Eden (3 page)

‘Did he win?'

‘Claims he did. Mind you, if he lost, I don't think he'd admit it.'

‘What about you? Are you a gambling man?'

‘Not that kind. McFadden loves Americans, and he loves to hate them. That's partly what this super-competitiveness is about. Beat the Yanks at what the Yanks do best.'

‘What about his ethical position with regard to censorship?'

‘I'd say it's pretty basic.'

‘He's determined to make money out of it?'

Chris nodded.

‘He and Senator Bryant must be quite a pair.'

‘Know how he started off his presentation? Of the top ten websites accessed by employees of a company, the number one site will be something to do with stocks, and the second one with sex. So you can see what drives the human psyche.'

‘That got a laugh from everybody present?'

‘It broke the ice. We're all human, all in this together.'

‘Maybe Bryant liked him because he's so up-front.'

‘I think that's probably one twist too many. McFadden wants to win. He wants to beat the competition, and he wants the biggest possible audience to watch him doing it.'

‘Was he dressed in his Western gear?'

‘Definitely not. Dark suit, white shirt, short back and sides.'

‘Sounds like a man selling religion.'

‘The other side of the image, I suppose. Evangelism comes in all shapes and sizes.'

‘Who else was at the presentation?'

‘The usual suspects. Actually, someone I didn't expect to see. Stan Walewicz. You know him?'

‘I know of him. He makes porn movies, is that right?'

Chris nodded again. ‘Looking very prim and proper. Keeping in the background too.'

‘He doesn't usually?'

‘I don't know him personally, but when I
have
seen him in action—let's say he gave me the impression that he's a man who likes to be noticed too.'

‘Do you think anybody else there recognised him?'

‘Hard to say. He didn't advertise his presence, but he did nothing to disguise it either.'

‘What do you think he was doing there?'

‘Sussing out the enemy? Your guess is as good as mine. I didn't talk to him.'

I looked at Chris, knowing that he would have avoided a known pornographer at a gathering like that. Everybody present would have, that is those who'd recognised him.

‘Did he speak to McFadden?'

‘Not that I'm aware of.'

‘When did you last see Eden Carmichael?'

‘It would have been the twenty-first. We put on a bit of a Christmas do.'

‘And invited the local pollies. How many turned up?'

‘A few.'

‘Ken Dollimore?'

‘He dropped in.'

‘How did he and Carmichael seem? Were they talking to each other?'

‘Carmichael was drunk,' Chris said.

‘Did Dollimore try and sober him up?'

‘Fat chance.'

‘You were at that party, weren't you? At the old Parliament House. Where Carmichael had his heart attack.'

Chris's brown eyes became wary. ‘Yes,' was all he said.

It had been one of those crowded functions with lots of free booze, guests squashed against pillars and each other, a noise level that made attempting any kind of business hard. Doing business, or trying to, had been the reason I was there. I didn't much enjoy the networking part of my job, and that night it had been a waste of time.

‘Did you talk to Carmichael that night?' I asked.

‘I bumped into him in the men's. He was pissed.'

‘What did you say?'

‘I asked him if he was okay. He said, “What's it look like,
mate
.” I thought, stuff you then. He wasn't that old, only fifty-seven. If he'd decided to look after himself after that he'd be alive now, wouldn't he?'

‘Did you notice Ken Dollimore that night, I mean after Carmichael fell?'

‘He was ahead of me on the stairs. There was that doctor too. There were lots of people gawking.'

‘Did you notice where Dollimore went?'

‘No.'

‘How long did you stay?'

‘Till the ambulance came. I felt—I don't know—not responsible, but I'd seen the guy in the men's not ten minutes before, and he was obviously out of it. I should have offered to drive him home. It's not as though he was a friend or anything, but I should have offered.'

‘Did he say anything else? Did you notice anything else?'

Chris flushed with anger. ‘He—he couldn't get his fly done up.'

