Dirty Weekend (35 page)

I woke up swaying from a nightmare blackout where I’d been trying to swim up through pitch-dark water to a surface that forever eluded me, reduced to a graph spike of consciousness on a broad black ground: no past, no future, just this awful moment of pain and confusion.

I struggled towards consciousness and reality. It was hard to do, like coming out of anaesthetic, with everything garbled and a long way away.

‘You’ve got a nasty head wound, mate,’ said my companion.

I was in the back of an ambulance. ‘Brian? Is that you?’ That was what I intended to say, but when I tried to make the words, all I could hear were peculiar noises.

‘You’re alive. Welcome back to life.’

‘What happened?’ I tried. ‘After he hit me?’ But again, although I knew what I was meaning to say, the way it came out was another series of groaning noises.

‘He pissed off in your car, we think,’ said Brian, trying to second guess my concerns. ‘Probably passed him coming down on the way up here. He could be in Sydney by the time we get you sorted out.’

But that wasn’t right. In vain, I tried to formulate the words. The prohibited item.

‘His grandmother’s okay,’ said Brian, thinking that was my concern. ‘She’s in another ambulance on her way to hospital. He’d whacked her hard too. Little bastard.’

Little bastard. That’s what his father had called him when we spoke in another world, another time.

‘No,’ I tried to say. ‘No, that’s not right. He’s got my baton. And the handgun if he finds it.’

‘Take it easy, Jack. You’re not making much sense.’

Then my line to the world dropped out again and the fear in my mind and the strange sounds I was trying to make swirled away.

Next, I was being hauled upright to sit swaying on the edge of one of those green fake leather examination tables in Casualty at Woden Hospital. ‘Just a couple of stitches,’ said the young resident, who looked younger than Jacinta. ‘You’ll feel a little prick—from the local.’ She smiled at her wordplay.

I looked around. ‘The police officer who was here. The one in the ambulance. Where is he?’ Relief. I could speak again and the words came out reasonably well.

‘Hold still, please,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask someone at the desk.’

I blinked. I couldn’t really leave right now, dragging this young woman and her sewing kit behind me, leading her with my stitches. I fumbled for my mobile.

‘Please,’ she said, quite sharply. ‘You can’t be seriously trying to make a phone call while I’m attending to a bad laceration on your scalp.’

‘They’re after the wrong man,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to tell someone.’

Then the local anaesthetic must have hit the spot, and the young resident must have misjudged the dosage given my frail state, because I heard her yell for someone to come and help hold me and her voice came from a long distance while I vanished down the wrong end of a black vortex.

‘I want to keep you here for observation,’ she was saying as I came back. This time, I was flat on my back. ‘Just overnight. We need to watch injuries like these. You could have a slow bleed in there, between your brain and your skull. I want to send you down to X-ray if you can walk.’

‘I’ve got to get out,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call.’

This time, I was able to sit up and dig my mobile out. I called Brian.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t Damien who killed Tianna. And I know who 17/2000 is.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Brian’s voice. ‘You’re not making any sense, mate.’

‘Come and pick me up. But first, go to my office and bring the reconstructed skull from the top of my filing cabinet. Take great care of her. She’s very precious.’

‘Jack. Take it easy. You’ve got a head injury.’

‘So did she. So did Tianna. Listen to me. This is what happened.’

I told him about the break-in at Alana’s place and the tartan rug in her car with its dusty particles and tools. ‘If you test them, particularly the tyre brace,’ I suggested, ‘you might find it has granite particles on it. As well as trace blood residue.’ I told him that my car could provide a mini-armoury. I told him about the baton and fudged a bit about the prohibited item. And most of all, I told him about the moment when the three noisy Sydney cops had turned the corner and started walking past us while Earl Richardson and I stood in the doorway of my office.

I talked fast, despite my condition, and after a while Brian stopped interrupting. By the end of it, he was listening.

Half an hour later we were speeding towards Sydney, my bandaged head feeling several sizes too big for me, despite or because of the painkillers I’d taken.

‘He needs help if he wants to get out of the country,’ I said.

‘We’ve got people watching his house,’ Brian said. ‘He can’t get far on the money he took from Alana’s place. He’s finished.’ He turned the police radio down. ‘But how did you get onto him? How did you work it out?’

‘I didn’t have to do it at all,’ I said. ‘Lily Meadowes did it for me.’

‘Who?’

