Disappear (11 page)

Rory padded his way to the adjoining kitchen alcove, filled the kettle. From out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Carly had gone rigid, her eyes glazing over, her face emotionless.

‘You’re sure …’ she began, but the words stopped, an apparent interruption from the voice on the other end.

Rory caught her eye, held her gaze. ‘Something wrong,’ he mouthed the words, but Carly gave no response. The phone seemed glued to her ear. She remained silent, listening.

‘Okay, thanks for the call, Mum.’ She replaced the receiver.

‘What is it, Carls?’ Rory asked, concerned, shifting as he sometimes did to his sweetheart name for her.

‘My father …’ Once again the words dried up. Carly sat on the sofa, clearly shaken.

Rory sat alongside her, touched her arm. ‘Carls?’

‘Mum said she called yesterday but we were both out and she couldn’t raise me on my cell. She phoned early to catch me before I left for the day.’

‘Bad news?’

‘Strange news. My father has been found.’

‘Your father? You told me he disappeared yonks ago.’

‘Before I was born.’

‘Alive?’

‘Dead. Hit by a car the night before last.’

Rory’s expression was one of amazement. He’d never been good dealing with emotional situations on a one to one basis. What words were needed? What actions?

‘How’s your mother taking it?’

‘Okay, I think. She’s had a day to adjust. And after all, I expect she got over him a long time ago. It’s just that … it’s so unusual. He was found in the same street where he and Mum used to live.’

Rory shook his head. ‘Weird.’

Carly wasn’t listening. Her mind was crowded with thoughts and emotions that made no sense to her. ‘He’s been alive all these years,’ she said, more to herself than to Rory, ‘and I never knew. He never tried to contact me.’

‘Perhaps he was looking for you when he was knocked down,’ Rory said. ‘That would explain why he was in the same street.’

‘Would it?’

Rory didn’t reply. Ever since he’d known Carly she’d held a resentment of her mother. The distance between them was so strong it was almost physical in intensity when they stood together in the same room. This was the last thing Carly needed right now, to discover that her father, living somewhere all these years, had deliberately shunned her.

Then something occurred to him, something Carly hadn’t considered. ‘If he vanished before you were born,’ he said, ‘then I doubt he ever knew he had a daughter.’

Carly nodded slowly. ‘Maybe,’ she replied, ‘but why did he vanish like that? Mum always said she and my father were very, very happy. Still in the honeymoon mode when he disappeared. If he was so happy, then he wouldn’t have taken off like that.’

‘I guess not.’

‘I have to find out, Rory. I want to know what really went on between my mother and my father. And why he disappeared the way he did.’

The curiosity was overwhelming. What Jennifer really wanted to do was go to the office, get on with her career, her life, and simply stay in touch with Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Lachlan for information as it came to hand. Let him pursue the case, do the digging, find the answers. He’d had less than two days to get the investigation under way. Nevertheless, she wanted to know if there were any further developments, and whether any conclusions had been drawn from the autopsy.

She’d accepted that the body on the slab was Brian. The dental records left no doubt.

Accepting it didn’t cure her restlessness. It merely led her, this morning, to Neil Lachlan’s office at Hurstville Police station. It was her second deed of the day, the first being her earlier phone call to her daughter.

She felt a sense of deja vu when she walked into the station, which was unnatural because this was a different building - the police had moved premises in the years since the disappearance. But the deja vu persisted. She realised it wasn’t so much the place itself but the act of visiting the police in this locality. A part of her would never forget the aura of this suburb, where she’d spent such happy times with Brian.

Lachlan rose from behind his desk when Jennifer appeared in his office doorway. ‘Take a seat, Ms Parkes.’ He waved her to a chair. ‘I’m glad you called by, I was going to phone you.’

‘News?’

‘No. Not as such. It’s still early days for any developments, I’m afraid.’

‘I see.’

Lachlan had already decided how he would handle this. ‘I had a visit from one of the State Crime Command superintendents, this morning. He’s taking the case under his supervision at Sydney HQ. He has a special investigations unit there that will be working on it.’

