Feeding the Demons (14 page)

‘Noel,’ she said. ‘One of my operators. He’s always wanting more work. And he’s got a big van.’ She gave her father Noel’s number and he pocketed it. She wanted to ask him about Rowena Wylde, but decided to leave that until a later date. She wanted to check the woman out herself first. She agreed to come over for dinner on a night to be arranged next week, said goodbye and drove home. When she arrived, the phone was ringing and she ran to pick it up. It was her father.

‘You don’t know what it means,’ he said, ‘to know you believe me. I want my name cleared. And it’s not just that. I want compensation for the thirty years I spent in the hell of the New South Wales prison system. I want a fortune in compensation. I want a lot of money—not for me any more, I’m getting on. But so that I can leave it to my daughters. So that—’ Gemma heard his voice break, ‘—so that I can at last be some sort of father to my girls.’

Gemma felt tears coming to her eyes and she quickly blinked them away by thinking like a cop. ‘Someone bludgeoned my mother to death,’ she said. There was a long silence at the other end of the line. ‘And the problem for me,’ Gemma paused, ‘is that he’s still out there.’

Gemma fiddled with the manila envelope while she rang the number Dr Zelda Firestone had given her. ‘I’m staying at a serviced suite in Liverpool Street,’ the American told her and gave her the address. ‘I would not be available to look at the crime scene photographs until an evening later in the week. What about Thursday evening? Seven?’

‘We’ve waited thirty years,’ said Gemma. ‘Thursday evening at seven will be fine.’ She rang off and picked up the remains of the croissants. They were in several pieces, duly chewed and spread over the kitchen floor. Pastry wasn’t Taxi’s favourite food, but he always liked to test anything he found just to make sure. She called out to him and was surprised that he didn’t come running. Outside, the nor’easter buffeted her umbrella and she went out onto the deck to fold it down. Once, it had gone flying like a crazy javelin to impale itself on a patch of ground near the brush that led down to the ocean. She called Taxi again, but no ginger shape came waddling across the grass towards her. The sea was now battleship grey under a pale apple green sky with the haze on the horizon foretelling a change.

She switched on the television to watch the news. The abduction of Bianca Perrault was the lead story and there was footage showing the police activity around the Perrault house. ‘Women should make sure doors and windows are secure,’ said Davey, now a Superintendent, squinting because he was short-sighted, Gemma remembered, but too vain to wear glasses.

She suddenly felt starving. In the cupboard, she found a tin of sardines and an old lemon and made herself sardines on toast. She was finishing up the last piece, walking into the lounge area with the plate under her chin to catch the crumbs, when the crumpled twist of a terrible car crash on the television caused her to stop in her tracks. ‘Police have released the name of the driver, killed instantly when her car careered out of control and collided with an oncoming semi-trailer. She was sixty-four-year-old Imelda Moresby.’ Gemma froze, mid-chew. She didn’t hear the rest of the news item. She remembered the dead woman’s strange words about everything going in twos. She recalled the words about the stirring of evil, and Kit’s warnings about old energies being aroused.

A sickening sense of responsibility assailed her. Did I do this? she asked herself. Did I bring this violent car crash on by reopening some archive from the past and letting some psychic genie out of a bottle? Don’t be so silly, she told herself sternly. I’m sounding like some flakey New Ager. But she was shaken, and the fact that Taxi still wasn’t home frightened her. She looked around, expecting to see him waiting there, licking his chops. ‘Where
are
you?’ she said out loud, irritated by his absence.

‘We are karmically linked,’ Mrs Moresby had said, or something like that. So it was with more dread that she fetched the photographs again and briefly flipped through the notebooks, sitting at the table. The pages were filled with notes of interviews, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, memory aids in the man’s neat, square writing. Her eyes stopped at the name Dr Rowena Wylde, as well as her address and phone number. Underneath were other names and addresses. Names from thirty years ago. And Mrs Moresby was dead. She rang Kit and left a message to say she’d be over later.

