Eden (4 page)

The timber yard opposite covered an area equal to that of
Margot's
and the tyre and furniture places combined. Though it had been open on that Tuesday, neither the receptionist nor any of the workmen had noticed Carmichael arriving. At least that's what the receptionist said. Everyone at work that day had been questioned by the police. She was afraid she had nothing more to tell me.

. . .

The Legislative Assembly building was a modest rectangle, intoned within a city block. I listened to the weather report on my way there. Already thirty-eight degrees.

In the air-conditioned interior, Carmichael's former PA, Laura Scott, lifted curious dark-brown eyes, well prepared to be distracted by my visit.

Before asking me to take a seat, she looked me up and down, as Margot had, giving me the feeling she'd been hoping for somebody more interesting. As for herself, she was dressed and made-up for a date with Brad Pitt. Her perfect tan made me more than ever conscious of my freckles, and the creases in my skirt.

‘You wouldn't believe these letters.' Laura sighed. ‘I've had people ringing me up and abusing me. Photographs of women tied up. Whips. Gang rapes.'

‘Who sends them?'

‘Religious nutters. It's as though I've got a direct line to Ed, wherever he's gone. Hell, I'm sure they believe.'

‘Have you told the police?'

‘That detective's nice.' When I didn't comment on this, Laura said, ‘Ed's heart packed up. There's no mystery about it.'

When I'd rung Laura and said I'd like to come and talk to her about Eden Carmichael, she'd sounded curious to meet me. She'd recognised my name from a case I'd been involved with a few years earlier, the same one that had led to my run-in with Ken Dollimore. The publicity that case had gained was opening doors, and I felt grateful for it.

As we continued to size each other up, Laura doing nothing to hide an interest that was tinged with disappointment at my lack of glamour, it occurred to me that she was probably without a job. No one was going to employ her to answer a dead man's hate mail. She didn't seem anxious though. Perhaps she'd already been offered another one.

‘What about Ken Dollimore?' I asked.

‘What about him?'

‘Where does he fit in?'

‘He's devastated.'

‘But in public he and Carmichael were enemies.'

Laura made a face. ‘It suited them. Well, it suited Ken, and Ed had learnt to live with it.'

Her tone was tolerant, even affectionate.

‘The feud got pretty nasty, didn't it? Didn't Dollimore once accuse Carmichael of poisoning his dog?'

‘That was horrible,' Laura said, with another face, of revulsion this time. ‘Max was gorgeous, and he was only three years old. You don't think Ed did it, do you? Ed wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, their arguments were all noise and no action.'

‘You mean a front.'

‘If you like.'

‘For what?'

‘Like I said, it suited them.'

‘And in private?'

‘They'd known each other forever. They were mates,' Laura added, as though no further explanation was necessary.

I thought that it was time to bring up
CleanNet
. ‘I've been told Carmichael was impressed by one of these new filters for blocking out undesirable material on the Internet. Could Dollimore have helped to change his mind?'

Laura gave me a long look. When she spoke, I thought her reply had been rehearsed.

‘The censorship legislation's Federal, that's the first point. The states and territories are forced to implement it, or try to. Ed was a practical man. Once he'd accepted that something was a fact of life, he'd find a way to deal with it.'

‘What about
CleanNet
?'

‘Do you mean the company that put on a show for Senator Bryant last year?'

‘What did he say about it?'

‘Pretty good, he thought. He thought the guy in charge was interesting. I've forgotten his name. A character, he said.'

‘Richard McFadden's his name. Did you ever meet him?'

‘No.'

‘Do you know if Carmichael bought shares in their company?'

‘He would have declared them if he had.' Laura's tone suggested that whatever faults her former boss had had, dishonesty wasn't one of them.

I told her Ken Dollimore had phoned me wanting information about
CleanNet
and asked her what she knew about his interest in the company. She said she hadn't known he
was
interested.

