back to the Blue Mountains. Work,’ I added.

She frowned. ‘What sort of work is that?’

‘I’m a scientist,’ I said, hoping she’d leave it at that. I didn’t want to reveal my true colours nor did I want to lie to this woman. The awkward position I was in brought me back to the reality of my situation and that broke the spell. I threw back the remainder of my coffee. Iona took my cue and picked up her keys and purse.

‘Has your scientific background given you a special insight into the human condition?’ she asked.

I thought of my police work, the lab, the way we added to the body of knowledge about death and crime, but I doubted if that was the part of the human condition she meant.

‘In a way,’ I said.

‘Science was a sort of enemy in my household,’ she said.

I wanted to ask her what she meant, but she was suddenly restless. She started digging into her purse and her eyes glanced at the little folded-up bill under the plate.

‘I’ll get it,’ I said, picking it up. I hadn’t done anything like this for years and I knew I wanted to see her again, but didn’t know how to make that happen. We stood up and I knew I should make a move now.

‘Is it appropriate to ask you for a phone number?’ I said.

She hesitated. ‘Do you want my number because of the meetings or do you want my number?’

I knew exactly what she meant. In Twelve Step programs, phone numbers are exchanged so that when a person feels the familiar pull to the old, compulsive behaviour, he or she can make a phone call to someone who’s gone through the same crises and found new ways to deal with them. I didn’t know what would be the best answer. ‘Both,’ I said. That seemed to have the desired effect. She pulled a business card out of her wallet and passed it to me.

But suddenly something changed. Her face become hard and closed and I could sense stormclouds gathering around her. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, the shimmering voice even more beguiling under pressure. I remembered that tone. She had spoken my daughter’s name in just that way. ‘I’m sorry. It was a mistake’— she looked around at the coffee things—‘this…this socialising. I shouldn’t have agreed in the first place.’

I was aware of her power and, at the same time, her fear. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What is frightening you?’

She stared, shocked, into my eyes and for a moment I thought she was about to burst into tears. Then she turned away, picked up her shopping and started walking swiftly towards the exit. I hurried after her.

‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t go like this. I’ve offended you in some way. I’ve been too pushy. Please forgive me.’

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘it’s not that.’ But she didn’t stop, calling the words back at me as she continued to hurry away. I didn’t want to make a pest of myself, but nor could I afford to leave her like this. It wasn’t just that I was strongly attracted to the woman, she had some real connection to my daughter and I wanted to know how and why. Otherwise, there was only Renee.

‘I’ll ring you,’ I said, touching the business card she’d given me.

She looked at me briefly and nodded, but perhaps it was just to get rid of me. She paused for a moment before she got into her car and I saw her take a deep breath, as if she had to steel herself. Then she drove away in the bright afternoon. I watched her car as it turned out of the street. I know a lot more about you, Iona Seymour, than you know about me, I was thinking. And I had to admit to myself that the more I knew, the more I wanted to know. I was not going to let her get away.

•

Back home, I looked up St Kilian’s, Padstow, and rang the number. A man answered.

‘Father Dumaresque?’ I said. There was a pause.

‘Who is this?’ asked the voice at the other end of the line. I told him who I was and found I was speaking to Father Cusack.

‘Mr McCain,’ said the priest, ‘is this a professional or personal call?’

‘Professional,’ I said. ‘I just want to ask him a question or two.’

‘Ask me,’ said the priest.

Somewhat impatient at his nosiness, I went on to explain. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘sometimes priests deliver messages to people when they visit.’ I also remembered that the letter Frank Carmody had received in gaol thanked him for
replying.
But to what?

‘That’s so,’ said the priest.

‘I want to ask Father Dumaresque about whether he’s done such a service. During a particular visit to a particular prisoner at Long Bay last year.’

‘Do you now?’ said the priest. ‘Then I’ll have to tell you that Father Dumaresque went to his heavenly reward over five years ago.’ He must have sensed my surprise because his voice was gentle when he next spoke. ‘I only asked all those questions,’ he said, ‘because I thought you might be pulling my leg. We get mischief calls a lot of the time.’

I rang off and immediately called Bob. He reminded me that anyone visiting any of Her Majesty’s prisons must furnish the administration with their name and date of birth which are checked. Anyone with a criminal record is refused admission.

