Lane's End (5 page)

‘A couple of
what
? You mean she’s sharing accommodation with two males?
Alistair!
How could you let this happen? You’re supposed to be looking after Sophie.’

Fitzjohn winced in despair at his over-bearing sister. ‘Meg, Sophie is 22 years old, studying forensic medicine at Sydney University. She can look after herself, live where she likes, and with whomever she likes.’

‘No she can’t. What gave you that idea?’ Meg turned back into the kitchen, the tea towel in her hand flying into the air. ‘You do have a short memory, Alistair Fitzjohn. And you a policeman too. Have you forgotten that this time last year Sophie got arrested for being a public nuisance in that damned university sit-in? That alone demonstrates she can’t look after herself.’ Meg slumped down into a kitchen chair. ‘This is worse than I thought. There’s nothing else for it, she’ll have to come home to Melbourne. I won’t have my daughter cavorting around Sydney living who knows where.’ Fitzjohn sighed and started toward the stairs. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Meg, it’s late and I’m tired. I’m turning in. I have an early start in the morning.’

‘But you can’t. We have to talk about this because I need your support when I speak to Sophie in the morning.’

‘I’m working on a case, Meg. I won’t be taking any time off until it’s solved.’

CHAPTER 5

With his camera equipment slung over one shoulder and a haversack over the other, photojournalist, Ben Carmichael, pushed his way through the crowded Cairo International Airport in an effort to secure a seat on a flight out as the city descended into chaos.

Torn between his desire to extend his assignment and remain to film the Arab Spring revolutionary wave of demonstrations, and his fiancée, Emma Phillips’s wish that he return home, Ben moved unwillingly to the ticket counter. After all, Emma had left him with no false illusions when last they spoke by telephone a few days earlier. His constant absences were causing them to drift apart. Ben knew which he must choose because he was aware that once he found himself in the throes of an assignment, the adrenalin kicked in and everything other than what he caught on camera was forgotten.

It was late on Saturday evening when he climbed into a cab at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport on the last leg of his journey home. Weary, and yet tense, he stretched his long lean body out and tried to quell the images of the horrors he had witnessed during the past four weeks.  At the same time, he contemplated the reception he was likely to receive from Emma.

When the taxi pulled up in front of the home they shared in CrowsNest, he paid the driver, slung hi
s
haversack over his shoulder, and walked through the garden to the front door. In the darkness he did not notice the junk mail spilling out of the letterbox at the gate nor see a yellow tinge to the grass on either side of the path. He just felt an overwhelming desire for his life to resume its normal path, at least for the next few weeks until his next photojournalism assignment. Hastening to the front door, he turned the key in the lock and walked inside. As he did so, a feeling of unease took hold. His haversack dropped from his shoulder, the thud as it hit the old oak floor filling the silence.

‘Emma?’ he called into the hot, stuffy atmosphere. ‘Emma, darling, I’m home,’ he called again up the stairwell. ‘Hey, sleepy-head.’ Ben took the stairs two at a time to the landing above where moonlight emanated through the front bedroom window, producing an eerie glow. A tingling sensation went through him. Tentatively, he walked into the room. The bed remained empty and undisturbed. ‘Emma,’ he whispered before his thoughts tumbled back to recall their last conversation. Had his relentless pursuit to capture,on camera, life as it happened, driven Emma away
?
He dived at the closet door, pulled it open and stood back. There, hung in meticulous order, were Emma’s clothes. Relieved but puzzled, he made his way back down the stairs, stepped over his haversack and walked through to the kitchen. The steady drip of the tap into the sink of unwashed dishes caught his attention before his gaze went to his reflection in the glass patio doors. Sliding the doors open, he stepped outside. In the darkness, as if forgotten, clothes hung limp on the line. Emma’s car space remained empty. Pulling his mobile phone from his pocket, he dialled her number.

“Your call could not be connected,” answered the dispassionate recorded voice.

With growing desperation, he retraced his steps. As he reached the front hall, he heard a knock on the front door. ‘Emma?’ he yelled with a surge of relief.

‘No, it’s me,’ a voice came from the darkened porch.

‘Joanna? Is Emma with you?’ he asked opening the screen door.

‘No. I haven’t heard from her since last week. I came over because I have to talk to you, Ben.’

‘Is it about Emma?’

‘No. Why do you keep asking about her?’