•

When Clive came into Kit’s therapy room, he sat right down on the mattresses without any comment. He was more relaxed than he’d been before, Kit thought. More comfortable about being grounded and on eye level with her. Perhaps he was starting to trust her, to feel that she had no axe to grind with him, no agenda that he had to conform with.

‘I’ve found a new friend,’ he announced. Kit cocked her head as if to say ‘is that so’, indicating she’d like to hear more.

‘Yes,’ said Clive. ‘A young bloke. We had an outing together.’

Kit waited, so he went on. ‘That probably doesn’t sound much to you. But ever since the wife left, and since this
problem
developed, I haven’t felt like going anywhere much at all, especially with another man. It mightn’t sound much to you, but it was a big thing for me. We went for a drive to the Blue Mountains. He has an auntie living there.’

‘And how have you been during the last week?’ Kit asked. She noticed a gleam of malice mixed with mischief in the narrowed eyes as he spoke.

‘I had a dream,’ he said. ‘I dreamed I had sex with you. Right here, on this mattress.’ He patted it and peered at her again, like a child peeking out from behind curtains, Kit thought. ‘I had a big erection and I just climbed on top of you and that was it.’

‘Did that put me in my place?’ Kit asked him. Clive put his head to one side and regarded her. Kit continued, ‘Because if you could just climb on top of a woman with a big erection, I would be redundant. You wouldn’t need to come to therapy any more, would you?’

Clive considered. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Because I can’t remember the ending of it.’

‘It’s not uncommon for clients to have sexual feelings for me,’ said Kit mildly. ‘Sex doesn’t happen here, though,’ she added. ‘In other so-called therapies, sex sometimes occurs. But you can relax in the knowledge that it doesn’t happen here in this room with me or anywhere else with me.’

Clive shook his head. ‘I thought it would be good for me,’ he said slyly. ‘I heard that body work can cure impotence. Wouldn’t it be a natural part of the therapy?’

‘Sex will be good for you when you’ve dealt with some of the issues that brought you here. When you’ve discovered what makes you impotent in your own life. That’s what you’re here for. To bring more life to your deadened body. Once you’ve regained your potent energy, sex will take its proper place in your life.’ She moved to be at his feet. ‘I’m going to do some work on your feet if you’re agreeable.’

Clive nodded and she started rubbing her thumbs along the sole of his foot. ‘It’s a good dream,’ she said as she massaged. ‘About finding your hardness—a sexually functioning penis—in therapy. You’re on the right track. And I think, too, there is an aspect of overpowering the woman in the dream. About a power struggle in this room. You have probably seen sex in terms of power?’

He nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said, as if it was obvious. ‘What else is it about?’

Half an hour later, they were talking about Clive’s mother.

‘Tell her,’ said Kit, ‘tell her what you’d like to say to her.’

Clive’s face was red. ‘I’m disappointed and angry that my mother is dead,’ said Clive, grunting with the effort.

‘Why is that?’ Kit asked.

‘Because I can’t murder her now.’ After a minute or two, he rolled over and sat up, facing her. ‘I wonder if they’ll ever find that young girl,’ he said. ‘The one that was taken from her house? Or if they’ll only find her body?’

Kit sat back on her heels. Was this a metaphoric statement, she wondered, about him discovering his own body again, which had been ‘taken’ from his house so long ago, was it merely news of the day chit-chat, or was it something more sinister? It was, she recalled, the second time he’d made reference to this series of killings.

‘It’s weird,’ said Gemma, straining to look over Kit’s back fence, ‘how we both feel we’re being watched. Or followed.’ She jumped down from her precarious toehold on the brick footing and brushed her hands together, ridding them of crushed vine leaves. ‘Don’t you think?’

Kit nodded. ‘What were you looking at?’

‘Nothing in particular,’ said her sister. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘in my game being followed is probably more to do with my line of work.’

‘I think I can say the same,’ said Kit. ‘I see some pretty disturbed people. Especially in the early days of their therapy when they’re looking at things they’ve pushed away for a lifetime. Things seem to get a lot worse before they get better.’

‘Do you think the intruder was one of your clients?’

