Eden (7 page)

‘Plus, I'm assuming that there must be others.'

Gail straightened up and turned to face me. ‘What's it to you?'

‘I have my reasons for wanting to know.'

‘Which are?'

‘I'll trade them, but at the moment I don't feel like giving them away.'

Gail gave me a long, calculating stare, then picked up a stained and dented saucepan. All her kitchen utensils were of the basic, hard-used kind. She threw the saucepan in a cupboard, then asked, ‘How's your little girl?'

‘She's fine,' I said, surprised.

‘And Peter? And Ivan?'

‘They're fine too.'

‘You know I had a bloke over there?' Gail said, joining me at the bench and downing half her beer in one go. ‘A lovely guy. Vietnamese. Most of his family killed in the war. Smart, great sense of humour. Bit younger than me, but that didn't matter. I met him through the agency. I started thinking about all that stuff. Marriage. Kids.'

‘What happened?'

‘His name's Tan. He got moved to Hanoi. We kept it up for a while, shuttled back and forth.'

‘Did he meet someone else?'

‘He says not. I think he has, though. I think he's trying to let me down softly.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘And I'm curious. This tough bitch attitude. This shit about trading information. Where's it come from Sandy? Is it the new you?'

Five

I smelt the intruder before I found any evidence of him. Nights on my own had made me sensitive to the sighs and solitary breathing of my house, the leftover smells of my rudimentary cooking. Something else was in the air, a faint, alien, metallic scent.

I let Fred in, and he raced down the corridor, nose to the floor like a dog doing his duty.

All the drawers in my filing cabinet were open. Files and folders lay scattered on the desk and floor, mixed with floppy disks and CDs that looked as though they'd been hurled across the room.

Fred snuffled while I checked the back door. My office window was securely locked, and didn't look as though it had been forced, the living room and kitchen windows the same. But the flyscreen on my bedroom window had been taken out and crookedly replaced. The paint work at one corner of the frame was chipped, as though someone had used a chisel to lever their way in.

I splashed cold water on my face, and sat on the edge of the bath for a few moments, thinking that the intruder must be somebody who knew my habits, had watched me driving off that evening, and knew that Fred was harmless, no sort of guard dog. What if he'd left the house just as I was arriving? What if he'd heard me pulling up, was still out there, deciding to come back and take by force what he hadn't been able to find?

I knelt on the concrete in front of Fred's kennel and felt around the inside of the roof. The disk was still there. Back in my office, I began to gather paper into piles, trying to recreate the intruder's movements. In my mind, he'd already firmed into a ‘he', and not a random male either, but one with sculpted silver hair. This break-in and the attempted electronic one could hardly be coincidental. Perhaps Ken Dollimore had lost his temper when he hadn't been able to find what he'd come for, and had trashed my office out of spite.

The filing cabinet had been emptied first. Folders from it were buried under the papers from my desk. Books had been flung at the walls. Pages had come loose, and some had broken spines. I examined book covers, holding them carefully by the corners, to see if they had marks, possibly even a footprint. The ground outside my bedroom window was still soaked from the storm. Still, a footprint was too much to hope for.

I waded through the mess and switched on the only computer in the office, since Ivan had taken his laptop with him to Moscow and I had taken mine with me to Gail's. Our old machine didn't seem to be damaged, but an infuriating red flag was flashing again in the top left-hand corner. The hacker had been back to try again at closer quarters. But was it the same person? Would someone who thought they could steal my files from a safe distance have broken into my house and lost his temper, or did the loss of temper suggest a different personality, a different kind of character?

My palms were sweating. I felt sick, but I made myself keep looking. Nothing seemed to have been altered or deleted.

Fred had learnt all he could from the new smells. He looked at me and wagged his tail, as if to say he was quite happy with this late night activity, but a snack to accompany it would be nice.

‘Useless dog,' I told him.

He wagged his tail again, uncertainly this time. I bent to pat him, and exhaustion hit me. Even if I lay in bed without being able to sleep, bed was where I needed to be.

But first, I phoned Ivan. Luckily, I caught him at his sister's flat, though he told me he was just on his way out. He asked questions, made sympathetic noises, told me to go to the police, but his words and voice sounded impossibly remote.

I asked to speak to Katya, but she was on a shopping expedition with her aunt.

