Now You See Me (29 page)

‘Oh, hell, Sharon. He keeps really odd hours — has part-time jobs, comes in at dawn sometimes and sleeps all day. He’s a muscle-builder — fabulous physique, but, remember, I told you he doesn’t give off any sexual vibes?’ She laughs. ‘Why do I automatically assume that a body-builder could be a serial killer?’

‘Perfectly reasonable assumption,’ Sharon says. ‘It’s probably item three in the FBI’s profile sheets. Listen, we have to tell Tony all this. Even if it’s bullshit, it’s enough to warrant a closer look.’

‘Of course.’ Noel’s voice is bleak. ‘I like Paddy. I fee
l
sorr
y
for him.’

‘Calm down,’ Sharon says. ‘He’s not behind bars yet. There’s this tiny problem called sufficient grounds to get past first.’ She thinks. ‘Mind you, there’s enough grounds for suspicion already, I think. But there’ll have to be some real evidence to back it up.’

Noel’s reaction to this is peculiar. Her eyes widen and she nearly says something, then she loses the thought. She shakes her head. Something about evidence, she thinks. The word’s become an obsession with her. She can’t hold on to the almost-glimpse she had of something else, a frisson of wrongness. She lets her mind go blank and sips at her wine, but it doesn’t come to her.

*

Tony arrives full of energy and looking pleased with himself. ‘Where’s dinner?’ he says as he comes in the door.

‘Nice to see you, too, Tone,’ Noel says, kissing him. ‘Glad you could make it.’

He pokes his head into the living room. ‘Hi Sharon, how they hanging?’ He turns back to Noel, ‘Got any beer for a bloke?’

‘In the fridge,’ Noel says. ‘Jeez, I was just telling Sharon what a sensitive New Age guy you are under that King Kong exterior, too. Now you’ve blown it.’

‘Blew it years ago,’ Sharon says. ‘Hi, Shagga.’

He winces and gives Noel a swift look. She returns it blandly. He goes into the kitchen and opens the fridge. The women laugh.

‘Reminds me of being at home with my fucking sisters,’ he mutters, coming back into the room. ‘Doesn’t matter what Herculean feats of investigative brilliance you’ve just pulled off, two women together can make you feel as if you’ve just shat your nappy.’

‘So, tell us,’ Noel says. ‘We’ve got something to run past you, too.’

‘Well, first the bad news.’ He plonks himself down on Noel’s chair and pats his knee, inviting her to sit there. She settles on the floor instead and rests her head against his legs. He takes a pull of his beer and goes on. ‘Full autopsy arrived this afternoon; nothing helpful. No scrapings, no semen — though there’s traces of lubricant again, from a condom. But it’s practically a household brand. Vaginally raped at or near the moment of death. The blow to the head might not have killed her instantly; it could have induced a coma, and that complicates things, apparently. Wound matches the hammer found at the van, but that’s not startling news — Blind Freddie could have told you that.’ He swallows another mouthful and waits.

‘Well, go on,’ Noel says, impatient with him. ‘What’s the good news?’

‘There’s an eye-witness,’ he says, playing with her hair, deliberately drawing out his story.

‘Where’;’ Sharon asks. ‘At the caravan?’

‘Nah. Sydney — Balmain. An abandoned goods yard, up for redevelopment. The night Justine went missing. The guy’s a hooker, it’s a gay beat, apparently — a new one on the local cops. He saw a little girl wander through, it surprised him. Then he saw someone come out of the shadows and take her hand. They talked for a little while and went off in the other direction.’

‘Man or woman?’ Sharon says.

‘Could be either, he reckons. Longish hair — that is, shoulder length. But jacket and pants.’ He looks at their faces. All right. I know it’s not much to go on, but it puts her here, in the city, not at fucking Otford in a caravan.’

‘But,’ Noel says, ‘she wasn’t found anywhere near Balmain. It was Ashfield. Why do you think it’s Justine? It could have been any kid, meeting her mother or father or her sister or brother. Anything.’

‘Because he recognised the description of her clothing we published. He saw the re-enactment of her coming home from school. Mind you, it’s taken him over a week to decide to let us know. The Jamisons live in Rozelle, too. It’s not too far for her to walk. It’s quite close to her school, in fact.’

‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ Sharon says. ‘Something more definite?’

‘Yep,’ he looks smug and takes another swig of his beer. ‘We had guys out there combing the site this afternoon. We found her schoolbag; her name written nice and clear on her pencil case and her books. She must have shoved it down behind a post before she met whoever it was.’

‘That’s a bit odd,’ Noel says. ‘Why wouldn’t she take it with her, wherever she was going?’

‘Who knows? Perhaps they’d arranged to meet. Perhaps he’d told her he’d look after her from now on, and she thought she didn’t need all that shit any more. Jesus, Noel, you can’t have everything wrapped up for you.’ He empties the can and gets up. ‘Nothing in a tinnie, these days. Let me get another one, then you can tell me your bit.’

There’s a ring at the door and the food arrives. They busy themselves with bowls and forks and plastic containers. While they eat, Noel explains about Paddy and his connection to the hospital and two of the victims. Eventually they all sit back. ‘He’s got long hair, right?’ Tony says.

Noel nods. ‘He usually wears it in a pony-tail, but not always. I’ve seen him with it out. He’d look gender-ambiguous from a distance.’

‘Gender-ambiguous? That’s a new one. You mean he could be taken for either a man or a woman, right?’

Noel is irritated. ‘Fuck off. Stop pretending you’re a moron. The wind’ll change, and you’ll be stuck with it.’

Sharon wags a finger at them. ‘Now, now, children. Little birds in their nests agree.’ She spears the last satay prawn and swallows it, then rubs her stomach. ‘I’ve eaten far too much. So, Tony, what’s the next move?’

‘We’ll talk to Galen,’ he says. ‘Might as well do it now.’

‘He’ll be at work,’ Noel says. ‘At the kids’ hospital. He’s night watchman there. He gets back about seven a.m.’

‘It can wait till then,’ Tony says. ‘Got an alarm clock?’ He knows she has; she glares at him.

‘Well, I know when I’m a crowd,’ Sharon says, standing up. ‘Anything I should be doing in the morning, Tony?’

‘I’ll tell you what you could do tonight,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘Apart from the obvious. Get Mick to tell you everything he can remember about Paddy, all right? Everything. Give him one of his own cross-examinations. Squeeze him dry.’ He leers at her.

‘He doesn’t do cross-examinations,’ Sharon says. ‘He’s a solicitor. And if we were in work time I’d find your language and insinuations offensive, Lieutenant Voulas.’ She gives him a casual kick on the calf as she passes his chair. Noel sees her out and then comes back to sit on Tony’s lap.

‘OK, Shagga,’ she says, inserting her hand into his shirt and pulling at his chest hair. ‘Wanna try and live up to the image?’

‘Noel,’ he says seriously.

‘What?’

‘That nickname. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.’ She sags against him, laughing quietly. ‘As if I could. Like it’s so ambiguous.’

‘No, listen.’ He puts his arm around her and shifts in the chair until he’s comfortable. ‘Of course I’ve tried it on with a few women. Why wouldn’t I? I’m a single bloke, and you have to count on a fair percentage of knock-backs. Stop laughing — I’m telling you something, fuck you.’

‘OK. Sorry. Go on.’

‘But it’s like ... I dunno, pre-mating behaviour, I guess. Yeah, I did a bit of social anthropology at university, too. It doesn’t mean that I always have to be like that, that it’s compulsive. It’s not ... pre-emptive. You know what I’m saying?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘It sounds like a proposal, and it’s so sudden.’

‘All right, have your feminist giggle. I’m saying that the way you act when you’re looking around for someone you want to be with is different from the way you behave when you’ve found that someone, OK?’

She’s serious now, too, her hand fondling his neck. ‘You’re saying I’m it, right?’

He grins at her. ‘That got you going, didn’t it? No, don’t hit me. Yeah, I’m saying that’s how I feel. What about you?’

‘Probably,’ she says. ‘But only probably. I don’t know that journalist and cop is such a good mix. I can foresee all sorts of problems.’

‘You could always stop being a journalist.’

‘What, and be a wife and mother? You could leave the force, too.’

‘I can always get a rise out of you,’ he says. ‘You’re more predictable than you think. Anyway, we’ve introduced the subject, so what say we leave it for now to mull over, and just go and fuck our brains out?’