‘I’ll check that the priest is really dead,’ Bob said. ‘Some reverends do tend to take the moral crusade very personally.’

‘Priests show up as perpetrators,’ I said, ‘rather than revenge takers.’ But someone had availed themselves of the name and identity of a dead priest and I wanted very much to know who this person was.

I put Iona Seymour and the priest from the dead out of my mind by reading through Bevan Treweeke’s miserable record. It went back thirty years. He’d first come to the attention of the local cops for an indecent assault on a little girl when he was sixteen. There’d been lots of complaints about him hanging round schoolyards, there were several charges of indecent exposure and even some convictions for burglary and peeping. But no serious charge had got past the committal stage. The year Rosie went missing, Treweeke had been thirty-two. This man certainly had the previous form I’d expect for a child abductor. But when I looked more closely at the earlier witness statements and records of interview, I understood why there was no record of interview with Bevan Treweeke concerning the disappearance of Rosie. In November 1975, when Rosie was taken from outside our house, Bevan Treweeke was at Devondale Correctional Centre, serving the second of a four months stint for Break and Enter. I turned my attention to the address he’d given in those days and saw that Treweeke hadn’t lived at the address where he’d hanged himself and where we’d found the car, but in Springbrook, where we’d grown up. As I flipped back through the records again, the Blackheath address I’d visited earlier in the day caught my eye. It was given as the address of his grandmother, Mrs Marjorie Selwick, his next of kin. I put the papers down and stood up, needing to move. As a general rule, the abduction of little girls is not a crime involving grandmothers. And yet Bevan Treweeke had ended up living there, and the Holden had also ended up there. Grandmother Selwick may have even bought it at some stage, in all innocence, and it was just a coincidence that her grandson hanged himself near it many years later.

I went over the facts that I knew by heart. Rosie was taken from outside our place. The car had raced down the street, skidded on the corner, reversed into the tree, and taken off at speed. Mrs Bower on the corner, who admitted hearing the crash, hadn’t been able to give the police much information. It had been days before the police had come out with a possible description of the car and by that time, anyone could have taken it anywhere.

I found Mrs Bower’s statement from my own records and read it. ‘I was cleaning the louvre windows,’ she said, ‘when I heard the sound of a crash. I couldn’t say what sort of car it was because everything happened so fast’. I threw the folder down in frustration and kicked it across the floor, further irritated. Until I felt the weight of the deflation and hopelessness that now pressed down on me, I hadn’t realised how much I’d had riding on this new connection. Then I reminded myself that my position had improved and that as far as the Rosie investigation went, I wasn’t back where I’d always been. Now we had the car that took her. And Bevan Treweeke’s little black notebook. I opened it up and started copying out the phone numbers in it. Discovering who these belonged to would be a start. I’d hardly written the first one when my mobile rang.

‘I’m sorry to have to be the one with the bad news.’ It was Florence from Forensic Services. ‘But I’m afraid the results on Frank Carmody’s clothes were NR.’ The disappointment hit me hard: Not reportable. ‘Even the amelogenin test?’ I asked. The first marker on the DNA profile gives us the subject’s sex.

‘Like I said,’ said Florence, ‘all the loci were NR. Sorry.’

I felt the heaviness of disappointment. All my careful searching and combing of the dead man’s clothes had come to nothing. But there was still my prize from the buttonhole.

‘What about the long blonde hair?’ I asked, and a fantasy image of the nightclub dancer twirled in my imagination.

‘Ah, that,’ said Florence. ‘No follicle. No DNA. We had a good look at it even so. Either Carmody came into close contact with some crazy knife-wielding Asian who bleaches her hair then dyes it again or .
 
.
 
.’

I sighed, knowing what she was about to say. ‘Okay, Florence. That’s unlikely, so I’ll settle for the obvious.’

‘Yep,’ she said, ‘someone was wearing a wig.’

Most wigs are made from Asian hair which is straight and strong, then bleached and dyed to the required colour.

‘That elimination sample from the cigarette butt is here ready for you,’ Florence was saying.

‘Thanks,’ I said. There was a pause on the line. ‘So we haven’t really got anything,’ I said finally, ‘on the killer.’