I heated some milk, though the night was very warm, and poured some into Fred's bowl as a treat. I stirred a large spoonful of honey into mine and drank it sitting on a kitchen chair with my bare feet scrunched into his fur, realising, with another spike of fear, that I'd have to keep my bedroom window closed.

In spite of thinking I wasn't going to be able to, I slept for a few hours, and woke as the sun began to heat my room at six.

I lay watching a path of light, and thought again about the break-in. Much of the work that Ivan and I were hired to do involved following payments from one company or government department to another. Often we were asked to track, through a maze of numbers, the relationships between suspect individuals and institutions, in order to ­discover who might be responsible for missing dollars, or the leak of information. Usually, by the time Ivan was called in, the trail had already been stamped on by half-a-dozen others, then abandoned as too messy, or because the security people supposed to be doing the tracking might themselves be implicated.

It had been a change to have a decomposing body and the suggestion of a sex scandal to mull over. In the currents surrounding Carmichael's death, my questions about his connections with
CleanNet
had seemed no more than a ripple. I wasn't about to admit this to Lucy, but I'd begun to wonder who took filters seriously, apart from lobby groups and kindergarten teachers. I had the feeling that everyone else, from Senator Bryant down, with the possible exception of Ken Dollimore, was only pretending to. A professional would not have overturned my office looking for a CD, or a few sheets of paper. Was I barking up the wrong tree? Had the thief been after something else entirely?

I had a quick breakfast, two cups of strong black tea, and went on with my cleaning up. As soon as I thought he'd be awake, I rang Peter at Port Arthur. He was full of excitement, chattering about his plans for the day. They'd been walking in a national park, and now they'd come to the part of the trip that he'd been looking forward to—convict history, the more gruesome the better. I said nothing about the break-in. I hadn't intended to. I just needed to hear his voice. When Derek came on the line, I didn't tell him either, replying to his, ‘Is everything okay?' with ‘Sure', aware that I could not expect reassurance from my ex-husband.

I phoned Gail Trembath later in the morning. ‘Seems I might be dealing with an amateur.'

Gail said, ‘If that makes you feel better, dear.'

I thanked her for her sympathy.

Deciding that it was a good opportunity to get rid of a lot of useless junk, and coughing from the huge amount of dust that had settled in amongst it, I carried piles of paper out to the recycling bin, every so often distracted into reading something I'd forgotten about. I pictured Ken Dollimore's silver eyebrows clenched in concentration, his growing fury as he emptied one drawer after another. Whoever he was—whether Dollimore, or a complete stranger—he was out there, on the other side of brick and concrete barriers I had foolishly believed secure. Had he been at the funeral? Had he driven to my house and parked outside? Had any of my neighbours seen or heard him?

I sent Lucy an email, then door-knocked up and down the street. Hardly anyone was home. Both my next-door neighbours had gone to the coast. One elderly man, opening the door after I'd knocked about thirty times, regarded me with undisguised alarm, as though I was telling him that he would be next.

I stood at the counter of the city police station to fill in a report, trying to ignore the young constable whose expression said that I was wasting my time. I knew there were a dozen burglaries in Canberra on any given night, and I couldn't even claim that my belongings had been stolen. I wished Brook was there, upstairs in his office, trading insults with his old friend Bill McCallum. I forgot what I was supposed to be doing for a moment, and stood with my pen in my hand, imagining dinner with Brook in a pub overlooking the ocean, picturing myself swimming in the sea. Brook was a strong, yet cautious swimmer. If there were flags, he'd be between them, yet far enough out to catch the good waves, bodysurfing them to shore with his action of a well-groomed seal.

. . .

Gail turned up in the middle of the afternoon.

‘What are you doing here?' I asked her.

She grinned. ‘A nice welcome. Come on, show me the damage then.'

My office was pretty much back to normal. Gail looked disappointed at having to settle for a description of chaos in the past tense.

She sniffed the air, as Fred and I had done, but the vagrant chemical smell I'd picked up was gone, destroyed by my vacuuming and dusting. I couldn't think what had made it. It could have been a male deodorant, or aftershave, but it had smelt too sharply astringent for that.

Gail marched around my house, observing neatness and clean surfaces, rattling off the reasons I should not be on my own. Her eyes flicked back and forth, seeking out reminders of my absent family.