Ben noticed the uncharacteristic sharpness in Joanna’s voice and hesitated. ‘Because I’m worried. I just got home and she’s not here.’

‘Have you tried her mobile?’

‘Yes. It’s turned off.’

‘Then I’d say she’s at a movie.’

It was then that Ben took in the harried look on Joanna’s face and the tears brimming her eyelids. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking into her face. ‘This isn’t like you.’ Ben fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. ‘Here, wipe those tears and tell me about it.’

‘It’s Dad.’

Ben’s eyes hardened. ‘Joanna, please don’t start on about that again. Especially tonight. The situation between Dad and me is never going to be resolved. I’ve accepted that. Why can’t you?’

‘It’s not about your estrangement from Dad, Ben. I only wish it was.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘Dad suffered a heart attack early this morning. He’s in the Intensive Care Unit at North Shore Hospital.’ Ben gaped at his sister. ‘The doctor’s say it’s touch and go whether he’ll recover.’ Joanna’s voice broke and she began to weep.

Ben put his arm around her, a multitude of thoughts racing through his mind. ‘I take it Laura is at the hospital.’

‘Yes. She wanted you to know what’s happened as soon as you arrived home.’

‘How is she coping?’ Ben thought of his step-mother, a stoic woman who doted on his father in every way.

‘She’s managing well under the circumstances. She knows Dad’s chances aren’t good, but as long as he’s alive she has hope.’ Joanna shook her head. ‘She’s such a positive person. I wish I was more like her. It helps at a time like this, and particularly with Dad being...’

‘Being what? Joanna?’

Joanna glared at her brother. ‘Being a suspect in a murder investigation.’

‘A
what
?’

‘Seems unbelievable, I know. It happened last night. Dad and Laura, together with the Hunts, hosted a cocktail party at the Observatory. It was for some of their company’s clients. One of the guests was found dead in the grounds at the end of the evening. Someone, I don’t know who it was, told the police that earlier in the evening they’d seen Dad arguing with the man who died.’

‘Does Dad know this?’

‘Yes. Laura and Dad left the venue early, before the body was found, but Emerson telephoned Dad later in the evening and told him.’

‘When did Dad suffer his heart attack?’

Joanna hesitated before she said, ‘Right after Emerson’s call.’

‘Was the man who died one of Dad’s clients?’

‘Laura doesn’t think so. She thinks he must be one of Emerson’s. His name was Peter Van Goren.’ Joanna looked into Ben’s face. ‘Do you know him?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘Well, it’s just that Mr Van Goren asked after you while I was talking to him last night. Are you sure you don’t know him, Ben? He’s not someone you’d forget in a hurry. He spoke with a slight foreign accent and walked with the aid of a cane. The cane alone might help you to recall the man if his name doesn’t. It had the most exquisite silver handle in the shape of an eagle’s head.’

Ben’s shoulders slumped and his hand grabbed the banister.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Joanna in alarm. ‘You’ve gone all white.’

Ben shook his head. ‘It’s jet lag. I haven’t had much sleep. You’d better drive us to the hospital.’

‘Okay. Are you going to leave Emma a note?’

‘No. I’ll keep trying her phone.’

Laura Carmichael sat alone in the small waiting room, her hazel eyes sunken, her face pale. Even so, when she saw Ben standing in the doorway, a certain warmth transcended her sorrow. ‘Ben, I’m so glad you’re here at last,’ she said, getting to her feet.

Ben caught Laura’s trembling hands before putting his arms around the woman who had been a mother to him since he was a small boy. ‘How’s Dad?’ he asked.

‘Not good, I’m afraid. The doctors don’t expect your father to survive.’ Laura Carmichael’s voice broke and she collapsed back into her chair. ‘They’ve been forthright and I do appreciate that. They say his heart is far too damaged.’ Silence ensued until Laura continued, ‘You must both go in to see him while there’s still time.’

Ben sat down in the chair next to Laura while Joanna hovered nearby. ‘Do you think that’s wise? You know how it is between Dad and me. The last thing I want is to upset him at a time like this.’

‘You won’t upset him, believe me,’ replied Laura. ‘Make your peace with him, Ben. Even if he’s unable to respond, you need to resolve your troubles, for your own sake if not his.’