‘Ken didn't go to the presentation, I do know that much. Ed told me.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Just that Ken wasn't there.'

‘Do you think they'd discussed going together?'

‘I don't know.'

Laura had called Ed Carmichael practical. I wondered how practical accorded with his visits to Margot Lancaster's club, his blue dress and yellow wig, indifference to his heart condition.

‘You know what I've just realised?' Laura said, as though my question had been voiced aloud. ‘I'm beginning to think I didn't really know Ed at all. I keep on seeing that stupid wig. It's like the joke's on me, like he's having a go at
me
. I know that's crazy, but it's the way everyone around here's been making me feel. I've even started thinking maybe Ed only went into politics as a joke.'

‘On whom?'

Laura gave me a sideways, speculative look. ‘Himself.'

‘Why would he bother?'

‘Boredom. To fill in time.'

‘What was he waiting for?'

‘It's funny you should put it that way. I've never thought of it quite like that, but he
was
waiting.'

‘Who for?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Did he have a girlfriend?'

‘No.'

‘You're sure?'

‘I think I would have known.'

‘A boyfriend?'

‘I don't think so. Ed wasn't the kind of guy who hid stuff. It wasn't his style.'

‘But he was secretive about some things.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘How many people knew about his dressing up?'

‘Enough, obviously.'

‘That was bad,' I said, ‘blasting his picture across the paper like that. Do you have any idea who took it?'

‘No.'

‘Ed never suspected he was being photographed?'

‘If he did, he didn't tell me.'

‘What about his family?'

‘He didn't have any. Not immediate family.'

I recalled seeing a West Australian cousin being interviewed on ­television, and thinking at the time that he was possibly the closest ­relative the press had been able to find.

‘What about his will?' I asked.

‘I don't know anything about that.'

‘Would you mind telling me what were you doing on the fourth of January?'

‘It might sound callous, but I had a very ordinary day.'

‘What about phone calls?'

‘This guy I'm seeing—kind of seeing—rang. We chatted for a bit.'

‘Anyone else?'

‘Ed had an appointment with Senator Bryant. I'd made it for him before Christmas. The fourth was the Senator's first day back at work. But then they rang and cancelled.'

‘What time was the appointment?'

‘Four o'clock.'

‘Do you know what it was for?'

‘No.'

‘Why was it cancelled?'

‘Something came up. That's all I was told.'

‘What time did they ring?'

‘It was lunchtime, twenty to one. Ed had gone to get some sandwiches.'

‘What did he say when he got back?'

‘He was annoyed.'

‘Upset?'

‘Yes, you could say that.'

‘Had he been upset before?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Earlier that day.'

‘He looked tired and worried, exhausted actually, and—'

‘And?'

‘Hung-over,' Laura said resignedly.

‘Did you ask what was worrying him?'

‘He wouldn't say.'

‘What happened then?'

‘I went out to the post office, and to get something to eat myself. When I came back, Ed had left. I never saw him again.'

‘Did he have a mobile phone?'

‘He refused to get one. He said they fried your brains.'

The phone rang and Laura indicated that it might be time for me to leave. I mouthed thank you and she frowned, not at me, I thought, but at whoever was talking on the other end.

I had a few minutes before my appointment with Ken Dollimore. His office was just along the corridor, but I didn't want to wait there. Dollimore had agreed to meet me when I'd said I wanted to talk to him about Ivan's notes.

I sat outside, in a corner of shade, thinking that Carmichael must have decided to visit Margot's club after learning that his appointment with Senator Bryant had been cancelled. He couldn't have planned to be in two places at once.

I rang Bryant's office to check the time of the appointment and to verify that it had been in fact been cancelled. Malcolm Hewitt answered, a staffer for whom Ivan had once done a favour. He confirmed what Laura had said, but couldn't, or wouldn't, tell me whether Carmichael had rung back. I tried to keep him talking, pump him a bit, but he cut me off.

