Fall (8 page)

I was the first to arrive at dinner, so I kept the obsessive Indian waitresses at bay by flipping through my notes on Ivana Lyon's autopsy, my notepad on the empty plate in front of me. It was busy at Malabar South Indian Cuisine on Darlinghurst Road even though it was a Wednesday. I'd never seen the place quiet and I was there a lot. Malabar was helped enormously by how many bad Indian takeaway joints there were in the area, peppered all the way up Oxford and William streets, the hopeful guilty pleasure of city workers on their way home. These same workers, disappointed enough times in front of their televisions, found joy and bliss when they discovered Malabar. Groups stood outside the windows smoking and jostling in the growing cold, leaping forward when their numbers were called and darting away into the night, plastic bags trailing steam.

I tried to keep my mind on the job, but at the table next to me a strange kind of group had gathered. I couldn't keep my eyes off them. It was the woman who attracted my attention first. I'm a red-blooded Australian male, so I notice women. I understand it's good practice to try to train yourself out of this tendency – especially if you're attached. You're supposed to forget about women, each with her own distinct kind of magic, never the same as the one you saw before, a dimple in
a perfect smile or a raspy laugh you can imagine cutting the dark of a warm bedroom. This one was very eye-catching and not in the traditional way.

She looked apocalypse-ready. She was muscled all over, the way survivors are muscled – a woman whose body was prepared both for running and fighting, for climbing and hiding and sliding down hills. She was more than ‘sporty'. She looked dangerous. Three huge guys sat at the table with her, talking in low voices, passing bits of paper around and signing things. The woman turned her head and showed me her sharp profile, and as she did I watched all the muscles in her neck move, some loosening, some tightening – the wires and chains of a great machine working. This is what women were becoming these days. Beautiful machines. Softness and curves and fat were things of the past. Everything was skin-tight and rock hard. It was exciting and kind of scary. I'm not sure it was really my thing.

Get your mind back on the job, Frank.

We knew plenty about Ivana Lyon from the autopsy. The body holds no secrets when you're dead. The autopsy told us she'd been exercising for some time, lifting weights as well as cardio, and she liked upper body exercises. Her triceps were well defined, and she had strong hands and the nice little calluses you get on the upper pad of your palm from not bothering with gym gloves. She wasn't pregnant, a smoker or a big drinker. She'd had braces once. She suffered mild psoriasis on her elbows.

I tried to take note of all these little bits and pieces and then forget them. I didn't like knowing the victim too well. As I got older it was harder to keep the murders impersonal. You start relating to them and you're in big trouble. Suddenly you think, oh yeah, I get the occasional spot of psoriasis on my elbows.
I had braces too for a while. I've had that callus on my hands. Next thing you know, you and the dead girl are best friends in your mind and you're willing to arrest the waitress for the murder just to cure your own broken heart. The justice system doesn't work like that. You can't cry over all of them.

Ivana Lyon had been dragged somewhere, knocked about a little on the journey. She'd had her wrists taped for a long time after death – probably right up until she was dumped back at the park at around 7 pm. She'd put up a little bit of a fight but not much of one – there'd been no scratching or biting, which indicated to me that she'd probably been drugged. How do you drug someone while she's jogging around a public path in view of hundreds of witnesses?

Her water might have been spiked before or during the run. That wasn't the likeliest option – but it was possible. The killer would have had to get hold of her water bottle before taking her, but if you knew her why bother letting her go out for the run in the first place? If it was someone she didn't know, the killer would have had to access the bottle she took on the run somehow – which might have occurred, if Ivana had stopped and put it down at any point. A bit of a gamble, though, following a runner around waiting for her to put her water bottle down. What if she never stopped for a break during the run? What if she stopped but she didn't let the bottle out of her sight? It was a bad plan.

