‘Hey!’
I spun around. It was a kid. Must have been out doing what I used to do. Hanging around the old wharves. He was frozen. Hard to tell if he was young. He was about thirty metres away. He wasn’t moving. I rolled Miss Homeless into the river below. The chains were so heavy, she sank beneath the surface without a sound. I turned back to look at the kid and he was still there, still frozen.
I ran.
The other way, of course. I knew the old wharf area well; up ahead was a metal fence to keep people like me out but someone, years ago, had bent part of it back, and I managed to squeeze through it and ran into the park next door. Where I hid, behind a massive strangler fig tree, its roots spread wide and deep into the ground. Just before dawn, convinced the cops had not been called, I emerged and went home.
If the kid thought he saw a killer dispose of a body, he didn’t tell the police, or if he did, they didn’t pay much attention because after about two months, I started to breathe easy, confident I’d got away with it.
But.
I said to Him: I think that was a warning. I think We need to retire. That was too close. We nearly got caught and when it comes to killing people, she was as perfect as you could get. Homeless, abandoned, hidden.
And He said:
Yes.
And then, before We left this alone, this part of Our lives, I reminded Him that, in the future, in the far and distant future, Jen White would, one day, be paroled. And then We might strike again. Back, then, to a new spate of head folds.
And He said:
Yes.
And Jen?
She is now about to get parole, nineteen years later.
PART IV
KARIN
God told Moses what to do
To lead the Hebrew children through
Pharaoh’s army got drownded
Oh Mary don’t you weep
Moses stood on the red sea shore
Smotin’ the water with a two by four
Pharaoh’s army got drownded
Oh Mary don’t you weep
Sunburnt Country
‘NEXT UP IS JENNIFER WHITE,’ I SAID.
‘You will have read the file and no doubt remember the case with all its tabloid glory, quite some years ago. We’ll bring her in, via the video link, in a minute. She’s been in Wacol for fifteen years now, for the three murders and this, as you will have also read, is her first parole hearing.’
—
THE PAROLE BOARD meets once a month to make its collective determination as to whether a prisoner is eligible to be released. Each prisoner’s file is emailed to us a week before we gather, in a rather dull boardroom on the fourth floor of the William Street government administrative office block, a depressingly ugly brown stucco building with 1970s fashionable concrete blocks protruding beneath each of its narrow grimy windows – Queensland’s testament to Stalinist Brutalism, some twenty years after it was in vogue in only the USSR.
The carpet hasn’t changed since the 1970s, and even though smoking in offices has been banned for decades, we can still sniff the generations of ciggie-puffing bureaucrats. Each prisoner’s file is massive, with case details ranging from the crime-breakdown, the sentencing details, records of all psych reports, the criminal’s history within the correctional facility, information regarding support systems for when and if they are released back into the community and, sometimes, victim impact statements on why they should not be released back into the community.
And signs of atonement.
Contrary to Hollywood expectations, good behaviour is not taken into account. Only its absence. ‘A prisoner is expected to behave well,’ I instruct all members on their first outing in the boardroom.
As president I take the top chair, sitting at the end of a long wooden table. Around me are my twenty-two fellow board members. Morning sun blasts through the small narrow windows, creating shafts of pale yellow across the room.
Outside it’s thirty-two degrees and it hasn’t rained for eight months. Cattle are being shot dead, farmers are committing suicide, drought relief is being debated in parliament across the road and the sounds of a crowd protesting against forest clearing can be heard as they march along the street below.
I’m young to be in this position – late thirties – but I was also one of the youngest QCs in the state. My husband, Warren, is also a QC. We have two teenage daughters who attend Clyde, an all-girls’ school and a house not far from where Jen White and her family lived back in 1999.
Brisbane is a small town, and Warren and I have a high profile. We often attend art-gallery openings and book launches; we try to maintain an active involvement within the girls’ school. When I was offered the job of parole board president by the Attorney-General, a dumpy cowboy called Ray, everyone told me they weren’t surprised. But I was.