‘Oh I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Sarah’s got some interesting results from the letters. She said she’d be faxing them through to you sometime soon.’ The ‘Rosie’ letters had taken a back seat because of my preoccupation with the hanged man and the Holden, and the recent unsatisfying interlude with Iona Seymour.

‘I’ll be in Sydney day after tomorrow,’ said Florence. ‘I’m coming up for a three day mini-conference.’ I remembered the Forensic Society was running a program at Sydney University and Florence and several others had been invited as speakers. ‘I’m not doing anything any of the nights,’ Florence was saying. ‘I’m staying at the Holiday Inn at Coogee. That’s only a little way from where you’re living.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said vaguely, wondering why she was telling me all this and somewhat surprised that Florence would know or care where I was living. ‘I hear it’s quite comfortable. Great views.’ I didn’t quite know what to say next. ‘The weather’s been good,’ I offered. ‘A bit sticky but you could have a dip when you’re not busy.’

‘And I thought,’ she continued, ‘that it might be nice to ask you if you wanted to meet up with me for something. You know…’

I didn’t. I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘I’ll be back down in Canberra by the time you’ve returned. There’s a document I want to look at,’ I said, thinking of the packaged anonymous letter that I still hadn’t opened.

‘I didn’t mean about work.’ Her voice was raw and stricken and I suddenly realised what she meant.

‘You mean a get-together?’ I said, quickly trying to restore the situation. ‘Grab a coffee or something?’ But it was too late.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ She rang off abruptly and I was left standing there, the strained voice ringing in my ears. So that when the phone rang again, I didn’t immediately pick it up. I was dismayed at the realisation that Florence Horsefall had some sort of romantic interest in me and I simply hadn’t seen it. I had the deepest respect for her professional and her scientific ability, but as far as anything personal went, she was just Florence who’d been a work colleague for as long as I could remember. Now her odd, self-conscious behaviour, the flustered manner, the embarrassment that she’d displayed when she was in my company made some sort of sense. Not only had I failed to see this, I’d also just failed miserably in dealing with her in an intelligent or decent way. The anger in her voice had been the anger of a woman who feels herself wronged. I knew that tone too well to ever mistake it.

Slowly, I picked up the mobile and saw ‘Missed call’ on the screen. I pressed the message bank. When I heard the voice at the other end, so familiar and yet so different, I froze. The voice in my ear was a woman’s voice. Eighteen months had softened and thickened her child’s voice. My daughter’s voice.

‘Dad? It’s Jass. Where are you?’ There was a pause. I heard her swallow. Was she nervous? Frightened of me? ‘Dad?’ Her voice less sure of itself now. ‘Dad. There’s something that’s happened.’ There was a pause. I wondered if she was crying. ‘I’ll call again.’ Then came the click as she rang off.

I was stunned, rooted to the floor for a second. Then I almost threw the mobile to the floor in frustration. Fucking hell, I’d missed the most important call of my life. I felt an unfair hatred for Florence Horsefall and her fumbling embarrassment and her romantic delusions. In that moment, I felt all the anger with all the women who had ever offended me. Damn you, Jass. Damn all of you. I wanted to cry. I played the message again and again. Slowly, I geared down and the fury left me. My daughter was alive and talking to me. She had responded to me. Renee had done her bit fair and square, earned her fifty bucks. My daughter had called me. She’d said she’d call again. All I could do was hope and pray and trust that she would. I picked the mobile up, willing her to ring again. Please, Jass, I whispered to myself, ring again. Now.

I walked outside and down the back, the mobile still in my hand. I peered through the bushes at the end of the yard. The playground over the back fence was deserted as always and the little swing hung stiff on its iron fittings, moving slightly as if someone had just left off sitting there. I stood there, remembering again the night my daughter ran away, the stupid argument about pierced ears, the screaming, the confusion, the sitting up all night and waiting for the police to take it seriously. I went back up the yard, automatically pulling the odd weed out of the tomato pots, seeing the yellow flowerets setting fruit the size of peas. I went back into the house, wondering where Greg was. I rang Charlie and in a few minutes I was at his place.

•

‘I’m in trouble,’ I said to him, as he let me in.

He looked at me closely and I could see concern in his features. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can see that.’

I put my hand on his arm and wondered where to start. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. ‘Charlie, Jacinta just rang me. A few minutes ago.’

Charlie sat up very straight. ‘What did she say? What did you say?’