‘Earl Richardson’s first wife. All I had to do was join the dots and suddenly the evidence all made perfect sense. The skirt, the earrings. My sense of recognition.’

Brian shook his head. ‘Will you for Christ’s sake tell me what’s going on?’

And so I did. It was always nice to impress people, even nicer to impress a young colleague like Brian Kruger. I watched sideways by the glow of the dashboard lights as he kept nodding his head slowly, taking it in and savouring it, bit by bit.

When I’d finished he glanced across at me, while the small computer screen came to life at his touch.

‘Jack,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say. The facts were there all the time.’

‘Do you know where Jason is?’ I asked.

‘We’ll find him,’ said Brian, reaching for the radio. When he’d finished speaking, he rehoused it. ‘All those clever Sydney types who are in town for the conference,’ he said. ‘Those guys who call us “plastics”? They should hear about this. From you.’

‘I don’t know if my head could manage getting around it all just now,’ I said.

‘And there could be a commissioner’s commendation in it for you, too.’

‘You know it wasn’t just me,’ I said. ‘It was a team effort. He had every base covered. He thought.’

‘That’s what you should say,’ said Brian. ‘In your presentation.’

‘I don’t think I should say that. Not until he’s arrested.’

‘He won’t be able to access any of his bank accounts. He’s got to have money to do anything.’ He considered. ‘We might be able to track him via his mobile.’

‘Which he won’t use,’ I said.

‘Not if he’s got half a brain.’

‘He’s got considerably more than that,’ I said. ‘Plus crime scene experience. And a helpful bereavement counsellor. All that bullshit about wanting to get back with Tianna was just smoke in our eyes. He wanted to be rid of her, keep all the property, and he’d found what he thought was a perfect unwanted wife disposal method.’

I told him about the information Bob had passed on and remembered the intimate moment when Deirdre Delaney brushed something from Earl Richardson’s black jacket.

Brian put his foot down while I rang Bob. We were driving northeast, angled into the rising sun.

When we arrived at the Police Centre, Bob was waiting for me and came down to the basement car park to meet us. ‘Your wagon turned up,’ he said. ‘Dumped near Central. I went over and picked it up for you.’ He handed me the keys.

‘Central,’ said Brian. ‘He could be on a train to anywhere.’

Somehow, I didn’t think so. No point in using the little money he had to arrive broke in a country town. ‘He’d stick out like dogs’ balls,’ I said. ‘He’ll stay in the big city. Till he can get organised and out. He could be with Deirdre Delaney.’

‘The woman with the interesting underwear? Your car’s over here,’ said Bob, leading us to it.

I noticed immediately that the baton had gone. I opened the door and when I felt under the seat, I cursed.

‘He’s armed,’ I said.

Brian and I left his car and continued in my wagon to Earl Richardson’s address, leaving Bob, who was officer in charge, to organise the search team from Sydney. As I took a turn too fast, the bag with 17/2000’s rebuilt face rolled towards the window.

‘What’s that on the back seat?’ Brian asked. ‘More of your armoury?’

I reminded him that it was the skull reconstruction he’d brought from my office.

We parked in the back lane of the semi in Glebe and met up with the Sydney crime scene team. A door-knock around the neighbours turned up a spare key. Don, a sergeant I’d worked with fifteen years before was among them and even remembered me.

I climbed into a Tyvek suit, wincing as I cautiously pulled the hood over my stitched head, and went inside with the Sydney guys, putting my gloves on, hoping that the pain in my head wouldn’t interfere too badly.

The search team went methodically through each room, dividing the space systematically so that not one inch was overlooked. In the back bedroom I saw an unrolled sleeping bag and an old army duffle bag and watched while they sorted through the clothes in it—mostly boardies, faded T-shirts and worn underpants. And an old colour photograph. The exhibit list grew: a small stash of leafy heads and a packet of cigarette papers.

I took the photograph from Brian and recognised it. A baby and a young mother with her face turned away from the camera, her soft dark hair with blonded tips shining in the Australian sunshine—the photo I’d briefly seen at Alana Richardson’s place. I looked into the main bedroom. It was dark, facing south, and the drawers beside the bed yielded some very recent photographs of Earl Richardson with Deirdre Delaney. I noticed, too, that the bedspread was missing from the bed and another small question was answered.

The search of the premises took a long time, but, finally, in an outside drain near the laundry, Elisabeth from the Surry Hills physical evidence unit found a set of old dentures. With my gloved fingers I picked them up.