I’m proud of my career, and I won’t deny I have toyed with the hope of an appointment to the bench. Maybe even the High Court. We are tremendously busy but try not to work on weekends; that’s scheduled as family time with the girls, usually starting with pancakes on Saturday morning. Yum cha on Sundays and a family movie on Sunday night, lights out, all huddled on the couch eating nachos and popcorn. (I make the nachos, Warren does the popcorn; he gets an easy break because it’s just a microwave thing.)
Our girls are our greatest joy. Beth is twelve and Di is thirteen. They both have an issue with buck teeth and wear braces. Beth loves Lorde and Lady Gaga. Di swoons to Frank Ocean. Whenever they go out, they resolutely keep their mouths closed and do not smile or speak because they are totally freaked by the tooth thing.
—
‘I NOTE THAT her parents have never visited but her sister has kept up regular contact. What’s the deal with an outside support system?’ asked Nellie, a mid-forties professor in science and technology at Griffith University.
‘There’s a report from her social worker; where is it?’ We all shuffled through the thick files on Jennifer White.
‘Here. Westaway House, in Southport, has agreed to put her up while she finds a job and her own place.’
‘Did anyone get a phone call from Ray last night?’ asked Clive, a mid-twenties nurse who was named Young Australian of the Year for his work in youth suicide awareness. Clive was the youngest by far and while he exhibited self-assurance, he was a little needy and easily intimidated.
‘Ray who?’ asked Nellie.
‘Ray the Attorney-General. Ray, our boss.’
‘I did, yes,’ I said carefully. ‘He’s not exactly our boss, Clive.’
‘He sure sounded like it last night.’
‘Did anyone else get a call from the Attorney-General last night?’ I asked the rest of the table.
Fifteen heads nodded. A majority of the vote. So bloody inappropriate, though I couldn’t say that out loud. ‘Right, well then,’ I said instead. ‘We all know that the Attorney-General has expressed concern regarding Jen White’s parole because of community concerns.’
‘First,’ said Nellie, ‘Ray is a cowboy who wears a Stetson to parliament when he’s not mustering cattle on his property; he only got the job of Attorney-General because the Premier needed to curry favour with the redneck vote. Second, Ray cannot tell us what to do or what not to do. Someone should give him a lecture on the separation of powers. And finally, this young lady who has been incarcerated on the flimsiest evidence –’
‘There was a knife,’ interjected Clive.
‘With the first victim’s DNA,’ added Susan, who was in her late fifties and a private-sector advisor to the government on building a greater rapport with China for the benefit of local Queensland businesses.
‘Yes, and we all know there remain unanswered questions about that trial, especially in relation to the knife. And do we think one of the investigating homicide officers at the time was pushed out of the Service by his ex-partner when she became Commissioner?’ asked Nellie.
Since Jen had been incarcerated, there had been a growing online movement to
protest her conviction, citing rampant sexism and dodgy evidence. She hadn’t exactly reached the profile of Lindy Chamberlain, who was found innocent and freed after giving birth while in prison, but Jen’s case was growing in notoriety.
‘It’s not our job to rehash innocence or guilt but to look at the situation of the prisoner. Jen has a social worker on the outside, tied up to a secure and registered place of accommodation within the ambit of the Salvation Army and she has a family member who has agreed to vouch for her, financially and emotionally,’ I said.
‘Ray said the public would frigging freak out if she was released back into the community,’ said Clive.
‘And have you read the submissions from the families of the victims? The widows of the three men, and their children? Grim. They’ll come after us,’ added Susan.
‘Granted, it is an emotional case,’ I agreed, ‘but we can only work to the criteria we are given.’
‘Which takes us to the issue of rehabilitation,’ said Nellie.