‘Oh.’ Jennifer wasn’t expecting that and it didn’t mean a great deal to her. ‘Is that good?’

‘Yes. We’re bogged down in cases here, so the investigation will get specialised attention.’

‘You won’t be working on the case?’

‘No. I’ll be very interested, though, to know the outcome and I’ll be keeping in touch with the superintendent to see how things progress.’

Jennifer felt a twinge of disappointment. She realised that, subconsciously, she’d had a sense of confidence in Neil Lachlan’s abilities from the first time they’d met. She mulled over his comments. ‘You would have given the case your individual attention,’ she said. It was clearly more a statement than a question.

Lachlan shrugged. He agreed with her, despite John Rosen’s comments half an hour earlier. He’d been the first detective on the scene. He’d seen the body, met the widow, he’d conferred with the coroner’s office. He’d always believed that the man who began an investigation had an affinity with a case, far more than someone who came in later.

However, he didn’t want to expose Jennifer Parkes to HQ’s sensitivity to possible publicity of the case, the real reason for the move.

‘I would have,’ he agreed, ‘but not as much as the unit in town can. Really, it’s in the best interests of the case.’

‘I see.’

‘The man who’ll be keeping in touch with you,’ Lachlan said, taking a notepad from his desk corner, ‘is John Rosen. This is his number at the Sydney LAC.’ He wrote on the page, then ripped it from the pad and handed it across the desk. ‘You’re getting very special attention, actually. Not everyone gets this unit on their case.’ He smiled at her, a warm, easy smile from the attractive, slightly rumpled, lived-in face.

She returned the smile and found herself responding to his gentle authority.

‘What I want to do before handing over to Rosen, however, is to go through the coroner’s report with you.’ Step by step Lachlan explained McIntyre’s findings.

At first, Jennifer said nothing. She absorbed the information, but as she did her calm demeanour hardened, her serenity turned to steel. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this, detective.’ Her gaze was intense. ‘You saw my husband. I don’t think there’s any doubt there was something eerie about his appearance. How can this coroner … ignore that?’

Lachlan went over the post mortem with her again, this time stressing the point that while the body’s pathology could not be conclusive about age, it didn’t alter the fact that the ID was positive. The coroner had no reason, no definitive proof, to support a theory that the body had not aged. Lachlan was insistent on this, while at the same time making certain he remained sympathetic.

Jennifer shook her head in frustration. She wanted to argue, but what the coroner had said made sense. She suspected, however, that the real reason the police accepted the body’s appearance, and the ID, was that it was simply too baffling to contemplate otherwise.

‘Then I suppose we have to leave it at that for the time being,’ Jennifer said tersely. She rose to leave. ‘The coroner’s report doesn’t do any more than state the obvious. And makes no attempt to explain this…incision in the neck.’

Lachlan wanted to agree but he bit his lip. He had to be careful how he handled this.

‘Thanks for your help, detective. I’ll take the matter up further with Superintendent Rosen.’

He offered his hand and they shook. ‘Best of luck.’ He felt a twinge of disappointment that he wouldn’t see her again. She was a striking looking woman. She had a blend of fragility and command that he’d noticed in some other businesswomen, but in Jennifer Parkes the contrast was stronger, and therefore more interesting. Her finely sculpted bone structure attracted the eye and held it. He wondered why she’d never remarried.

He knew next to nothing about Jennifer Parkes, and he had the feeling he would like to know more.

First Letter

5th August

Dear Mother,

I had an intriguing thought today, one I wanted to share with you.

Just think of the crimes - all the crimes committed by all the men and women throughout history.

The killings, the thieving, the tortures, the deceptions. Imagine them all strung together as one long, endless sideshow.

What a bizarre carnival it would make.

I’m part of it, you see, the next hawker along the alley with a product no one really wants or needs - except that I want it, and why shouldn’t I get a little of what I want?

Everyone else does.

I don’t get the chance to share things with you. I can’t tell you about the things I do, or show you, but I can write about them. You read my letters, don’t you?

I want you to know all about me.

