Now You See Me (28 page)

‘It doesn’t give me satisfaction,’ she says. ‘I only wish there was a way we didn’t both have to be so miserable. Tom, you’ve always kept secrets from me, haven’t you? Why haven’t you ever told me about your parents, your childhood?’

‘I have,’ he says. He thinks about it. ‘No, perhaps I haven’t. Our early years are a bit of a fog, now. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to forget about it, I suppose. It’s no big deal — it wasn’t something I deliberately kept from you, just something I tried to put behind me.’

‘Can you tell me about it now?’ she asks.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. It was bad, rotten. I’m a bit drained at the moment. It’s a lot to dredge up, after what I’ve dredged up already.’

‘Tom, do you think it has any ... relevance to the way you are?’

He laughs. ‘You mean did my mother dress me in girls’ clothes and tell me how pretty I was while my father fucked me? I don’t think so. Things aren’t usually that simple, chicken. No, they were just common or garden brutes, that’s all. You’re crying again — why?’ He touches her lace lightly with his finger.

‘You called me chicken,’ she says. ‘You haven’t called me that for years.’

‘Oh, Rosie,’ he says. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’ He pulls the sheet down slightly and nuzzles his face into her breasts. ‘I must say that’s a damned attractive look, though.’ She puts out a tentative hand and strokes his neck. He kisses her and licks the salt tears from her face. She moves her hand slowly down his body and feels his erect penis. ‘Why don’t you take your clothes off?’ she says. ‘If I’d known crying turned you on, I could have done it ages ago, any time.’

He undresses and gets into the bed with her. They make love with careful intensity, uttering small moans when they rediscover familiar places of pleasure, half-forgotten triggers of sensation. Rosa comes with a shrill cry. Tom keeps pumping inside her, his face contorted, until he howls with triumph at his climax.

‘Hush,’ she says. ‘We’ll have the neighbours in.’

‘No, let’s not,’ he says. ‘I prefer it with just the two of us.’

Her laughter dislodges him and he gasps and rolls to lie beside her. They hold each other close, legs intertwined.

She says, ‘You smell of cigarettes.’

‘Yes, I’ve taken it up again. Sorry ...’

‘It’s all right. I quite like it.’

He strokes her hair and says, ‘I don’t understand anything. Perhaps I’m just a drama queen, have to have a crisis to get me going.’

‘Compensation,’ she murmurs.

‘What?’

‘Something my therapist said.’ She raises her head to his surprised face. ‘You should think of therapy too, Tom. You need some neutral observer to talk to, don’t you think?’

‘No. I tried that once. Load of shit. He started trying to get me to recall past lives.’

She laughs again. Then she says, ‘What does this mean, Tom? Is there a chance for us? Could we start over?’

‘I don’t know, Rosie. Perhaps.’ They are silent, thinking, and eventually they fall asleep with their arms tight around each other.

Paddy rings the bell. He shifts from one foot to the other as if he were warming up for some physical exercise. He hears the tap of heels along the passage, then Diana opens the door.

‘Come in,’ she says. ‘Are those for me? Thank you.’ She takes the bunch of tightly curled red rosebuds from him and sniffs at them.

‘They haven’t got any perfume,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how they do that, do you? Stop roses smelling?’

She smiles at him and shrugs. She is wearing a tuxedo jacket over sheer black tights and stiletto-heeled boots. He is in his usual sweat shirt with its cut-off sleeves, and track pants. He ambles into the living room and stands in the middle of the carpet, looking around. ‘So, what are the ground rules?’ he says.

‘There aren’t any,’ she says. ‘Whatever you want goes. My name is Diana, that’s important. Otherwise we make it up as we go along.’

‘Diana,’ he says. ‘That’s nice. I like that. Goddess of the hunt and all that.’

She turns away from him and chooses a pale blue fluted vase from the shelves. She goes into the next room and he hears water running. She comes back and puts the vase full of crimson blooms against the white wall in a corner.

‘It clashes,’ he says. ‘Everything else is cool in this room. Those roses are too hot. Next time I’ll bring white flowers; or greenery, that would do.’

She puts a disc in the player, the cerebral piano of Philip Glass. The repetitive phrases creep into the room and take it over. Diana settles herself into the chair near the fireplace and gestures to Paddy to sit facing her on the couch.

‘Diana,’ he says, sitting, tasting the name. ‘Diana, you know it’s a while since I’ve been with a woman like this. I don’t even remember how to begin.’

‘Well,’ she says. ‘It’s up to you entirely. Whether I’m a woman or not, too.’

‘Is that why you’re dressed like that?’ He leans back. ‘Have you got any dope?’

‘Beside you.’

He turns his head and on the coffee table are three large joints in a silver ashtray. He picks one up and lights it. He inhales deeply and passes it to Diana. She takes a small puff and passes it back. ‘You smoke it. It only makes me sleepy,’ she says.

‘So, anything goes, right?’ he says, drawing in the sweet herb.