He looked at his watch, perhaps to avoid meeting my eyes, or to let me know my time was up. I thanked him for talking to me, and agreed to pass on his best wishes to Ivan.

. . .

When I tried to access Stan Walewicz's website and found that it had been taken down, I decided to give him a call. His number was easy to find in both the white and yellow pages. He sounded mildly surprised, but, after a few moments, as interested in meeting me as I was in meeting him. He'd heard of me and knew about our consultancy. When I commiserated with him over the closure of his site, he laughed and told me there were ways around it.

He was heading back to the coast that afternoon. He'd only just popped in to pick up his mail. We arranged a time to meet after his holiday.

I sat back in my chair and stared out the office window at my dying lawn, which summer water restrictions had forbidden me to water. I felt annoyed with Ivan for not referring to the Minister's recommended list in his notes, and even more for his failure to mention that Richard McFadden was well known for his gambling. Surely this was the kind of detail Electronic Freedom had been after when they'd asked him to do some background research on the company. Though Lucy hadn't spelt it out, rumours about McFadden's gambling may have been what had drawn Electronic Freedom's attention to
CleanNet
in the first place. Ivan had barely scratched the surface. To be fair, he'd made the point about being pressed for time himself.

I narrowed my eyes against the glare outside. Since Ivan's report and notes were so lacking in detail, that rather left the field open for me to provide it.

. . .

Over the next couple of days, I contacted all the Canberra companies listed as belonging to the
Herman Marcus
group. Some of the people who spoke to me knew Dollimore, and had known Carmichael reasonably well. They were happy to chat about both men, speculate on the reasons behind their disputes and long-lasting friendship, and help me fill in details of local IT businesses. I learnt, among other things, that Carmichael and Dollimore had gone to school together. But none admitted to knowing of any special connection between Carmichael and
CleanNet
, or was willing to express an opinion about
CleanNet
beyond saying their product was competitive. When I pushed for their views on censorship, the opinion came back to me, blandly expressed, though not without sincerity, that many parents and schools wished to restrict children's access to sites they considered unsuitable. It was a straightforward case of supplying a demand.

I made myself finish the report that I'd been putting off, then wrote an assessment for Lucy, dressing it up a bit and making it seem as though Richard McFadden's love of gambling might be casting a mantle over other vices. I had to be careful, but I needed to whet her appetite as well.

. . .

Ivan had a predilection for gadgets, which I was gradually weaning him off, or so I thought. When I first met him, the main room of his house had been converted into a cross between a computer museum and an inner-north Canberra spy station. He also loved playing around with digital images. A message, any message, was improved by pictures. Ivan's latest, conceived a couple of weeks before he left Australia, was a series of small flags, all variations on the Australian one.

I noticed one of these flags pulsating in the top left-hand corner of my computer screen, and cursed Ivan under my breath. I couldn't remember what each of the flags was for. It was like him not to have taken me through them before he left, or to have provided any kind of key. This one was mainly red. I double clicked it. A xylophone played an arthritic ‘Waltzing Matilda'. A message came up on the screen saying that someone had tried to hack into my computer.

I rang Lucy, who sounded more relaxed than she had the last time, and chuckled when I told her about the flags. Like any business with a clientele to protect, the lobby group had ways of guarding sensitive files. She kept me on the line while she checked their log. There was no record of an attempted break-in over the last forty-eight hours.

Had my would-be hacker been after the
CleanNet
material, or was the timing a coincidence? Ivan and I had had our share of snoopers. We were an obvious target. Ivan didn't mind. It was all part of the game to him.

I emailed him to let him know what had happened. Because I wasn't sure what message his notes might contain for a would-be thief, I copied them to a disk which, after thinking about safe places and not-so-safe places, I sticky-taped to the roof of Fred's kennel. Fred sniffed at it, then, realising that it wasn't food, showed no more interest. Then I burnt the hard copy, and deleted the file from my computer, thoroughly deleted it, as Ivan had taught me to do.