‘Granny’s dentures,’ I said, turning the combined upper and lower set over in their bag, remembering what Alana had told me. ‘He used these to make those so-called bite marks on Tianna’s body. He was trying to make it look like some mad sex- and violence-killer. But the pressures were all wrong and the marks didn’t even look authentic.’

‘He was trying to muddy the waters,’ said Brian as he labelled them.

‘Send them down to Harry Marshall,’ I said. ‘Ask him to check these against the photographs of those so-called bite marks on Tianna Richardson’s body.’

‘We can’t find much in the way of official documents,’ said one of the team, who was going through all the drawers. ‘Looks like he’s already been here—taken his passport and other documents.’

A loud commotion near the front door made me turn injudiciously, hurting my head. In came Jason Richardson, half off the floor, struggling in the hands of Don from Maroubra police. ‘Look who we’ve got here! He conveniently ran into a car at the end of the street.’

‘Jason,’ I said, ‘why did you come here?’

‘He was driving past the house but when he saw the police presence he took off, didn’t you,’ said Don.

‘Leave me alone! Get your bloody hands off me!’ Jason struggled to free himself.

Pulling the hood of my spacesuit off my injured head, I stepped forward. ‘He’s okay, Don,’ I said. ‘I know him.’

And I did. Intimately. Abandoned by his mother, unloved by his father. And now in big trouble. The stitched injury on my head throbbed in time with the beating of my pulse.

‘Where’s your father, Jason?’ I asked. ‘We really need to know before things get worse.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

The defiance was real, the denial was false and he knew that I knew he was lying.

‘Your father’s on the run,’ I said. ‘He needs to get away urgently. He’s already contacted you, hasn’t he? You were on your way here to pick up his gear. But we got here much faster than he’d imagined. Has he told you where to find his passport and his emergency stash?’

Jason remained silent.

‘We’ll find them, Jason. Even if we have to take this place apart, brick by brick. And we’ll charge you with aiding and abetting. Not to mention obstruction. You wouldn’t last five minutes in prison, son.’

I could see the kid was almost in tears. But his mouth was set in a hard line.

He turned away, refusing to look at me.

‘He needs someone to get him money, to act as a go-between. Someone who will help him escape. Suddenly, after all these years of pissing you off and calling you a dole bludger, he needs you. He can’t really rely on his girlfriend. She might start asking too many questions and get suspicious herself. But a son is different. Especially when your father
needs
you.’

I saw the lower part of his face start to slide.

‘That must feel good, real good,’ I said. ‘But the sad fact is that he’s using you, Jason. The minute he gets what he wants, he’ll piss you right off again. He’ll be on the next aeroplane, ship, yacht, whatever, out of the country. Just like your absconding mother.’

I thought that might break him, but he held firm.

‘You know where he’s hiding, don’t you?’

Jason struggled again but he was no match for the big man who held him with one of the mean wristlocks I’d used on Greg.

Where would he hide, I wondered, as my head throbbed even harder and hotter. Where would he lie low, waiting for the necessary documents to be delivered to him? It came to me in a flash. I suddenly knew where Earl Richardson would be.

‘Father Basil,’ I said.

We decided to do it quietly rather than the weapons-drawn, sirens-screaming business and an hour later, once we’d tracked down Father Basil’s whereabouts, Bob, Brian and I drove there in my wagon. We parked in the back lane behind St Aloysius’s in the inner city, waiting for the rest of the troops to arrive. Bob got out and did a quick survey of the back of the church and the small attached rectory and its tiny cement garden.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said as he climbed back into the car. ‘It’s too quiet.’

We decided to move then and check the grounds more thoroughly. As Brian got out of the car, I called after him, ‘When all this is over, I’ll buy you and your girlfriend a cocktail.’

Brian ducked through the backyard to disappear around the front of the church; Bob and I made sure the small cemented area around the entrance to the rectory was clear. A sign next to the buzzer invited visitors to press for attention.

I tried the door and found it wasn’t locked.

‘I’ll go first,’ Bob said in a low voice. He already had his weapon drawn and I was glad of that. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Be careful, Bob,’ I said. ‘This man has nothing to lose.’