Kit shrugged. ‘I simply can’t say,’ she said finally. ‘It’s certainly possible.’ She squatted down next to an overgrown garden bed and started attacking the couch grass that had all but covered the ground under some struggling daphne and gardenia bushes. Gemma watched as a long strand of couch came unstitched until Kit pulled it right out and threw it on the pile. She’d told her sister about Mrs Moresby’s death.

‘About this case of the effigy killer that I seem to be getting more and more involved with,’ Gemma started.

Her sister looked up from her weeding. ‘You look tired, Gems.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am. I’ve got a lot going on at the moment. Did I tell you I took our father to his new digs in Glebe?’ she said. ‘He’s got a nice garden flat there.’

‘Bully for him,’ said Kit, tugging at a long string of grass. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate without running round after him.’

‘Oh Kit, please,’ said Gemma, stung. ‘He wants to clear his name. He wants a huge compensation payment. So he can be a father to us at last. He said he wanted to be of some use to us and leave us a lot of money. He’s changed, Kit. He’s not the violent, frightening man that we knew as kids. He’s paid a terrible price for his character defects.’

‘If he’s innocent,’ said Kit. There was a tense silence.

‘Anyway,’ said Gemma, after a pause, ‘I’m not here to argue about that. I want to talk over some aspects of Angie’s investigation with you. This time, he’s abducted a young girl from her home.’

‘How do you know it’s him?’ said Kit.

‘We don’t. Not for sure. But he’d made a pile of women’s clothes, not laid out like the last times. Just in a pile.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t need to “make” a woman,’ said Kit. ‘Now that he’s taken a real one.’

‘That’s what Angie thought, but maybe it’s not him at all,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s certainly different from the other situations. I’d like to have your comments.’

‘Tell me the whole story,’ said Kit. ‘Right from the very beginning.’ So Gemma did, weeding beside her sister, talking through the crime scenes, starting with her own shocking discovery at the Tusculum Hotel, the clothes on the floor, the door left ajar, moving onto the young accounts clerk murdered at Maroubra because she made the mistake of sleeping with a window slightly open, the golf club lying beside her stiffening fingers. Then the crime scene at South Coogee, the empty bed and the stolen girl, the forced lock, the clothes in a messy pile on the floor, the pearl necklace dropped on top. Kit listened, with full attention, occasionally interrupting to get clear about a point. She consciously put away the disagreement about their father so that they could join again, in their usual way, to sort something out, as they had so many times before. She took up the broom, seemingly deep in thought, sweeping the pulled-up grass into a pile.

‘I have to ask myself something about this person,’ she said eventually. ‘Why he does the things he does. What he reveals about himself by what he does.’ She squatted back on her heels, facing her sister. ‘There’s a boy—a young man—probably in his twenties. He’s demonstrated that he’s completely inadequate with women. That’s why he has to sneak in on them. He is probably quite inadequate in his own life, as well. He’s unmothered, unfathered. His schooling has reflected this. He’s not a success story in any part of his life. He’s one of those unnoticed people, but he’s worse off than that. He’s what some would refer to as a “loser”. So his life and his appearance will reflect that. I imagine squalor around him. Ill-kempt appearance, the look of neglect. What you’re looking for is someone who is a spiritual and psychological derelict in their own life, as well as physically squalid. Maybe bad teeth, run-down shoes, poorly dressed. Dirty house. I’d be surprised if he has a job, especially in these days of high unemployment. Or if he does work, it might be at an abattoir, or in animal husbandry—somewhere he can indulge his rage and sadism on weaker creatures. Because he’s very passive. Timid, even. He does things with women’s clothes. Maybe he peeps too. Maybe he fantasises about how good it would be to do his clothes thing with a woman nearby, but not too near. The first time his fantasy comes true—that we know about—is when your door at the motel is left ajar. There’s an opportunity and he takes it, slipping into a woman’s room, a woman’s life. A sleeping woman’s life.’

Gemma shuddered, her imagination picturing the killer as he softly slipped through her door, came into her room, saw her asleep, leaving him free to act out his fantasy with her clothes.