Three

In Canberra, prostitution was zoned light industrial, and the zoning system seemed to work. The suburbs of Mitchell, Hume and Fyshwick mixed brothels and X-rated movie rentals with used cars, discounted white goods and shops selling computers. Their streets were deserted after dark, except for a cluster of sex traders, single lines of ant cars heading towards honey, or a corpse.

I stood at the corner of the street that Eden Carmichael had driven to, parked in, habitually crossed, and squinted at the lines of low-slung, cheap, no-nonsense buildings. White wood swelled in the January heat. Grosvenor Street, Mitchell, looked like the main street of a country town, wide as our local rivers never were, a row of parched eucalypts along one side, stamp-sized shadows underneath the awnings. I smelt raw pine furniture, and felt that deep quiet of a country town in the middle of a summer day, when not much can happen out of doors. A timber yard backed onto paddocks, where sheep and cattle rested behind fences, under the little shade that they could find.

Inland homogenising light filled every opening. I shaded my eyes and spotted number 23. It was built on the same model as its neighbours, regular and squat, except for a circular neon sign, unlit now, that said
Margot's
in a curly script.

My phone call to Margot Lancaster had been brief. As soon as I'd introduced myself, she'd asked if I knew any journalists. I'd replied that I did. Margot had asked whether any of them would be interested in telling her side of the story. When I'd said I had a friend who might, Margot immediately wanted a name. Realising I had a bargaining chip, perhaps my only one, I'd persuaded her to talk to me first.

. . .

Margot's close-fitting hair was dyed a deep blue-black. The sleek helmet suited her. She was tall and slim, dressed neatly in a navy pants-suit. Air-conditioning made her club's small foyer a pleasant twenty-two degrees.

I asked her if she'd mind showing me around.

Her nod of agreement was a small, economical, unrevealing gesture. Silently, she led the way to the back of the building, where I heard music and laughter through a door.

Margot opened another door and stood to one side. In the centre of the room was a queen-sized bed, covered by a dark-blue quilt. The walls and ceiling were painted creamy-white, the blinds fully closed. A TV and DVD player stood opposite the bed. Apart from this, a polished pine bedside table with a lamp, and a chair upholstered in heavy cotton were the only furniture.

It was very still, the only sound coming from the air-conditioning. I pictured the room when it was occupied, filling out, becoming a space lit subtly by the lamp, taking on the shape of a couple having sex. Daylight would fade, night bring its own custom. I gazed around the room, knowing, without having to ask, that it was the one Eden Carmichael had died in. Though there were no obvious, outward indications, I sensed that it had become a kind of shrine.

I turned to Margot. There seemed to be a filament of blown glass between us and the world outside, and I felt suddenly close to her, as though, if we remained there a few minutes longer, I would grasp what lay behind her silence and her self-control.

She turned quickly on her heel, and led the way back to the front of the building, where there was a reception desk with a computer, phone and fax machine.

Positioning herself behind the desk, she looked me up and down, noting my bare legs, the awkward repair job I'd done on one of my sandal straps, my plain denim skirt and T-shirt. My hair was almost as short as hers, cropped for the summer, and I wore no make-up. Perhaps I should have felt discomforted by Margot's scrutiny, her hint of disdain for someone who took as little trouble over her appearance as I did, but my aim just then was to give her the impression I was harmless, and I hoped I was doing that.

When she decided to speak, her voice was brisk, with an undertone of contempt. ‘I run a good business here. You know reporters, and you're pally with the cops. They kicked me out of my own club for two days while they went over everything with their fingerprint brushes, and took the mattress away for DNA testing. A lot of good that will do them. I can't see them taking samples from half this town's MPs to get a match, can you?'

Knowing I wasn't expected to answer, I asked a question instead. ‘How did Eden Carmichael die?'

‘He had a heart attack. The autopsy confirmed it.'

I didn't say what was surely obvious to Margot, that the death of a cross-dressing politician was bound to be treated as sensitive. The forensic people were not likely to risk taking short cuts.