Yes, well indeed, I thought as I prepared to set up the video link with The Slayer. Not a lot in the case file on atonement, let alone an acknowledgment of the crimes, despite multiple sessions with prison psychologists. But Jen does seem to have ticked all the other boxes.
Except the one she can’t tick. Community outrage, herded by a Stetson-wearing cattle farmer who probably didn’t even know how a parole board operated until one of his advisors warned him of this upcoming decision.
—
‘HI, HELLO, JENNIFER? Are you there? It’s Karin Jones here, the president of the parole board.’
‘Hello Ms Jones. Hello, members of the parole board. It’s Jen here; you can call me Jen or Jennifer.’ As the image of a thirty-three-year-old woman with short brown hair and the most striking eyes crackled into focus.
My Nights with Enrico
IN THAT OTHER REALITY, THE ONE FROM WHICH I ABSCONDED when I fell down into The Doom, The Fall, when the grip of homicide encircled me and carried me to the bottom of the ocean, head first, plunging me into the sand with a Get this bitch –
In that other reality I studied literature at the University of Queensland and wrote my Masters on Jane Austen (I had realised that Kafka was a teenage aberration of gloom and Goth, like Sartre and Joy Division) and then did my PhD on the works of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, in the context of magical realism and how poetry can infuse the definition of the novel, with allusions to Gabriel García Márquez and Leonard Cohen and his impossible-to-read but wonderful-to-read Beautiful Losers.
Like the characters from Bolaño’s masterpiece 2666, the only book to make me cry, I was a literary academic who travelled the world to give lectures and occasionally sleep with men (or women) after a night of raucous argument and singing and dancing in Barcelona and drinking Rioja or absinthe like Baudelaire and Rimbaud and Modigliani, Proust, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron and Erik Satie whose piano music I listen to in my cell, much to the bemused chagrin of my fellow inmates. The Girls. And we danced and we danced and told stories and woke up under the dawn of a Paris sky and dreamed about la joie de vivre merveilleuse.
That is the other life. The other reality. The one to which I cling as I lie in my cell trying not to listen to Anne wail in the cell next to mine.
Anne’s meth-addled boyfriend, who goes by the name of Dragnet and is a biker, blew off the head of their eight-year-old daughter when he mistook her for a fifteen-foot cop like Godzilla, or at least that’s what he told his biker mates who just came in to tell her the bad news that little Blissy is dead and now in heaven.
I close my eyes.
In my other life I never married but I had many lovers and we would dance and laugh, and Enrico, he was the Brazilian on the beach in Senegal, he said to me: Don’t you want children? And I said to him: Yes, maybe, I don’t know but it’s impossible because I am on this remote island called Wacol, Enrico, but my sister has kids and she shows me the photos of them as they slowly grow up.
—
THERE WERE A lot of I nevers.
Never went to the Year 12 dance, never graduated, never studied at uni, never went out on a date, never had sex with a boy, never cooked spaghetti carbonara like my mum used to, never drank a glass of wine (only a hit of mum’s vodka one night whereupon I promptly threw up), never smoked a cigarette, never drove a car, never went overseas, never ate risotto, never even kissed a boy, never went shopping with my own credit card, never held my sister’s babies (who are no longer babies), never got to forgive dad for asking if I was a killer, never got to turn sausages on a barbecue, never got to wake up and think: Fuck it, I’m going to sleep in and not get up, never got to go down to the Valley and watch the ravers and dance all night long to eccies. And, funny:
Since the conviction I haven’t felt anxious until now. Now, before I talk to the parole board.
Because, you know, it’s the routine. They wake you up, you do this by a certain time and go to bed at a certain time until, after a few years, you get used to not making a decision because there are none to make. Oh, okay, there’s chicken or beef and should I embrace or ignore Rosie, who wants to be my lover and maybe I will, because there is this thing called loneliness and there is this other thing called the press of flesh where I hunker up to her in bed and we just hold each other tight; no clothes, no nothing, just us and maybe we look into each other’s eyes and maybe she touches me and maybe I touch her and maybe she exhales a soft whisper as she orgasms and maybe I do too, that whisper into me as I inhale it and take in her breath and as I orgasm, she inhales my breath, like we capture one another in a moment of unexpected intimacy.