It’s a long time now since my first time, and I’ve never told anyone, not a soul. Hard to explain how it felt. Kind of like the first time I slept with someone, only much, much better. I was young, too. Thirteen. If you’d been around then you would have known Vince Martinelli. Italian kid, real airhead in my class at school. He was a friend of mine, except I never really liked him. I always knew he used me to get the things he wanted, like money ‘coz I always had a little more than he did. Once he talked me into giving him a whole pack of footie cards I’d collected. He was going to give me a metal ring with a skull and crossbones emblem in return, except he never did, and sometimes he assured me I would get it - eventually - and other times he taunted me, flashed it at me, called me gullible.

He was the first one I killed.

It was fourteen years since he had written this, the first of dozens of letters to his mother. He remembered how it began.

Those first years of the strange surveillance had been the most frustrating of all. The prostitutes, the erotic magazines - and later still the pornographic and violent videos - none had actually helped him overcome the frustration. They weren’t the same as the real thing, the physical act of destroying human life, of wielding the ultimate power.

Writing the letters and posting them helped a little, giving him an outlet. As he revealed his secrets on paper he re-lived them for a while.

The glory. The excitement.

He found a certain satisfaction in imagining the revulsion the reader of these letters would feel. The bitter taste of vengeance, like acid drops in his saliva. He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat pushing against his Adam’s apple like a sexual urge.

The jogger often took copies of the letters and leafed through them, choosing one at random to read. It was a long time since he’d re-read this, the first letter. As is often the case with the first of anything, it was his favourite. He sat cross-legged on the floor of this secret place, the lights low, the large, empty space around him silent and dark, and he continued reading:

It was after school one afternoon, we were walking home. Just Vinnie and me. Vinnie had a knife, a switchblade that he’d discreetly removed from his older brother’s bedroom. I’ve no idea why his brother had it in the first place: some macho teenage thing, I suppose.

Vinnie was a smart-ass and that afternoon he decided to stir me about the ring, flashing it at me. Only this time he drew the knife as well, acted tough, daring me to try and get the ring from him.

Do you believe in fate, Mum? I do. You see, Vinnie was all brawn and bluster, and he could be very clumsy. He dropped the knife and my reflexes were faster than his. I stooped down like lightning, picked it up and ran off. He chased me into an alley that ran between the newsagent and the delicatessen. It led to an old, gravel parking station behind the mall.

That was where it happened. Out of breath I stopped and turned around, panting. Vinnie was just about on top of me, laughing, actually. Probably thought it was a good game, loads of fun. I struck out with the knife, swished it through the air and the sharp steel edge sliced into his throat.

An expression came onto his face that didn’t make any sense to me. He looked puzzled, and his eyes seemed to grow larger. I thought they were going to pop. The blood was gushing from his throat, soaking into his shirt.

That’s when I first felt the elation. An exciting tingling sensation pricking at the hairs on the nape of my neck. That’s why I think it was fate. If Vinnie hadn’t dropped that knife, I would never have run into that alley with it and cut his throat, I’d never have felt the wonder and the power of it - and later the craving for more.

I remember stepping back, watching him crash to the ground. Luckily no blood splashed onto me, and no one had noticed Vinnie and I together that afternoon. I was never questioned, certainly never suspected. One of the advantages, I guess, of being thirteen years old.

Of course, I can’t rely on luck or fate now. I have to plan. I need to be prepared.

But the thrill of it, Mum. The exhilaration can last for days. I never cease to be amazed at the pleasure it gives me, the sexual urge that erupts throughout me. And the heady, giddy feeling of power. And total control.

Isn’t that what any of us really wants? Control.

I kept the knife. It’s still packed away somewhere, a memento. I’ve never used it since that day, but one day on a special occasion, I will.

I took the ring of course. I knew no one would miss it and, it was such a silly childish thing. I soon tired of it. And the football cards. I took them from his school satchel and I felt good. I had everything I wanted.

Before long I knew I wanted to kill again, but it was a long time before I did. I was scared of getting caught. I never forgot the enormous amount of publicity that surrounded the discovery of Vinnie’s body.