‘In his room,’ Kit continued, ‘wherever he lives, he’s made a “woman” before, but always comprised of bits and pieces of clothing stolen from here and there. This time, he has the real clothes of a real woman who is lying passive and motionless only a few metres away. This is very exciting for him. I suspect that he can’t get hard with a real woman, even with a prostitute, because the issues with his mother are too terrible. But now he’s had a taste of a new level of excitement, slashing and stabbing your clothes with you lying just through an open doorway. So now I see him looking around all the time for more openings like this. Doors left open, windows open. Remember, this sort of disorder, this obsession is like a full-time job. You and I don’t really fully appreciate this. You need to keep in your mind that this is the
only
energy that motivates him, that gives his life any direction or interest. It is where all his vitality lives and he focuses all his energy towards it. So he’s always looking, always waiting. This is his meaning in life. Always cruising and alert, prowling around his territory. He notices where single women live. Watches them drive up in their cars, go into their houses and units. And he gets to know that certain windows stay invitingly open, even at night. He knows his beat.’

‘Yes,’ said Gemma, remembering the lectures on profiling. ‘This sort of killer usually lives in the local area.’ She thought of the ground floor flat at Maroubra, the young woman stabbed to death before she’d had a chance to wield her golf club.

‘This time,’ Kit said, ‘he pushes the window up and climbs in, wanting to recreate the excitement of the motel experience, but while he’s setting up the girl’s clothes .
 
.
 
.’ She paused. ‘What’s her name, by the way?’

‘Marcia,’ said Gemma. ‘Marcia Harding.’

Kit continued, ‘Perhaps he knocks something over, perhaps he sneezes. Whatever happens, Marcia wakes up and grabs a golf club. She comes out of the bedroom and sees him. He panics. This wasn’t part of the deal. Maybe she screams. Maybe she even hits him. Whatever happens, he kills her with the knife that had, until now, only “killed” in ritual. Now he’s moved into a new league and it is highly exciting. Sure, there’s anxiety, but he does what he’s always done to manage anxiety. Sexualises it. So he probably has the best erection of his life. And this time, he’s overpowered a woman. He can do anything to her now. He masturbates over her dead body. Off he goes, into the night, back home to wherever he lives.’

‘He lives alone,’ said Gemma. ‘A mother or a wife or a flatmate would notice the bloody clothes.’

‘It’s possible that he lives with a parent. He could have disposed of the clothes on the way, but it is more likely that he lives alone,’ Kit agreed.

‘And now,’ said Gemma, ‘he’s really getting arsey. Now he feels he’s in a position to force his own entry. Why passively wait for openings to present themselves?’

‘Yes,’ said Kit. ‘This is the bit that worries me. Taking a girl from her house is very different from how he’s operated before.’

‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s a big difference. It’s to do with the changing MO.’

‘I know that. But think about it. For behaviour to change like that, something else must have changed in his life. Something,’ said Kit, ‘has made him less passive. More aggressive.’

‘What are the conditions that might make a passive person become more aggressive?’ asked Gemma. ‘That’s exactly why I’m here. To ask you as a therapist who deals with human motivation. Because you see connections that Dr Dickhead Copeland doesn’t.’

The two sisters got back to the weeding in silence. Gulls wheeled overhead and, down below, the Pacific purred into the narrow inlet of Gordon’s Bay. ‘Do you remember when we were little,’ Gemma asked, ‘climbing into that big wicker clothes basket when our father was screaming round the place? I only just thought of it today.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Kit. ‘I remember that very well. We used to hide in the laundry, too, out the back when things really got bad. You used to sob and sob and I’d hug you and rock you. You were my baby.’

Gemma looked at Kit and her sister’s eyes were filled with tears. ‘Do you remember Mrs Moresby coming in that night?’ asked Gemma.

Kit shook her head, then abruptly stood up and stretched. ‘I don’t remember much about that night at all,’ she said. ‘And I can only do so much weeding in one go.’ She disappeared into the kitchen and came out with a jug of iced lime juice.

