The Silent Inheritance (23 page)

‘Was it love at first sight?’

‘Stop now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because … because I am thirteen when I see him the first time. You know that too.’

‘Juliet was thirteen when she fell in love with Romeo.’

‘What?’

‘
Romeo and Juliet
, the famous love story,’ Marni said. ‘Samantha asked me today how old you were, and if you were pregnant when you got married?’

‘Say mind you business.’

‘Did my father have the brain tumour when you married him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did you? Marry him?’

‘When I get sick, you will run away, ah?’

‘How long was he sick for before he died?’

‘Long time.’

‘I know where I want to go for our holiday, Mum.’

‘Where?’

‘Perth, to see his grave.’

‘No.’

‘Why not.’

‘Not Perth.’

‘You said anywhere I want, and I want Perth and a photograph of his grave.’

‘We going to Queensland.’

‘I don’t want to any more, and it wouldn’t just be to see his grave. We could visit the Clarks and find some of the kids you went to school with.’

‘I can see Uncle Bill in Brisbane.’

‘Then do both. Fly to Perth, visit the grave and the Clarks, then fly right across the middle of Australia and visit your uncle.’

‘We stop in Sydney when we coming back, eh, visit … someone. Then we get on ferry to Tasmania?’

‘Can we?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? It would get rid of some of our money. How much extra would you have got as the payroll—’ Marni looked towards the door. ‘Someone just opened the gate.’

‘Lock the door.’

Marni locked it and turned on the outside light. Sarah went to the bedroom to peer out the window, thinking maybe Raymond, maybe prowler, or the Freeway Killer. She saw Bob. He was with a woman who didn’t look like his mother. Then she turned her face, and it was Maureen Crow.

*

Marni had to borrow two chairs from Mrs Vaughn. Bob helped move the table away from the faded green curtains, and four chairs around that table was a crowd, and when everyone was sitting with their mugs of coffee, Maureen Crow dropped her bomb.

‘From tomorrow, David will be working out of the Sydney office. I will be taking over the Melbourne office.’

Marni looked at Bob, and his face said he already knew, and hooray! Maureen Crow must have kicked her husband out, which she should have done years ago.

A strange meeting in a squat for the homeless, Sarah’s back to the curtains, Bob on her left, Marni on her right and Maureen Crow facing her, and just talking to Sarah as she’d talk to anyone. Some people gabbled, some thought if they spoke loudly she’d hear them. A few tried Pidgin English, when all they had to do was face her and talk.

‘I haven’t been involved in the day-to-day running of the business for some time. I will be a little rusty. I’ve talked Bob into remaining with us for at least six months. Can I rely on you, Sarah?’

‘What about her holidays?’ Marni asked.

‘The new arrangements won’t interfere with your mum’s plans, Marni.’

She sounded very businesslike and confident, not posh though, and she didn’t look much more than forty. She wasn’t fat or skinny, wasn’t wearing a suit and high heels either. She was dressed like a normal mother dressed, in trousers and sandals and a light black sweater top.

‘Our previous payroll officer received fifty-six thousand per annum. If you decide to stay with me, Sarah, you’ll receive the same, starting from this week.’

Fifty-six thousand was huge money. In February, her mother had thought she might get fifty-two. To Marni that promotion had been all about the extra money. It had never been only about the money to her mother. She’d wanted the title, and now she could have it – and not have David Crow.

And Marni left her to discuss it while she filled the jug and counted biscuits. Mrs Vaughn hadn’t left many. She could make a batch of scones in a hurry, and she turned on the frying pan to do it, which allowed her to hear what they were talking about while not obviously listening.

A life-changing amount
, the TattsLotto man had said. He hadn’t been wrong. It was like their win had changed the entire world around them. It would change where they lived soon.

And who’d feed Mrs Vaughn and clean her house. She couldn’t. She’d have to give in and move into a nursing home where not being allowed to smoke would probably kill her.

Bob came to help make coffee when he smelt hot scones. ‘You decided on Sydney, I hear,’ he said.

‘Perth,’ Marni said, washing, drying plates and knives. ‘My father is buried in Perth and I want to see his grave.’

‘How old were you when he died?’