‘Sounds good.’ She yawns. ‘Jesus, I hate to think of you questioning Paddy in the morning.’

‘I’ll leave the baton behind,’ he says. They walk holding hands to the bathroom and jostle each other at the basin. Despite her anxiety over Paddy, Noel feels an elation she has not experienced for years.

*

Sharon is typing up her notes with two fingers when Tony comes in. She has been given a cubicle that she suspects was once a broom cupboard. It has room for a chair and a narrow desk, with a computer console. She keeps the door open wide to the wall; otherwise it hits her in the back when people enter.

‘Jesus,’ Tony says. ‘You’d be better off in the bullpen.’

‘That’s what I said. I get the feeling I’m not too welcome here.’

‘Don’t worry about it. They probably thought they were doing you a favour, giving you a space to yourself. Come down to the canteen and tell me what you’ve got. I’m not going to try and squeeze in there with you. It’d be harassment whichever way you looked at it.’

In the cafeteria they buy coffee and sit down at a table behind a concrete column. Sharon sips at her drink and screws up her face. She pushes the cup away from her and gets out her notebook. ‘Who goes first? Did you see Paddy Galen this morning?’

‘No, fuck it. I waited till about 9-30 and he didn’t come home. Noel says that’s par for the course. She reckons he sometimes goes straight from work to the gym.’ He shakes his head. ‘Now, did you get anything from Mick, or did he refuse to incriminate himself?’

He pulls a pen from his jacket pocket and flips over a page in his notebook. Sharon puts her own notebook on the table and flicks back through several closely written sheets, smiling as she remembers Mick’s annoyance at her recording his conversation, and telling him he might have to be a witness.

‘Well, it’s interesting. It certainly doesn’t put Paddy out of the picture. There were a few of them in that group who’d had abusive families. Paddy, Tess Crashaw — she’s Judith Harbin’s girlfriend. You know, the prosecutor? Tom Larson, I’ve met him, too, he’s an acka. They were all at university together, and they called themselves the AOKs — Abused Only Kids; sometimes the Survivors. They used to get pissed, or stoned, and do sort of spontaneous psychodramas together, with the others as onlookers. Paddy’s idea, apparently — he used to read all that sixties alternative psychology stuff. It only lasted a year or so — everybody else got sick of it.

‘Paddy was doing combined Honours in Sociology and Philosophy. Mick reckons that would have been enough to turn anyone crazy. He was weird then, too. Never had any money, no family. He lived in other people’s hallways or their laundries — really, I’m not exaggerating. Or he’d skulk around the University Union until all the security guards had been through and he’d bed down on a couch there, use the student showers. He got some tutoring work in third year — pretty unusual for an undergraduate, but they all thought he was brilliant. Then he had enough money to rent a room in shared accommodation. Mick says there was some love affair that went badly wrong — he doesn’t know the details. But he thinks the police might have been involved somehow.’ She looks at him. ‘We could check that, couldn’t we?’

Tony groans. ‘Great, more shitwork. You can do it. How come Mick doesn’t know what happened? Or is he just not telling?’

She frowns. ‘I don’t know. I wondered that, myself. He says by then he’d realised he was going to fail if he didn’t start working, so he buried himself in his books for the whole year, hardly saw anyone.’ She taps her pen against her teeth.

‘So, what are you leading up to? That there was some sort of group dynamic going on here, and Paddy was the one who cracked?’

‘I hadn’t thought it through that far,’ she says, impressed. ‘But it could be something like that. I suppose a conspiracy’s a bit far-fetched?’

‘Just a bit. What form did his famous nervous breakdown take, exactly?’

‘Again, Mick’s not entirely sure.’ Or he’s not being entirely truthful, she thinks. ‘Apparently he started saying strange stuff in class, pushing off-the-wall theories, slagging off at the lecturers, hallucinating. One day he collapsed somehow, or he tried to attack someone, and the university doctor packed him off to a shrink. Next thing Mick heard he was in a psychiatric hospital. He went out to visit him a couple of times, but he was practically catatonic — massive shock treatment and God knows what drugs. After that he didn’t see him for years. Then about ten years ago he got a phone call from him, arranging a picnic, a reunion for all of them who’d been friends at university. They have them every year, now. I’ve been to one of them.’