‘I'm being treated like a suspect,' Margot complained. ‘All I want is for someone to give me a fair hearing.'

She'd agreed to my visit because she thought I could help her. But ‘pally' was not a word I would have used just then to describe my relationship with the police. I wondered how much she knew about my association with Detective Sergeant Brook, how much she'd made it her business to find out.

‘At least the TV cameras have gone,' she said, ‘but the phone keeps ringing all the time. If it's not some preacher abusing me, it's a reporter trying to trip me up. “Sixty Minutes” wants to do an interview.'

‘Not “Sixty Minutes”. Say no.'

‘That's what I thought. But who?'

‘My friend works for
The Canberra Times
,' I said.

‘Them! They published that revolting photograph.'

‘They've also published the letters of complaint.'

‘Yes. But not one sticking up for me.'

‘I'll speak to my friend about it. The editor might be happy to print your side of the story.'

‘Would he show the article to me before it was published?'

‘She. I believe she would. I'll ask her. Could the photo have been taken on the day Carmichael died?'

‘Not from here,' Margot said emphatically. ‘I'd never do that to a client. Never. Just because I run a club, people assume that I've got no moral standards.'

‘Would you mind telling me what happened that afternoon?'

After giving me another long look, this time accompanied by a wary frown, Margot explained that soon after Denise had gone into the room with Carmichael, there'd been a phone call from the holiday camp where Denise's daughter was staying. The girl, whom Margot referred to as Rebecca, had sprained her wrist. She was upset, and Denise had left Carmichael to speak to her.

‘Did he always see Denise?'

‘Yes.'

‘How long was he on his own?'

‘About ten minutes.'

‘Did he already have his dress on?'

‘Yes, he did.'

‘Did Denise shut the door?'

‘It was slightly open.'

‘Did you hear any noise?'

‘No.'

‘Where were you?'

‘Here at my desk.'

‘Where did Denise go to talk on the phone?'

‘The room next door.'

‘Did anyone come to the front door? Did the phone ring?'

‘No.'

‘What were you doing during that time?'

Margot flushed and looked embarrassed, as if this small detail was the odd one. ‘I was doing the crossword in the newspaper.'

‘Who else was here?'

‘That's it.'

‘Just you and Denise?'

‘And Ed, of course.'

‘Wasn't it unusual to have just one girl on?'

‘January's our quietest time.'

‘What time
was
it?'

‘When Ed arrived? Around four-thirty. A bit after.'

‘Had he made an appointment?'

‘No.'

‘Was that usual?'

‘Sometimes he made appointments, sometimes he just turned up.'

‘Did he always wear the dress?'

‘It was his dress. He brought it with him.'

‘Why didn't he leave it here?'

‘He liked to wash it himself.'

‘And the wig?'

‘That stayed here. It's mine. I mean, it's the club's property.'

‘Other clients used it?'

‘From time to time.'

‘But Carmichael always did?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where's it kept?'

‘In its box. It's a valuable wig. Real hair.'

‘Where is it now?'

‘The police still have it. And the dress.'

‘What happened when Denise went back to Carmichael?'

‘She called out. Screamed. I ran in. Ed was lying on the bed. We tried to revive him, but we couldn't. I phoned the ambulance.'

‘Had he seemed upset?'

‘No.'

‘Had he been drinking?'

Margot paused, then said, ‘About as much as usual.'

‘Apart from his heart, did you know of any other health problems?'

Margot shook her head.

‘How long had he been a client?'

‘For about three years.'

‘Did he visit other clubs as well?'

‘No.'

I wondered how she could be so sure.

‘What about Ken Dollimore? Has he ever been a customer?'

‘I know my local politicians. Clients use false names, but they don't often go to the trouble of disguising themselves.'

‘Perhaps not as a client?'

‘I have never met Ken Dollimore.'

‘But you knew he was Eden Carmichael's close friend.'

Margot studied me before replying. ‘You're mistaken,' she said finally, ‘if you think a client would discuss politics with any of the girls here.'