Over iced tea, I asked her if she'd ever seen Ken Dollimore lose his temper.

Gail rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and said, ‘I was at the Assembly to interview the Chief Minister. It was at the start of those protests over the Gungahlin Drive Extension. I passed Dollimore in the corridor and with no warning at all he grabbed hold of me.' Gail took hold of imaginary coat lapels and shook them. ‘He called me a parasite and a human mosquito.'

‘Did you bite him?'

‘Yick!' Gail shook her head. ‘A guy with such a reputation for standing on his dignity. And I'd done sweet nothing. I hadn't even breathed on his hair.'

I said I didn't think a bit of journalistic harassment would do Dollimore any harm. In particular, I thought Gail might pester him about what he'd been doing on the afternoon Carmichael died. I reminded her about contacting Margot Lancaster, and said I had something she might be able to use in return. Carmichael was supposed to have been in Senator Bryant's office in Parliament House at four o'clock on January 4, not gasping his last in a brothel. The appointment had been made before Christmas, and cancelled at the last minute. I'd confirmed it with one of Bryant's staffers.

Gail nodded, then gave me a smile that was like a handshake, confirming a deal.

Six

It was six o'clock, but already felt like midnight. Because I'd chosen to turn my back on the meat raffle, I found myself sitting with my nose pressed against a penny-farthing bicycle. The raffle that made my stomach turn comprised not one frozen chook, or ten, but floor to ceiling meat—newly dead, red and white and bloody. Close up, it separated into chops, sausages, roasts and steaks in individual packages, gladwrap tight, set artistically like tiles in a wall mosaic.

I asked Denise Travers if it was a weekly thing. She said it was. I asked her how she thought the winner might store his or her prize. She lit a cigarette, looked bored, and said she didn't know.

Denise had long black hair and fingernails to match. Her lips were the colour of an undertaker's shadow. She was above average height and slim, dressed in dark, well-fitting clothes. At a distance, and apart from the length of her hair, she could have stood in for Margot Lancaster. Close up, she looked half Margot's age.

Not wishing to put her off by staring, I turned my gaze back to the largest exhibit in the bicycle museum.

Denise smiled to let me know she was pleased by my discomfort. She'd chosen our table, in an area of the
Tradies
that was reserved for smokers. She told me that when her daughter was little, she and her husband used to go to the
Tradies
every Friday night. She'd have a middy and he'd have two schooners and a plate of chips.

I raised my glass. ‘To absent husbands.'

‘Yours pissed off as well?' Denise turned her head to blow smoke away from me.

‘The first one did.'

‘And the second?'

‘In Moscow, visiting his sister. You haven't given it a second go?'

‘Nah,' Denise said, with a self-deprecating smile. I've had a few nibbles, but.'

‘But?'

‘Something always puts me off. Margot said you've got a friend who's a reporter.'

‘Do you want to talk to her?'

‘Maybe.'

‘What about your daughter?' There wasn't a polite way to ask, but I was too curious to let it go.

‘Rebecca knows what I do for a living.'

That makes you a remarkable mother then, I thought.

I needed to eat before I had any more to drink. Meat was out, but a plate of chips sounded good. I didn't want Denise getting restless though, while I waited in a queue.

‘Tell me about Eden Carmichael,' I said.

‘Half the clients have got some sort of health problem. I mean, if you start quizzing them.'

‘Who knew about his?'

‘Whores can read, can't they? I mean, generally speaking.'

I thought about this question, inclining my head away from the huge weight of dead animals at my back, while Denise smoked and regarded them steadily over my left shoulder.

‘What was he like?' I asked her.

Denise shifted in her chair. ‘Why should I—' she began, then nodded, as though reminding herself of an obligation. She stubbed out her cigarette, and twined her hands around her glass.

‘You know, the cops took fingerprints off all the girls? You know how many clients pass through the club in a week?'

‘Tell me.'

‘Well, not so many now it's summer holidays. But in a good week—'

‘How many girls does Margot have working for her?'

‘Three.'

‘Business has slowed down?'

‘It's January.'

‘Clients are superstitious?'

Denise made a face, then said, ‘We'll see, won't we.'

I knew she was trying to steer the conversation away from Carmichael, and asked again, ‘What kind of bloke was he?'