He pushed the door open and the squad car suddenly arrived in the back lane, its hotted-up engine roaring a warning. I swore and moved in fast behind Bob only to see Father Basil racing towards us, almost knocking Bob over. I grabbed him before he hit the ground. The Franciscan almost followed him. ‘Where is he?’ I shouted.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Father Basil’s face was drained, his words hoarse. ‘I thought he was going to kill me!’

‘Where
is he
?’
My voice was almost a scream.

‘He’s gone through into the church! As soon as he heard the car outside!’ I knew the front entrance of the church opened onto a busy road. We had to contain him.

‘Brian!’ Bob yelled, disappearing round the front after our colleague. The place was seething with cops as squad cars from all over arrived and I hurried back to my wagon and jumped in, intending to drive round to the front of the church. Reversing, I turned and revved my car down the alley that ran parallel to the church grounds, linking the back lane with the main street frontage. I braked suddenly. At the end of the lane I saw Earl Richardson struggling in the hands of several police.

As the relief surged through my body, the throbbing in my head became worse. The bastard owed me one.

The search team was still busy wrecking large sections of the walls and flooring in the Glebe semi when Earl Richardson was led in handcuffs towards the dejected figure of his son slumped against the wall.

‘Useless little prick,’ his father snarled.

‘Is that any way for a daily communicant to talk?’ I said, aware of the throbbing in my head. ‘What were you doing at Father Basil’s? Confessing?’

The search team counted the money in the cashbox they’d uncovered and entered it in the exhibits’ book, doing the same with the passport.

‘I’ll get off this, McCain,’ Earl said. ‘I’ll say that I asked you to do me a favour but you had it in for me, that you maliciously fixed evidence against me. I’ll tell them how you did it, too. I’ll tell them how you threatened me. How you tried to extract money from me. Why do you think I called you in the first place? Just to cover every base, that’s why. Just in case this happened. There are a lot of phone calls between you and me. Any court will want to know why the crime scene examiner and the alleged killer were in daily communication with each other during the time of the crime scene examination. You know the code of ethics. I’ll walk free and you’ll be out of a job.’

‘Shut up, Earl,’ I said, though I didn’t like what he was saying. I remembered how he’d described us as ‘friends’. My findings as a scientist would fall under suspicion. Questions would be raised as to why I’d taken on the role of crime scene examiner when it clearly wasn’t my place to act in this way. I couldn’t remember any other chief scientist who’d done what I’d done. Suddenly, I felt sick.

I went outside to my wagon. My head was getting worse. I wanted to lie down for a minute, relieve the throbbing in my head. I looked through the glove box for some aspirin. As I straightened up, I saw the bag with Wendy’s reconstruction in it. Through the haze of pain and fear, an idea suggested itself and I snatched up the bag, hurrying back towards the door.

Just before arriving at the room where the others were, I took the reconstruction out of its bag and, holding it in front of me, approached the doorway, pointing 17/2000’s head so that her serene, sideways glance was directed straight at Earl Richardson. I stood there in the doorway, like he’d done at my office, holding the head up in front of me, looking past her soft, dark, blonde-tipped hair.

‘Talk your way out of this one, Richardson!’ I yelled. ‘Look who’s here!’

He started to rise to his feet, his face shocked. I heard his sudden intake of breath, saw his face go red, then purple, saw the spasm of agony as his heart went crazy. I watched, hard and cold, while he gasped and staggered, unable to stand up.

‘Come on, Earl,’ I said. ‘Talk your way out of her!’

He’d slid to his knees, his face a ghastly grey.

‘Dad!’ Jason cried, running to support him while I stood there, pointing her head, her youthful face, at him.

‘Call the ambulance!’ someone screamed.

Jason turned to me with stricken eyes. I saw how like her she was, with the same narrow face, fine, long nose, the same high cheekbones.

‘Stop doing that!’ Jason screamed at me. Then, in a softer voice, ‘Who is she? What’s happening? Dad!’

‘The spitting image,’ Alana had said. Jason was the spitting image of his mother.

I rested up at Charlie’s, visiting my doctor later that day, who changed the dressing on my head and made noises about how I should be concentrating more on clerical work and less on tactical operations. I could only agree with her.

Jacinta, still very teary about Shaz, nevertheless did a great job with the tea tray and even made a cake as a special cheer-up treat for us all.

‘How are the lemurs?’ I asked her, sitting up from the spare bed, deciding it was time, at 3 p.m., to start the day.

‘The lemurs are fine,’ she said, laughing. ‘Me and Andy wanted to know if it’s okay to come down and spend a few days at the cottage with you. I’ll see if Greg and Ellie can make it too.’