Ivana Lyon's autopsy revealed a strange injury to the back of her left thigh, right below her buttock. It was bruised like a track mark and still open when she died. I didn't like the idea that there might be a killer out there with a tranquilliser gun putting down runners like jaguars on the plain, but I couldn't think of another way around it. I had to wait until midnight
for the toxicology report, but I was pretty sure it would back me up. Someone had hunted Ivana like an animal. Tracked her, caught her, barrelled her into a van like a lion on its way to the circus. I was sure of it.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, a text. Imogen saying she was late, probably. She was the only person who texted me. When I opened it up, however, there was a message from Hooky. I felt my nose wrinkle involuntarily. Imogen in my ear like she was sitting beside me.

What's a seventeen-year-old girl doing texting a middle-aged man? Slut. Slut. Slut.

The text read:
Tranquilliser gun, right?

I smiled and texted back:
You're in pedos, girl. Not homicide.

She replied before I had time to put the phone away:
I want in!

When I looked up from my phone, Eden was settling into a chair beside me. She poured herself a glass of water, glancing ruefully towards the door without saying hello.

‘You didn't change?' I frowned.

‘Don't start.'

‘You attended an autopsy in that outfit, Eden. You think you could have slapped on a different shirt to come to dinner?'

‘You're murder police, Frank. Not fashion police.'

‘Imogen's going to come through that door in a second, desperately overdressed now.' I pointed towards the front of the restaurant. ‘It's going to be awkward.'

‘Frank,' Eden smiled at me, patted my hand, ‘Imogen's always desperately overdressed.'

We engaged in a long, uncomfortable silence, looking at the tablecloth. Imogen walked through the door eventually,
offering no relief at all in her foxy orange dress, little pearl earrings and the pride of her collection: the eight hundred dollar Jimmy Choos. She only wore orange when she really meant it – I understood it was a difficult colour to pull off – and as she approached the table I saw her face harden. When had my life become this way? I wondered. When had I begun to sweat over what women were wearing? Imogen bent to kiss me and clouded me with Chanel.

‘Eden, thanks so much for coming.' She grinned and kissed Eden on the cheek. Eden hadn't seen the gesture coming and stiffened as though electrified. My phone flashed on the table – another text from Hooky – and Imogen's eyes fell on it just as my hand did. I tucked it away and she gave me a look. The look a woman gives you when she's cataloguing something in her mind, putting something away to burn you about later.

‘Shall we order?' Eden asked.

‘Imogen just sat down.'

‘I know what I want,' Eden shrugged, jutting her chin at the nearest waiter. He came to the table and Imogen scrambled for her menu.

‘We'll order wine now.' I kicked Eden under the table. ‘The Malbec, please.'

The waiter nodded and retreated and Eden looked satisfied with herself. She picked up her knife and turned it by its point on the table.

‘Well, what a crazy week,' Imogen said brightly. ‘First that Byron Bay thing and now this.'

‘What Byron Bay thing?' I asked.

‘A couple of young travellers and a couple of scumbags from some backwater hole behind Byron,' Imogen said. ‘Police found
them all stuffed in a burned-out van. Can't seem to figure out the connection between the two parties. It's all over the news.'

‘How weird,' I said.

‘Do we have to talk shop at the table?' Eden snapped.

‘Tough week, Eden?' Imogen smiled.

‘I'm fine.'

‘Oh, I just mean –'

‘She's not counselling you, Eden,' I said. ‘She's just asking how you are.'

‘They never stop, Frank,' Eden raised her eyebrows at me, widened her eyes. ‘They never stop.'

‘Who never stops?' Imogen frowned.

‘Let's order.' I waved for the waiter.

 

Eden settled after a while. The balance seemed to have been tipped between punishing Imogen for being an ‘owner' and making me uncomfortable, which she didn't seem to want to do, possibly for the first time ever. Eden appeared to have a bit on her mind, which was unusual. She was pretty good at compartmentalising. Dropping the job when she couldn't do anything with it, picking it back up again when she could. She kept looking off towards the front doors, letting Imogen and I talk. She hardly ate, though what she ordered was by far the best choice on the table. She waved distractedly at me when I asked her if I could finish it. Imogen didn't seem to get the hang of Eden's closed personality. Kept plugging her with personal questions and getting nothing in return, though she spent plenty of time offering up examples from her own personal life as encouragement – stupid ex-boyfriends and her
loser father and a nightmare boss who had come down on her too hard.