I wondered why she felt it necessary to make this disclaimer.

‘Has Dollimore phoned you, been in contact with you?'

‘Look, I've done you a favour, talking to you like this. I think I've answered enough questions, don't you?'

Margot was expecting a favour in return, but since we both knew that, there didn't seem much point in repeating it. When she shut the door behind me, I could feel her relief.

I ducked involuntarily, meeting with the heat again, a solid wall, white and hard and entirely lacking moisture.

The discount tyre place next door to Margot's club did not go in for air-conditioning. I stood sweating underneath a fan in a small office, while an adolescent boy went to get the manager.

I'd told him I was a private investigator who'd been hired by Eden Carmichael's family. The manager, when he came in, didn't ask to see my ID, which was just as well. He seemed inclined to treat Carmichael's demise as a joke. ‘The old fool had it coming to him,' was his first remark. He looked to be in his mid fifties himself, judging by his weathered face, but his body was straight and hard-looking, and his brown eyes bright with the opportunity for a bit of gossip. I would not have been surprised to find that he was one of Margot's customers. Mentally, I filed the question away as one I might ask later. Now I wanted to concentrate on January 4.

‘Were you at work?' I asked him.

‘Yep. I take my holidays in winter. Head up north. We had Christmas week off and re-opened on the third.'

‘Did you see Eden Carmichael arriving?'

‘Can't say I did.' The manager looked sorry to be disappointing me. ‘Don't notice every punter. Some days it's quiet, some nights the carpark's full, though they've never had a night like that, I must say.'

‘You mean so busy?'

‘I mean with the police cars and the ambulance.'

‘Did you know Carmichael was a regular?'

‘Silly old coot. Poncing in there with his shopping bag. He didn't care who saw him.'

‘Do you know what was in the bag?'

‘Me and the boys speculated. It was one of those fancy ones with handles.'

‘But you realised what it was once you saw the photo in
The Canberra Times
.'

The manager laughed.

‘Any idea who took the photo?'

‘Not a clue.'

‘Did you see anyone with a camera hanging round?'

‘Negative to that too, I'm afraid.'

‘What do you think of the girls?'

‘The girls are nice.'

I wondered if he was leaving Margot out, making a distinction. ‘Denise?' I asked.

‘Denny's gorgeous,' he said without a hint of embarrassment. I thought he might have answered my curiosity on one point.

‘When did you first know that something was wrong?'

‘When the ambulance came screaming down the road. Thought it was a car smash.'

‘What happened then?'

‘Paramedics dashed inside. When one of them came out, I asked what was going on, but he wouldn't tell me.'

‘Did the police interview you?'

‘It was getting close to knock-off time. A guy in uniform came over and asked us to wait. He didn't want us going home until he'd spoken to us.'

‘How many of you were there?'

‘Just me and Robbie. You met Robbie. There's only three of us. Lex's got a young family. He takes his leave in January. A detective came and asked us questions, like did we see Carmichael? What time? Who else went in and out?'

‘Did you see anybody else go in that afternoon?'

‘No one. No cars. No taxis. And I can't imagine Johns catching the bus.'

‘What time did Denise and Margot arrive?'

‘Margot got there first. At lunchtime, around one it would have been. I'd gone round the corner for some sandwiches. Her car was pulling up when I got back.'

‘And Denise?'

‘That was later.'

‘You saw her?'

He coloured slightly. ‘Yes.'

‘What time?'

‘Before four.'

Robbie came in with a question from a customer, and we said goodbye. I didn't think he was holding anything back. On the contrary, he would have enjoyed having more of a story to share.

I wondered what Margot had been doing for three hours on her own, and if it was usual for her to get to work early in the afternoon. Her other neighbouring business, a shop selling reconditioned office equipment, had been closed on January 4, the receptionist told me. She was cold to the point of rudeness, and I knew I'd get very little out of her. She was clearly sick of being asked about Ed Carmichael.