We don’t talk about why we are inside.
Everyone knows who I am but no-one has ever brought up the crimes.
And I don’t to them.
And I love Rosie but I would never tell her that but I think she might feel it, as she sucks in my breath, as I exhale into her open mouth.
Rosie is hoping to also get parole.
She says: Come and live with me, after I get out, because you know what?
What?
I have a farm that has trees, tropical fruit trees, like mango and rambutan and papaya, mangosteens and star fruit and it’s up in the north, deep in the north, past Cairns – lover, my lover, my sister, my lover as I stroke my fingers through your hair and peck your dimples and stroke you in that place where I can, feel your hot breath flow into my mouth, lover, I had this little farm before I did what I did. I’ve never told you what I did, have I? Why I’m in here. Do you want me to tell you now as I flutter a kiss upon your eyebrows, do you want to know?
No.
Ha-ha – I’ll tell you anyway. I cut him into six pieces and cooked them up in a pot. Pot roast with spuds and carrots and quite a bit of garlic because he had sweat issues; slow cook, eight hours, and then I invited his mum and dad over for Sunday lunch, to feast on the beast they had spawned. Touch me … as she exhaled into my open mouth as I –
Do you still love me, lover? Did I go too far?
As she caressed me.
No, you didn’t go too far. You never will.
—
‘HELLO. IT’S GREAT to be with you, and I hope I’m not too nervous as you ask me questions.’
‘Okay. Look, there’s no formal structure to this, so let’s just start, shall we?’ said Karin.
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Jen, tell us about the murders and how, sixteen years later, you feel about them, about what you did.’
‘I didn’t do them.’
‘Jen, it’s very important for us to understand how you have processed the murders and how you feel about them, in terms of moving forward,’ said Karin as the others around the table nodded in agreement.
‘I didn’t do them.’
Karin drew breath and stared hard. ‘Jen, you were found guilty of three murders, and our job, or part of our job, is to assess your consideration of those crimes. For us to release you back into the community we all need a very clear u
nderstanding of where you are, sixteen years later, on the crimes.’
‘Yes. I understand. I am not stupid. I’m innocent. I did not commit any of those crimes.’
Following a silence of about ten seconds, during which the parole board members stared at the screen then at the table then at Karin, she said:
‘Thanks for talking with us today, Jen.’
And a zap and her image was gone.
—
I COULDN’T HELP it. I was angry. I have a problem with anger. Still, after all these years being in jail. Next time, Jen, next time, be nice.
Heat
‘HELLO JEN. IT’S KARIN JONES HERE AGAIN AND I HAVE THE parole board with me. It’s been over a year since we last talked with you, and your lawyer has made another request for us to consider your parole. You have now been in prison for seventeen years. Can you see us?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. Well, we can see you. We have all the documentation – Westaway House will still put you up, until you’re able to pay for your own accommodation, and your social worker has again made a recommendation on your behalf and your sister has confirmed, as she did last time, that she will vouch for you financially and emotionally. The prison has come back to us and confirmed that you’ve not been in any trouble there. One thing to be clear on, for all of us, is: parole is not a right. The judge in your trial sentenced you to Life but, you know, Life is not life and, in your case, after nearly seventeen years, it is appropriate that we, once again, consider your situation in relation to the other stakeholders and make a determination as to whether it is timely that you be released back into the community. Sorry, that was a bit of spiel; do you understand what I just said?’
—
BY NOW, AT the age of thirty-five, Jen is beginning to show her age – just a trace – with a couple of grey slivers in her hair. Aside from that, she remains trim and vibrant with those intense eyes staring unrelentingly and that angry righteousness that will destroy her chances of getting anywhere.
Blood River Page 20