‘Not even born. He had the tumour when Mum married him. I don’t know why anyone would – if they knew their new husband was going to die,’ she said, then shrugged. ‘I suppose if you love someone, you take what you can get of their lives.’

‘She got you,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I’m pretty glad about that.’

‘I reckon the world might be glad too one day, Marni,’ he said. ‘Have you got relatives in Perth?’

‘Only Mum’s foster family. She lived with them after her parents got killed.’

‘How did they die?’

‘Car crash, when she was my age.’

*

Bob learned more from Marni in two minutes than he’d learnt from Sarah in as many months. He looked at her when he placed her coffee down. She was nodding, but saying little. She hadn’t met his eyes yet.

He hadn’t gone back to work today, or only long enough to type out his resignation and hand it to Crow. He’d been reporting to Maureen monthly since taking the job, so he’d done the decent thing and phoned her.

She’d called back at five. He’d been with her since six.

His trip to Peru was off, or delayed, and when he handed Sarah her mug of coffee, she met his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

Maybe Marni was on the right track when she’d said that if you loved somebody, you took what you could get.

F
REEWAY KILLER’S DNA FOUND ON FIFTH VICTIM

It was headline news – as was Michael Swan.

GRANDSON OF LADY CYNTHIA SWAN UNDERGOES CRANIAL SURGERY AFTER BRUTAL PRISON ATTACK

Someone had taken offence to his pretty face. He had screws in his eye socket to beep along with the metal in his neck if there came a day when he attempted to pass through airport security.

Traces of blood not belonging to Lisa Simms had been found on her body. A minute trace was sufficient these days to give up DNA. It wouldn’t help in the search for the serial killer, but with luck, might be enough to convict the callous bastard who’d run her down, buried her, then returned to the site and attempted to mimic the Freeway Killer’s method of disposal.

The two heavy-duty garbage bags she’d been found in had been evidence enough for the media. Forensic were more particular. They’d found glass fragments in her hair, consistent with glass from a shattered windscreen. Her skull injury, severed spinal cord and broken leg marked her as a road casualty – a hit-and-run victim, but the perpetrator had taken her and run, and more likely than not, on the Friday night she’d gone missing. According to forensic she’d been buried for a week.

She’d given them more than that smear of blood. They’d found soil from the burial site, grass seeds, traces of kangaroo faeces, leaves, one identified as that of a Japanese maple, which, by its position on the body, forensic believed may have been carried from the scene of the accident.

A lot of footwork had been, and was being, done. There was a kilometre of streets between the boyfriend’s house and the house Lisa had shared. If she’d been on her way home, they may find the site. An impact capable of doing the damage done to that girl would have broken more than the vehicle’s windscreen. A headlight maybe. Something.

The removal of her body from the scene of the accident suggested to Ross that the driver may live, or be known, in the general area. His initial thought, a car full of drunken hoons, didn’t compute – unless they were local hoons, unless she’d landed in one of their driveways – and even that didn’t compute. Hoons, having got away with it on the night, wouldn’t return to the burial site.

To date the car hadn’t turned up at a body shop. They’d find it locked in a garage somewhere, or torched.

Ross had eaten a solo meal tonight. He sat alone now, with his coffee, playing scenarios in his head while keeping an eye on the box, awaiting an update on Swan’s cranial surgery, not overly interested in his health or in Lady Cynthia’s protestations of her grandson’s innocence, but in her ankles. He’d seen them on the six o’ clock news and set up his box ready to record when the channel played that interview again. They would. Give them a new piece of news and they wore it out, played it until it bored the viewer blind, until any pity initially felt for the victim had died stone dead.

Mrs Simms had been boring the viewers blind for two days. When they replayed her, Ross hit the mute button.

A week ago, that woman had stated on national television that her daughter had been out of control since her twelfth birthday. Since her body had been found, Lisa had made the swift transition to precious angel. That woman would find someone to sue for the loss of her angel.

That box, propped in the corner of most sitting rooms, had too much power. Be it politics or disaster, it manipulated the emotions of the masses, breaking down, then remoulding community attitudes.