Gemma straightened up too and washed her hands at the garden tap while Kit poured the juice into two glasses. Gemma took hers and wandered back over to the pond. A long-legged water skater trembled on its impossible legs, shivering across the water’s surface.

‘Something needs to have changed in the killer’s life. An increase in pressure can create so much stress in a passive person that they are forced to take action,’ said Kit. ‘But that increase in pressure can be caused by many different things.’

‘A new relationship?’ Gemma offered and her sister nodded.

‘Yes,’ said Kit. ‘That’s possible. But not a romantic one. If he could function that way, he wouldn’t need to make a dummy woman.’

‘But he makes the dummy to “kill”, not to be romantic with,’ Gemma protested.

‘In his experience,’ said Kit, ‘sex and violence are part of the same thing. If he’s a child of domestic violence, and it’s almost certain that he is, that’s what he’ll have learned.’

‘What about a loss of someone significant? A death?’ Gemma suggested after a moment.

Her sister nodded. ‘Any big change in his life,’ said Kit. ‘Something that pushes him into a new place. But it’s got to be big.’

‘What about moving back in with his mother? That could make him very frustrated,’ Gemma said. ‘Or maybe losing a job—if he had one—or starting a job that demands too much?’

Kit shrugged. ‘Do you think he’s employed?’ she asked.

‘Statistically he’s more likely not to be,’ her sister answered, remembering her theory.

‘Something’s happened because he needn’t have had a car for the first two attacks,’ said Kit. ‘But he’d almost have to have a car to abduct someone.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Gemma. ‘He really needs a car to take a strong young woman, even one that he’s subdued with the threat of the knife.’ Gemma considered as she sipped her lime juice. ‘He’d almost have to immobilise her, too. Tie her with something. We might find that something’s missing from her belongings when her mother or sister goes through them. Can you think of any other significant reasons,’ she asked her sister, ‘that might cause a person to change his behaviour? Why is he changing from passivity to forcefulness? Is violent behaviour like an addiction? Does he need more? And does it get easier with each attack?’

Kit went inside and washed her hands in the laundry and Gemma followed her. She picked up her backpack and slung it round her shoulder, and Kit walked with her to the door.

‘I’ve thought about what you said the other night,’ Kit said.

Gemma turned at the door. ‘What did I say?’

‘I know I have serious issues regarding men. This isn’t a surprise to me,’ Kit was saying. ‘But somehow, what you said, or how you put it, brought it home to me. I’d intellectualised it away before.’

Gemma felt a pleasure that was rare; that she could on occasions offer wisdom to her older sister. ‘God knows how long it is since I’ve had sex,’ her sister said, and Gemma looked at her in surprise. ‘I’ve been avoiding the whole thing, the man thing,’ Kit stated. ‘You were right. I need to make changes. And the best way I can start changing the man perplex—the most appropriate place to start—is to make amends to my son.’

Kit paused. ‘Gemma, will you find Will for me?’

‘But I thought—’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Kit. ‘I said I couldn’t have any contact with him. But I want to know how he is and where he is. That way, I can write to him, to ask him to forgive me.’

‘Forgive you for what?’ Gemma said.

Kit walked over to the pond and sat on the coping. ‘For being such a disappointment to him,’ she said. ‘As a mother, I mean. I was so tied up with Gerald, with his depression and my own suffering. I wasn’t able to give Will the attention that any child—particularly such a bright and beautiful person as he was—needed so he could flourish. I was always pushing him away. Not literally, but by being so preoccupied with everything else. I only really noticed him when he misbehaved. I’d like to write to him and say that I would do anything to change the past, but I can’t. That I did my best and that it wasn’t good enough. That’s all. I just want him to know that I understand why he became a sitting duck for addiction. That I understand that he might hate me and never want to see me again. I will accept that if that’s how it is for him. But I want him to know that I can admit that I failed him badly and that I deeply regret it.’

‘I can do that for you, Kit,’ said Gemma. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to track him down.’ They went inside and the kitchen seemed dark after the bright garden.