‘He made a girl feel special. He was old—well, not as old as some—but he had this—you could have a conversation with him. He made you feel he was interested in you as a person.' She caught my eye. ‘I know, I know. But Ed had this warmth. And there was something brave about him. There was his heart, his daggy dress—he was like, I don't know,
courageous
.'

‘What happened that day?'

‘I helped him put his dress on. He liked me to do that.'

‘What about underwear?'

‘He brought it with him.'

‘You helped him to put that on as well?'

‘I—yes.'

‘The wig?'

‘He had to unwrap it himself. It all had to be done just so.'

‘Unwrap?'

‘From the tissue paper. In the box.'

‘How long has Margot had the wig?'

Denise frowned, as though there was more to my question than met the eye, but all she said was, ‘Like forever.'

‘What happened then?'

‘My phone rang.'

‘Do you normally leave it on?'

‘I was worried about Rebecca. She was at summer camp. She didn't want to go. She rang because she'd had an accident. I asked Ed to excuse me for a minute.'

‘Had you ever left him alone before?'

‘Not once he had his dress on.'

‘Did he seem upset?'

‘He seemed a bit unwell, and—'

‘Yes?'

‘He'd been drinking.'

‘More than usual?'

‘When he visited the club, he'd usually had a few.'

‘Was he in a hurry?'

‘He didn't seem to be—before I left him, that is. He knew it was Rebecca. Take your time, he said.'

‘Did he say anything about where he should have been that ­afternoon?'

‘Why? Where was he supposed to be?'

‘I was told he had an appointment. It was cancelled.'

‘I don't know anything about that.'

‘Where did you go to talk to your daughter?'

‘Next door.'

‘Would you have seen Carmichael if he'd come out of the room, or if somebody else had gone in?'

‘I was facing away from the door, and anyway it was only open a few centimetres.'

‘Would you have heard the door opening?'

‘Beck was crying. She was in a bad way. Have you got kids?'

‘Two. My son's thirteen, but my daughter's only little. Did the phone at reception ring while you were talking to Rebecca?'

Denise took a moment to think about it, then she shook her head.

‘What about the people at the camp?'

‘They were okay. Really, they were fine. But she didn't want to go. School holidays are hard. I talked her into going because it suited me. She knew that.'

‘How long did you leave Carmichael on his own?'

‘I was back in about ten minutes. Margot says I yelled out, but I don't remember what I said. His face was all purple—and his tongue—it was horrible!'

‘Was there anything different about the room when you went back?'

‘The police asked me that. I wasn't looking at the room. I don't remember.'

‘Think about it. Take your time.'

‘Well, the bed was messed up and Ed was sprawled all over it, so that's a difference. The table—there was the lamp, cigarettes, tissues, condoms, clock radio—all the stuff that's usually there.'

‘His clothes?'

‘Some guys drop their clothes on the floor, but Ed was neat. He always folded his.'

‘Where were they?'

‘On the chair.'

‘The wig box?'

‘What about it?'

‘Where was that?'

‘On the floor.'

Something in her tone made me ask, ‘You're sure of that? You saw it?'

‘That's where Ed put it. He always put it under the table. It was too big to fit on with the other things.'

‘What time did you leave that evening?'

‘When the police finished interviewing me. About nine o'clock.'

‘Did you notice anybody in the carpark?'

‘The police cars. No one else.'

‘Did Carmichael have sex with men?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Did he talk to you about men friends?'

‘He mentioned that religious one.'

‘What did he say?'

‘That they'd known each other for ages.'

‘Was Ken Dollimore ever at the club?'

‘I never saw him there.'

‘Did Carmichael see other girls?'

‘No. Only me.'

‘How did the dressing up start?'

‘It was way before my time.'

I felt Denise's guard begin to slip, a physical sensation like loosening a tie. She and Margot really did look alike. Both had dark brown eyes. Margot's were bedded in a nest of lines and slackening skin, but their expression was youthful, and Denise looked to me, on balance, as though she would age more quickly.

‘What's Margot like to work for?'

‘Fine.'

‘And the other girls, are they local?'

Denise coloured, then lit another cigarette. ‘Margot's got an arrangement with a place in Sydney. They send girls down for three months to try out.'

‘Do many of them stay?'