‘Are you dating right now, Eden?'

‘No.'

‘Single for a while?'

‘Yes.'

‘I used to work with this guy named Nick who I think would be just perfect for you,' Imogen grinned and glanced at me. ‘He's an anxiety specialist. I met him for the first time when –'

Now it was my turn to drift off. I like to tune out when Imogen talks about other men, in case I catch tales about guys with better jobs, bigger dicks, houses without possums in their upper floors. I don't know why women insist on talking about their ex-boyfriends and crushes in front of you, but over the years I've learned to ignore it. All impotent angst over guys I'd never met had ever given me was grey hair and restless nights. When I drifted back in it was because Eden was kicking me under the table.

‘What does it matter what my parents do?'

‘Oh, I don't know. It doesn't matter. That's not what I mean.' Imogen laughed uncomfortably. ‘It's just, I don't know. My dad inspired me to do what I do. He was a very clever man but he never really fulfilled his potential. He could have been so much more than he was. When I decided I wanted to be a psychologist … I mean, maybe your father –'

I got out my phone, glanced at the time.

‘We're going to have to wrap this up, ladies. I've got calls to make tonight.' I put my arms around both of them. ‘Not that I'd rather be anywhere but sandwiched between you two gorgeous creatures.'

Eden peeled my hand off her and got up, started sifting through her wallet with the hard-edged face of a john looking for money to pay a prostitute. Somehow it seemed appropriate.

When I got back from the bathroom, Imogen was still sitting at the table, staring at the lone fork left over from the swift clearing the waiters had done. There's something sad about a freshly cleared restaurant table. The stains of a party attended, enjoyed, finished. Imogen didn't look sad, though. She looked cold. I sat down and went to grab my phone from where it sat in front of her but her hand was over it before I could.

‘What the fuck is this?' she asked. She pushed the button at the bottom of the phone and the screen lit up, flashing a preview of a message from Hooky.
Hook me up!

‘She's talking about the Lyon case. The jogger. She wants some part in it. I don't know. She's hungry.'

I shrugged. Imogen stared at me.

‘What?'

No response.

I opened the message stream and showed her.

‘See?'

‘Why isn't she texting Eden?'

‘She doesn't know Eden.'

‘Why isn't she texting Command?'

‘She doesn't know anyone in Command,' I laughed. ‘Jesus, they wouldn't want her kept in the loop anyway. It's not her case.'

‘So you'd be doing her a favour.' Imogen licked her painted lips. ‘You and some hungry little girl texting back and forth, doing each other favours.'

‘Fuck me, Imogen. This thing you've got going with Hooky is just … it's madness. She's a child. She's texting me in a wholly and completely work-related capacity. That's it.'

‘Oh, I'm sure.'

‘Babe, I don't know why I'm sitting here defending myself. I don't have to explain this to you. It's nothing, and I'm telling you it's nothing and you're ignoring me. What you're insinuating is kind of sick. She's seventeen years old.'

‘I'm not insinuating that you're trying to interact inappropriately with a seventeen-year-old, Frank. Open your ears. I'm insinuating that a seventeen-year-old is trying to interact inappropriately with you.'

‘And that I'm doing nothing about it.'

‘I'm trying to help you realise what's going on, so that you can do something about it.'

‘Well, thank you, Imogen. Thank you very much. You're such a giving person.'

‘Fuck you.'

‘Fuck me?' I scoffed.

‘Yes. You're being rude. And mean.'

‘You're being rude. You don't know this girl. Her sister bludgeoned her parents to death. She sprayed their brains all over their pretty pink bedroom.'

‘That's terrible.'

‘You're right. It was terrible. In fact you have no fucking idea how terrible it was,' I said.

‘I'm sure it was the kind of terrible life event that might reorient a person's whole perception of the world. Of people. Of relationships. Of appropriateness.'