My spirits lifted immediately. ‘I’d like that a lot,’ I said. ‘I’ve taken a month’s leave.’

‘That is so cool, Dad,’ she said, coming over to kiss me. ‘I’ll need cheering up. We’ll probably drive straight down after Shaz’s funeral.’ She drew back and looked at me with her mother’s eyes.

‘What is it?’ I asked, sensing her hesitation.

‘I want to see Iona, Dad. I don’t want to lose her just because you’re hopeless. Where is she?’

I gave her the address of Anne-Marie’s Ainslie apartment and then I lay back and planned my next move to win Iona Seymour back into my life. She’d never left my heart, not for a second.

But I still felt sick whenever I thought of Earl Richardson’s threat. Combined with the disciplinary action I could face for not merely having an unlicensed handgun, but permitting it to fall into criminal hands, his threats could mean the end of my life as a jobbing scientist.

‘He came knocking on my door,’ I said, as I sat on Charlie’s garden deck, after telling him what had happened. ‘Wanting to thank me for all I’d done for him. I’ll bet the prick was laughing all the way. He’d set things up so well that we went for it.’ I paused. ‘
I
went for it. He had another woman lined up and Tianna was a nuisance and he didn’t want all the fuss of a divorce. Not to mention the financial loss. He planned this well. Even brought an extra bedspread with him, just in case.’

Charlie gave me a look.

‘I’ll explain sometime.’ I shook my head. ‘You’re right, Charlie. I am heading for burnout if I don’t take some time off.’

Charlie nodded slowly. ‘But then, when he did come knocking on your door,’ he said, ‘he saw what looked like someone standing in the corner of your office.’

I nodded. ‘He found himself staring straight at his first wife, looking like she did all those years ago when he murdered her. He had the first heart attack.’ I paused and drank some coffee. ‘At the time, I’d thought he’d got into a state seeing Adam Shiner turn the corner. But it had nothing to do with Shiner and everything to do with Lily Meadowes’ eyes staring straight out at him.’

‘No wonder he can’t bear Jason, if he’s like his mother,’ said Charlie. ‘I feel sorry for the poor kid.’

‘Not only was he staring straight at his young bride again,’ I said, ‘but he was also realising that it was just a matter of time before that pretty face would be all over the newspapers. And no time at all before someone—probably Alana Richardson—said, “Hey, that’s my first daughter-in-law, Lily Meadowes!” Then the inference would be drawn about Tianna. And Earl Richardson, conman, pantsman and wife-killer, who up until that minute believed he’d got away with everything, would be fucked good and proper.’ I felt I wanted to spit.

‘All that religious crap,’ I added. ‘What was he thinking?’

Dusk was falling and Charlie’s garden was suffused with a soft light that made the greens glow with an intense brilliance.

‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a confession. I hope Earl Richardson doesn’t survive this second coronary.’

‘You’re saying you wish him dead?’ said Charlie as he got up from the table and went into the kitchen. ‘It would be a great deal easier for you if he would just go away,’ he called back.

I thought about that. That was what Earl Richardson must have thought, about first one woman, then, twenty years later, another one, and here I was, having the same thought. So what did that make me?

Charlie had returned with the percolator and I held my cup up. ‘He’s got nothing to lose if he tries to bring you down with him,’ Charlie said, filling my cup. ‘All he has left to avenge himself is malice.’

The soft dusk light darkened. Maybe I was being too gloomy. Maybe no one would believe Earl Richardson, no mud would stick. I had done some good work. In discovering the murderer of Tianna Richardson, I’d also solved another murder, one that had gone unnoticed for nearly twenty years.

‘You know,’ I said, thinking of this, ‘whenever I think of Jason Richardson, I feel sad. What will he do now?’

‘There’re a lot of kids like him around, one parent murdered, the other in gaol for the murder.’

I made a silent promise that I’d look in on the youth—I needed to connect more with the living, much more. Even if it was too late for me and Iona and the plan I was making to win her back, she’d taught me this much.

‘I’d still like to know why Earl killed Albert Vaughan,’ I said, voicing another concern.

‘Sometimes you just don’t get to join up all the dots,’ Charlie observed.

Noisy miners squabbled in the trees around us as they jostled for night roosts.

‘So, bro,’ Charlie said after a silence. ‘How did he do it?’