The square was practically empty. As I watched a child cross it, hurrying to keep up with a determined parent, my memory slipped a cog, and I remembered Laura Scott standing over Carmichael the night he'd had his heart attack at the old Parliament House. I hadn't known who Laura was then, but her expression, as I recalled it, struck me as odd. She'd raised her head and looked up the stairs as men in suits ran down them, her attitude that of a person not shocked, nor even surprised, but one whose expectations had been met. Another memory surfaced. One of the suits rushing down the stairs had belonged to Ken Dollimore.

I'd left a few minutes later. A doctor was looking after Carmichael, an ambulance had just pulled up. The carpark was ahead of me, the lights illuminating the building behind. I'd walked slowly towards the rows of cars, feeling as though what had happened back there, over the staircase, was floating in a giant bubble.

It was then that I saw Laura for the second time. At least, I saw a slim, dark-haired young woman in earnest conversation with a tall, silver-haired man, and it struck me now that the woman had been Laura. Ken Dollimore's head had been bent over hers, and it had been clear, even from a distance and in the semi-darkness, that what they were saying to one another couldn't wait.

There is a kind of sculpted, silver-white hair that, once it attains a certain set, will keep it till the wearer dies. Dollimore's hair was like that. He looked effortlessly the patriarch, and both these effects, the effortlessness and the patrician elder statesman, were present in every photograph I'd seen of him. They were there, as might be expected, when he posed for the camera, but also when he was supposedly caught off guard, in those shots and TV interviews snatched from him in the days after Ed Carmichael died.

He sat upright behind his desk, inviting me to take a seat on the other side. His eyes were blue, opaque, his manner at once condescending and placatory. His office had a January closeness, the quiet, inward closeness of a large building holding its breath between Christmas parties and the return of business. Adjacent were the theatre and museum, the fountain in the middle of the square, shadowless at noon, and between Dollimore and myself the sudden alertness of two people with a score to settle.

‘What is it about
CleanNet
that concerns you?' I asked in a respectful tone of voice.

Dollimore leant back in his chair. I thought he was pretending to relax. He eyed me steadily and said, ‘I'm sorry about that. It had been a particularly bad day.'

‘Do you have a problem with the company?'

‘No.'

‘Did Eden Carmichael own shares in
CleanNet
?'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘It would be one reason for your interest.'

Dollimore frowned. ‘You said you wanted to talk to me about your partner's notes.' He used the word ‘partner' in a way that made it clear he considered me very much the junior one.

‘That's right. They refer to a presentation
CleanNet
put on for Senator Bryant last November. I was wondering if you'd been there.'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘Did you meet
CleanNet
's director when he was in Canberra?' I prompted, acting on a hunch.

‘We—briefly, yes.'

‘I understand Mr Carmichael was impressed by the presentation.'

‘Is that what it says in the notes?'

‘No. Just that he attended.'

‘Then how do you know he was impressed?'

‘By talking to people who were there.' Mentally, I crossed my fingers, expanding Chris Laskaris to a range of sources.

Dollimore's face stiffened, becoming sculpted like his hair. ‘I'm besieged,' he told me. ‘Everyone wants answers—my constituents, the press—they want me to make a definitive statement so
they'll
know what to make of Ed dying in such a dreadful way.'

I saw how a reputation for definitive statements could catch up with a person, just at the moment when he did not want to make one. And how a responsibility towards constituents might weigh heavily on someone who'd built a career on his readiness to speak with moral certainty.

‘The good citizens of Canberra are shocked and disgusted, and want you to express shock and disgust on their behalf?'

‘They
are
good citizens, Mrs Mahoney. If they weren't, the whole thing would be a lot easier.'

Dollimore's hair curved up off his forehead, in the style of an ageing Elvis Presley, but with none of Presley's extravagance or sensuality. I thought of Carmichael's wig, the way it framed his face in that troubling, enigmatic picture. Dollimore's hair looked solid and reliable, but I guessed that his facial muscles were being held together by considerable effort.