‘Some do. If they like it here.'

‘I guess Margot has to like them too.'

I waited, but Denise said nothing further.

‘Are the Sydney girls experienced?'

‘Some are, some aren't.' Denise bit her lip. ‘I'd like to stop working.' She flashed me a quick, challenging look. ‘But I want to give Beck the things I never had. And you can't do that on eleven bucks an hour.'

This seemed self-evident, and I did not know what to say that would not sound trite.

‘What's the place in Sydney called?'

‘
Sans Souci
.'

I wondered if Denise knew what it meant. I also wondered what it was about our conversation that was making her uncomfortable.

‘What happens if Margot doesn't get on with a girl?' I asked.

‘She leaves,' Denise said, standing up.

I told her that I thought it would be all right to get Gail to do an interview—meaning, we both knew, if Margot wanted the interview arranged. It was clearly Margot's idea to try and organise some favourable publicity. But Denise had, commendably I thought, decided to check me out for herself.

I walked home from the
Tradies
thinking about the similarities and differences between the two women. My first impression had been that Denise copied Margot in her style of dress, but now I wasn't sure. I sensed that both had learnt to treat free talk as suspect, synonymous with waste. Say only as much as a client may be entitled to insist on, and no more. Dignity coexisted with a studied reticence. Words failed, or were inadequate, for so much. In a brothel, I suspected, they became a measure of the margins.

But Denise had said she'd enjoyed talking to Carmichael. In spite of her denial, I wondered if he
had
told her about his cancelled appointment with Senator Bryant. The more I thought about it, the less inclined I was to believe that he'd said nothing about where he should have been.

Who had Carmichael most embarrassed by ending his life the way he had? Ken Dollimore? His colleagues in the Legislative Assembly? Margot? His constituents? And whose interests was it in, if anyone's, that he should have done so?

. . .

I wasn't looking forward to spending another night alone, listening for footsteps, or the rasp of a chisel at my bedroom window.

Gail rang. I began to tell her about my conversation with Denise, but sensed she wasn't listening.

‘You've heard from him, haven't you?'

Gail said, ‘He's getting married.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. I'm not the marrying kind, am I? Never have been.'

‘Come over,' I told her. ‘I need company.'

. . .

It was the right kind of night for a long, leisurely walk, clouds engorged and heavy once again, holding the heat close to the earth with a lover's insistence. I thought of my house locked up and empty, of my intruder circling.

Gail kept giving me quick, sideways glances, but said she didn't want to talk about Mr Engagement.

Before we knew it, we'd walked all the way into the city. Landmarks so familiar that, during the day, I scarcely noticed them, appeared to be improved, spruced up. Old buildings, whose paint was worn, shapes tired in the sunlight, looked washed clean, well-proportioned in the darkness. The white arches of Civic seemed part of a forgotten Spanish town.

Gail was walking with exaggerated bow legs, pretending to be drunk.

She rushed ahead, a cowgirl with a posse after her, turning around and shouting, as though I was a mile away, ‘Sandy! We're the last two women in the world!'

‘Where
is
everybody?' she demanded.

‘Down the coast,' I said.

‘Oh, Sandy.' Gail's eyes glittered with tears she would never admit to. ‘Why didn't you go to Moscow with Ivan and Katya? A person needs to get out of this dump once in a while.'

A car's headlights picked us out. I stopped in the middle of the empty footpath, suddenly afraid. Gail was standing ramrod straight, accusing, as though the harsh, indifferent lights and echoing forlornness were my fault.

‘What would we do, if we were the last two women in the world?'

‘Well, I wouldn't go to bed with you,' I told her.

‘Oh Sandy, what an
awful
thought.'

. . .

That night, I huddled into bed with Fred for company, Fred surprised and delighted to be offered an old blanket on my bedroom floor. I woke to the sound of his toenails clicking in the corridor, as he took himself off for a drink. For the next day and night, I stuck to my small area of habitation, Dickson Pool, the shops, the house, which I greeted after each brief absence as though I had been gone for days. I conducted my business by telephone and email, daring my intruder to pay a return visit, telling myself I was ready for him if he did. Images of the funeral kept coming back to me—thunderclouds shot through with yellow, Ken Dollimore dispensing largesse at the crematorium, Ed Carmichael's last goodbye.