‘Well, short of physical damage, yes,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to go elsewhere for that.’

He chokes on his next inhalation. ‘No, that’s OK. I’m not into that stuff. To be absolutely truthful, I’m not sure what
I
a
m
into these days. Can we try a few different things?’

‘Of course,’ Diana says. She gets up and pours herself a straight vodka from the bottle on a sideboard. She lets it trickle down her throat while she watches him. He goes on smoking the joint, his eyes half closed. Finally he stubs it out. ‘I don’t know,’ he says lazily, half giggling. ‘I can’t think of a single thing I want to do.’

She downs what’s left in her glass with a single swallow and goes to the door. ‘Just wait a minute,’ she says. ‘I’ll be right back.’

He waits, absorbing the monotonous music until he finds it mildly irritating, then he lights another joint. He is halfway through it before she reappears. She has put on a short cropped blond wig and she is wearing a grey cotton school shirt with a bottle-green tie, above grey serge shorts. Her grey socks droop over bulky black laced boots. He starts laughing and he can’t stop. He chokes on smoke and laughter.

‘Is that what you think?’ he says. ‘Why not a nurse’s uniform? Or a cop’s?’

‘What d
o
yo
u
think?’ she asks, not at all put out by his amusement. She comes over to him and unbuttons her shirt. She presses his head to her breast. His laughter subsides, gradually, and he begins to suckle, making small, inarticulate sounds.

She takes the joint from his hand and puts it in the ashtray. She helps him off with his clothes. She pushes him back on the couch and takes him into her mouth. When he is hard, she rips open the fly on her shorts and straddles him, licking her fingers to moisten things further. When he is inside her, thrusting, his eyes widen in amazement. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he says. ‘Oh Christ, no. No.’

‘Shouldn’t I have worn something?’ he says later, vaguely, lying sprawled anyhow half off the couch, dazed and depleted.

‘Yes. Next time,’ she says. ‘I figured I wasn’t in much danger. You’re practically celibate, aren’t you Paddy?’

‘Practically, yes,’ he says, giggling again.

She stands up and takes off her shorts and shirt. ‘That’s it for tonight, dearie. You can have a shower if you want.’ She goes into the bedroom and re-emerges wearing a towelling bathrobe.

‘Holy hell,’ he says. ‘You don’t muck about, do you ... Diana?’

‘No,’ she says, her voice cool and teasing. ‘I don’t. Next time come with a few ideas of your own, OK?’

‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I think I can do that. When is the next time?’

‘I’ll ring you,’ she says. ‘Don’t try to contact me, ever. That’s important, Paddy. Do you agree?’

‘Sure,’ he says, making for the bathroom. ‘Will it be soon? The next time?’

‘Oh yes, it’ll be soon. I promise.’ She hunches herself up in the armchair and pours another glass of vodka. ‘It will be very soon,’ she says to his back, half under her breath.

*

Sharon arrives at Noel’s flat in the early evening and they sit by the window with a glass of wine. ‘I thought it was dinner again,’ Sharon says. There are no smells of food, no evidence of any preparation.

‘I’ve ordered Chinese,’ Noel says. ‘For eight o’clock. Tony can’t get here before then.’

‘Did you have anything to do with getting me onto the investigation?’ Sharon asks, squinting at her, slightly defensive.

‘No. I was as surprised as you probably were. I thought he was pissed off at you for interfering. He was muttering to that effect, anyway. Seemed to think we were conspiring behind his back.’

‘That explains it then,’ Sharon relaxes. ‘He’s got me where he can keep an eye on me.’ But she can’t hide her gratification that Tony’s asked to have her seconded to the case. She sees it as a chance to move into more demanding work, perhaps into Detective Division. ‘He told the brass that he needed someone with first-hand experience of domestic violence. Mick says we could sue.’

Noel grins. ‘He would. So, anything new?’ The circumstantial evidence had turned up at the caravan at the coast, pat enough and careless enough to make Tony, at least, take her theory more seriously now. A brickie’s hammer, kept in a lean-to beside the caravan, still had Justine’s blood and hair on it. A sheet, soiled with the child’s vomit, was wadded into a plastic bag under a bench, and there were signs that someone, presumably Justine, had been kept in the van for some days.

Sharon frowns. ‘The higher-ups are hassling us to charge the foster parents. We’ve had them in since last night. Prosecutors’ says there’s enough evidence for a conviction. So far Tony’s holding them off on an actual arrest.’

Noel had seen the couple being taken in for questioning on the television news. They’d huddled under concealing coats, bundled from the unmarked into the police station at speed. The presenter had said in her falsely concerned voice that they were ‘assisting police in their enquiries’. She’d also picked up on Noel’s article about the statistics of child murder inside the family unit. Rafferty had been pleased. He wasn’t so pleased when she told him she didn’t have the full story yet.

‘Let it go this week,’ she’d told him. ‘The other papers’ll have egg on their faces next week, I promise.’

Now she wasn’t so sure. ‘What are they saying? The Jamisons, I mean?’