The media could make or break a Prime Minister, create a hero then turn him into a villain. In the week following Lisa and Danni’s disappearance, they’d fed the public fear in heavy doses, had made mothers afraid to take their kids to school, had played and replayed an interview with a retired FBI profiler, played snatches of an interview with two American cops, instrumental in the capture of one of the Yankee serial killers. Inspector Johnson had been given fifteen minutes of prime time – and for the next two days, even Ross had started turning off his cop-speak.

Where they had a fresh crime scene, where they found a readily identifiable motive, a bit of footwork and surveillance did the rest. Given no crime scene, no motive, attempting to track Melbourne’s serial killer was like tracking a black ghost through a dark tunnel while blindfolded.

They’d spoken again and again to the parents of the dead girls, seeking a connection. They’d traced the owners of Kingswood Holdens and come up with nothing. They’d questioned paedophiles, set up Granny Plaid Skirt and Danni models at Forest Hill Chase, each one holding an environmentally friendly shopping bag, had made appeals on the box for Granny Plaid Skirt to come forward, and for the public’s assistance in identifying the woman. She’d had her face and outfit on the cover of the
Herald Sun
– and not one useful call had come in.

Ross had worn out his eyesight studying that underground car park security video, and kept returning not to that brief edge of Danni but to the full-length shot of Granny Plaid Skirt. He’d worn out the Woolworths supermarket checkout tape, or the section that had trapped Granny Plaid Skirt behind her shopping trolley.

She haunted him, and the more he watched her, the more she haunted him. He knew he’d seen her somewhere, seen that outfit, her short grey hair … somewhere, sometime, someplace. Like Nike cap and his cocky walk, Granny Plaid Skirt hung around the outer perimeter of his clashing neurons. She had a good head of hair for an elderly woman, too good maybe. Something was not quite right about her. She irritated his sinuses. As did her shopping trolley in the supermarket and lack of trolley in the car park – and her cardigan on a day of excessive heat. It was more than that. He’d seen her before.

She could have reminded him of one of his mother’s friends. A few had worn similar skirts and cardigans – though not on days of muggy forty-two-degree heat.

All gone now, his mum, dad and gran. Not dead, just gone away to someplace.

He had his sisters, had his nephew. Liked that kid. Would have liked one of his own if he’d turned out like that kid. Didn’t have a kid and wasn’t likely to, and in a world like this one was turning into, who’d want to inflict it on a kid? He picked up his smokes and walked out to his balcony to look down on what the owl saw when he flew Melbourne skies – if there were any owls left in Melbourne. With the lights blazing, it was a beautiful sight, and growing taller every year. There were people living in the sky down at Docklands. David Crow’s fancy unit was on the twenty-third floor. He was probably watching boats go by, not cars. ‘How high can man live before he needs to carry an oxygen pack?’ Ross asked the night. He yawned ashing his smoke into a slim tin, which had contained peppermints before making the transition to portable ashtray, when he heard the late news playing, and Lady Cynthia’s voice.

He ran for the remote and hit record, then turned on the kitchen exhaust fan and stood beneath its sucking whisper while he sucked the last from his butt. He’d set off his smoke alarm one night with his smokes, shortly after he’d moved in, and had security up here wanting to bust down his door. His lease would be up in July. He’d do something about getting himself a garden – and planting an avocado seed – and smoking where he felt like smoking.

Watching an angled Lady Cynthia made her mouth appear wider. Wondered if she’d been born with that watermelon mouth, or if it had been stretched wide by overuse – or one too many face lifts. It wasn’t her mouth that he was recording. He wanted her ankles, and before the channel cut to another batch of commercials, he got them, trapped them on his flash drive.

The thunderbolt didn’t hit him until he was playing it through, and when it hit, it exploded out in a sneeze that may have shaken the building. But he knew, knew that his two ghosts were one, that he’d wasted two weeks of Danni’s life in searching blind for the killer when he’d had the bastard on the western underground car park on day three. He was her, Granny Plaid Skirt. That bastard dressed in women clothing to get those girls.

Her hair hadn’t looked right the first time he’d seen her, because it wasn’t right, because he was wearing a wig. Her shoes were right, as was her walking stick, her walk. Her legs weren’t. They weren’t elderly and they were a male’s legs, with thick bony ankles.