Ben glanced up at Joanna. ‘You go first, Jo,’ he said, before his thoughts drifted back to his last meeting with his father when the rift between them had been fuelled, yet again, by his refusal to invest in the property market. It all seemed so trivial in the face of what was now happening. He felt Laura’s hand on his.

‘Here’s Joanna now. Go make your peace.’

Ben walked the short distance to the Intensive Care Unit. At the door, he hesitated, the years of recriminations between him and his father pouring through his mind. Tentatively, he opened the door and walked into the hushed atmosphere where those in attendance moved silently between patients in their constant vigil. His father’s form lay still, his body monitored by machines, their steady beeps the only sound. Ben placed the palm of his hand over his father’s. As he did so, Richard Carmichael’s eyes fluttered. ‘It’s okay, Dad,’ he said softly. ‘You don’t have to speak. I’ll just sit here with you for a while.’

Richard Carmichael’s lips moved. Ben bent over to listen to his whispered words. ‘He told me you s... I’m sorry...’ Tears glistened in Richard Carmichael’s eyes as they closed.

Perplexed, Ben patted his father’s hand. ‘I’m sorry too, Dad.’

In the early hours of Sunday morning, Richard Carmichael slipped from this life, and as the sun appeared on the horizon, Laura, Ben and Joanna emerged from the hospital lost in their own thoughts.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come and stay with me for a few days, Laura,’ asked Joanna as they reached her car.

‘Thanks for the offer,’ replied Laura, her face pale with sadness and fatigue. ‘But I’d sooner be at home. I’ll feel closer to Richard there with all his things around me.’ She looked to Ben and caught his arm, concern on her face. ‘Joanna told me about Emma. Have you been able to reach her yet?’

‘No, but I’m sure it’s because her phone’s run out of battery.’ As Ben said the reassuring words, a surge of anxiety went through him because he knew that Emma’s fastidious nature would not allow that to happen. ‘She’ll be at home, I’m sure.’

In the growing humidity, Ben watched Joanna’s car disappear into the traffic before he turned to make his way through the garden to the front door. In the light of day, he saw the junk mail spilling out of the letter box at the front gate, and the lawn tinged with yellow from lack of water before he lifted his gaze to the front door. It remained closed. His heart sank. If Emma were at home, that door would be open. Turning the key in the lock, he stepped inside. On the floor lay his haversack where he had dropped it the night before. ‘Emma?’ he called in hope. Amid the silence, he made his way into the living room, his eyes going to Emma’s bright smile looking out at him from her photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘Where are you?’ he whispered. Clutching the frame, he slumped heavily into an armchair, his eyes glistening as his thoughts revisited their last conversation for a clue as to where she could be. When nothing came, he started to recall their first meeting in February 2011 during the Christchurch earthquake disaster. On assignment in New Zealand at the time, he had found himself attached to a group of journalists. Emma was one of them. Her resilience and spirit had drawn him to her at once and their romance blossomed amid the devastation and chaos. As he reflected, his mobile phone rang. ‘Thank God,’ he yelled, grabbing it from his pocket. ‘Em? Is that you?’

‘No, Ben, it’s Audrey McIntyre, Emma’s research assistant. I’ve been trying to contact Emma since last Saturday with no luck. That’s why I thought I’d try you. Can you tell her that I’ve finished the research on one of the artists for her book? The other I should have done by the end of this coming week.’

‘You say you’ve been trying to contact Emma since last Saturday?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you last speak to her, Audrey?’

‘Last Thursday night. We’d spent the better part of the day at the Mitchell Library doing research, so we had a bite to eat together in town after we’d finished. The last time I saw her was at Wynyard Station before she caught her train home. Why do you ask?’

‘Because Emma wasn’t here when I got home last night. I’ve been out of the country for the past month. I’m worried sick. Especially now since you say you haven’t been able to reach her either.’

A moment of silence ensued on the line before Audrey said, ‘No one has, Ben. I’ve asked everyone we know and no one has heard from Emma since last week.’ Ben did not reply. ‘Are you still there?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I’m here.’

‘I think you should contact the police, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I’ll do that.’ As he spoke, the doorbell rang. ‘I’ve got to go, Audrey. There’s someone at the door. It might be news about Emma. I’ll call you back.’

Ben lurched out into the front hall. Through the screen door stood a man of medium height wearing a dark grey suit and maroon tie. With him a tall ginger-haired younger man.