‘It’s their hammer, but it’s been missing for weeks. They don’t know how the sheet got there — Missus insists it’s not one of hers, and it’s true it doesn’t match any in the house, or the old flannelette ones they keep in the van. Not that that means anything — people always use cast-off, mismatched stuff in their holiday places.’ She takes a mouthful of wine, Noel waits.

‘Well? What else? D
o
yo
u
think one of them did it?’

‘Jesus, Noel. If you hadn’t got me trying to think laterally, like you, I’d be betting my savings on it. They’re pretty convincing in their denials, but they’ve had a few weeks to get their stories straight. We’ve offered them both the chance to dob in the other and that’s no go. That’s one thing in their favour — often they crack at that point if they’re guilty. The other big thing in their favour is that no-one can put them there, at the van. They both clocked in for work every day, in Sydney. Of course, Prosecution would argue that it’s not a very long drive down to that part of the coast. They could have kept the kid there and visited her at night with no-one knowing.’

‘What do the Stanwell Park neighbours say?’

Sharon swills her wine round in the glass and leans back, closing her eyes. She is exhausted, having been up half the night observing the questioning of the Jamisons. ‘There aren’t any real neighbours,’ she says. ‘It’s a funny little cove with caravans and shacks, more Otford than Stanwell Park, and it’s mostly weekenders. No-one saw any lights or heard anything when the
y
wer
e
there. You can’t actually take your car down that far, so nobody would have noticed headlights or anything.’

‘What are they like?’ Noel asks. ‘The foster parents?’ Sharon opens her eyes again and immediately narrows them in anger. ‘Oh, I’d prefer them to go down for it, no question,’ she says. ‘They’re pretty much the scum of the earth. They’re into fostering for the money and for the opportunity to indulge their nasty little sadistic habits. Hard to tell which takes priority.’

‘Is Justine the first kid they’ve had control of?’

‘No, there’ve been a few. I spent most of today with DOCS people, going through the files. Not a pretty story. One of the kids is grown up now — some enterprising lawyer should get hold of her and persuade her to bring a retrospective suit for abuse. There’s plenty of evidence there for that. I got the hospital records faxed over, as well.’

‘But they kept giving them kids to foster?’

‘Personnel in that department get replaced every few minutes, and no-one ever has the time or the inclination to check back through the case histories and make an assumption or two. If you’re on their books, you’re on their books. They could do with a fucking bomb under them.’

Noel hesitates, her hand holding the bottle in mid-air, about to top up their glasses.

‘What? Sharon says. ‘Had an inspiration? It’s about time for one, I think.’

Noel pours the wine and sits back, staring out at the city spread below them. ‘Hang on a minute. Something you said; it’s so obvious. Almost too obvious. Let me think it through.’ Sharon lies back in her chair again and has almost drowsed oil when Noel speaks.

‘The hospital,’ she says slowly. She can almost grasp where her thoughts are leading, and she doesn’t like it.

‘OK. The hospital,’ Sharon prompts her. ‘I can follow you so far. Which hospital?’

‘The Children’s Hospital. Both of them. The old one in Camperdown, and the new one, where is it?’

‘Westmead. Right out west. What about it?’

‘It’s the other common factor, isn’t it? Apart from there only being forensics? Where does all the evidence come from for the abuse history? Fragments of it are in police files, some of it’s in the abandoned labyrinths of DOCS. But every single one of these kids was admitted to hospital at least once.’

‘Well, it tends to happen,’ Sharon says patiently. ‘Abused children tend to need medical care.’

‘But Sharon, I know someone who’s worked at both hospitals. Someone who knew at least two of the kids I picked out.’ Now that she’s got to the end of her train of thought she’s appalled. ‘And he was questioned over Belinda Carey, too. He was a waiter in that wine bar she used to sneak off to.’ Sharon sits up, wide awake now. ‘What? Who?’

‘Listen Sharon, has Mick ever told you anything about Paddy Galen?’

‘Paddy? The ageing hippy with the sheepdog grin?’ Noel nods. ‘Well, not much. Just what you know — they were all at university together. And Paddy had a nervous breakdown or something and was in a loony bin for a while. He was supposed to be the most promising mind of his generation until they fried his brains with shock treatment. That’s all
.
Padd
y
?’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Noel says. She pulls her legs up into the chair and hugs them, resting her chin on her knees, her wine glass teetering in her dangling hand. ‘He’s a bit weird — lost, somehow. But I’ve never sensed anything violent in him.’ She is silent for a while as pieces lock into place. Paddy’s strangeness. His own history of abuse. The way he asked her all about the investigation and what the police thought.

‘That’s what everyone says,’ Sharon says
.
‘H
e
wa
s
suc
h
a
quie
t
bo
y
; or
:
H
e
wa
s
a
goo
d
neighbou
r
; or
:
H
e
wa
s
s
o
attentiv
e
t
o
hi
s
poo
r
ol
d
mu
m.
’