I told Charlie about the fact that I’d missed the call because of Florence. Then I had to tell him something about the Florence mix-up. ‘I think she’s got a crush on me,’ I said. ‘I’ve never even noticed her. In that way, I meant.’

I told him about my visit to the suicide’s car shed and the finding of the old Holden. ‘If I sound all over the place,’ I said to my brother, ‘it’s because I am. The last twenty-four hours have just exploded around me.’

Charlie made a soothing noise and led me into his living room and made me sit down, pouring me a lemonade while he had a brandy. I was vaguely aware of Siya in the kitchen and the smell of rosemary and lamb roasting. I described my meeting with Iona, and my growing attraction.

‘Ah,’ he said, remembering, ‘the woman with the voice.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the voice. Bob and I both think she might have been about to say something about the murders of Gumley and Nesbitt, then changed tack. It’s only after she’d changed direction that she mentioned Jacinta.’

I put my head in my hands. ‘I don’t know. There’s just too much happening for me to deal with properly,’ I said finally. ‘I’m overloaded.’

‘You’ve been overloaded for a while,’ said my brother in his serious voice. I sat there, nursing my lemonade.

‘And Charlie, there’s something I want to tell you. Maybe you can help me explain it to myself.’ I paused, gearing myself up to say the words. ‘I saw Rosie last night. In my bedroom. Just standing there near the door, as plain as I’m seeing you now.’ In the kitchen I could hear Siya singing about love in the only Greek words I knew. ‘I feel like my life is coming unhinged from its moorings. Now I’m seeing things that aren’t there. And not seeing things that are. I should’ve noticed what was going on with Florence.’ Charlie just sat, watching me attentively and listening to my litany. ‘But the thing that really worries me,’ I said finally, ‘is this. If I couldn’t see that a woman I work with, that I see most days of my life up close, was sweet on me, how many other things aren’t I seeing? Things that I need to see?’ I looked over to Charlie, but he was just sitting there, still and quiet, listening intently. I waited for a while but the silence just grew longer. I inhaled deeply, realising I’d been holding my breath. ‘I knew I was a bit stressed out,’ I said, ‘but now I’m really alarmed. My job depends on me seeing everything, noticing what’s there, reporting, recording, analysing. You know and I know I can’t afford to overlook anything, not the tiniest thing.’ Again I was silent, then I looked at him. ‘You said recently that I needed help,’ I said. ‘Well, here I am. Help me.’

Charlie smiled. ‘It doesn’t quite work like that, Jacko. I can’t be involved with you like that.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You’ve got the letters after your name.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, ‘and I’ve got the same letters
in
my name. I’m your brother. I can’t be a counsellor to you.’ He relented a bit. ‘In the most casual way, perhaps,’ he added. ‘I mean in the broad picture. But if you want to talk to someone, it really can’t be me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m emotionally involved with you. I’d be compromised. Biased. Not seeing things clearly either.’

I sat there thinking. I knew this already, but I hadn’t realised that I’d need to be told like this.

‘It wouldn’t do you any good,’ he added. ‘Besides, you’d probably take no notice of anything I recommended.’

‘But you must be able to do something. Tell me something.’

Charlie got up and went to the sideboard, pouring just a finger more brandy and a lot of mineral water. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Go home and have a look at that box of our mother’s stuff. Start thinking about the past. Start letting it in. Draw a picture of our house and a map of the rooms. Start thinking about the similarities between our mother and the woman you married. The similarities with you and our father. The fact that our sister and your daughter both left home at thirteen.’

‘But they were totally different incidents!’ I said. ‘You can’t compare them.’

‘I’m not comparing them,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m simply noting them. And asking you to do the same. I’ll have a think and get back to you with some names and phone numbers.’

As if on cue, Siya came out of the kitchen, her dark eyes in their shadowed sockets glancing from me to my brother, taking in the scene.

‘Please will you stay for dinner, Jack?’ she asked. She laid her brown hand on my arm. I shook my head.

‘Greg,’ I said. ‘I need to be home for him.’

‘Ring him. Ask him, too.’

But I left in a few minutes.

•

I was cutting potatoes up and getting the broccoli ready when the back door banged open and my son came in. He went straight to the fridge and started making himself sandwiches. I could see that he’d had a tough day. He was pale and his eyebrows met together in a frown.