by Pamela Hart
Sydney Harbour in the early morning reminds me of what it must have been like in the old days, when everything travelled by boat because the roads were so bad. Yachts, tug boats, tall ships under sail getting ready for their first tourist jaunt of the day. Little dinghies full of men going home to put their dawn catch in the fridge before they got ready for work, rowing eights, single sea kayakers threading their way along the shoreline. And the ferries, of course, zig-zagging from wharf to wharf, collecting and decanting passengers just like in the 1800s. It’s a working harbour, not just a tourist playground, and in the post-dawn hours you can see that clearly.
At Luna Park the last ride to be tested is always the little roller coaster, which I love, so I was very annoyed when my phone went off just before I stepped into the coaster car with the mechanics—just me and the boys, riding our own coaster. So cool!
‘Yes?’ I snarled into my phone.
‘Terry says they can’t get into your house. I thought that woman from the museum was supposed to meet them?’ Jennifer Jay never introduced herself to her team. We were expected to know her voice.
‘She was,’ I said, and made ‘wait for me’ motions to the mechanics. They tapped their watches, so I got into the car still talking. The U-shaped safety bar came down over my shoulders and pressed me into the seat.
‘Well, the man’s there, but he doesn’t have a key.’
‘Get them to go round and get the spare from Mum,’ I said, as the ride winched slowly up the long, long hill at the start.
‘Okay.’
Jennifer Jay hung up and I tried to put the phone in my pocket, but I couldn’t reach past the bar. We were at the top of the hill, looking west over the busy harbour. No time to squirm—I tucked my phone into my bra and grabbed the bar, and laughed and laughed as we went over and soared down.
The last laugh I had for some time.
Five minutes after I got off the roller coaster, feeling that curious combination of dizziness and cleanliness that they always give me, my phone rang again. I checked my watch. It was still only nine-thirty, although it felt much later.
‘There’s a body in your living room,’ Jennifer Jay said.
‘No, it’s only sheep. I told you,’ I said absently, checking my shooting schedule to make sure that we’d got all the shots we’d planned. The camera crew would stay on for the rest of the day to get ‘colour’—people riding, playing games, eating—but I needed to head back to the office to confirm tomorrow’s shoot at the warehouse where they kept all the stuffed toys for the games.
‘That woman’s dead.’
‘What?’ I put the clipboard on a bench and sat myself next to it. ‘What woman?’ I had an unpleasant feeling I knew the answer.
‘That woman from the museum. They got the key from your mother and there she was. Dead.’
I’m glad to say that my first thought was not This is going to stuff up my renovations. First, I thought of Tol. He had been there, Jennifer Jay had said before. Had he found her? Poor thing. Secondly, I thought of Julieanne, and that was when I felt very cold. All right, I hadn’t liked her, but it was hard to imagine anyone more intensely alive. Julieanne dead. Impossible. She can’t be dead, part of my brain was saying. I only saw her yesterday.
I felt disconnected from my body. The noise of the park retreated and the bench under me felt a long way away.
‘Did she fall into the hole or something?’ I asked. Broken neck. Cracked spine. I hoped it had been fast, that she hadn’t lain there for hours hoping for someone to come … I started to shiver.
‘No idea. The police are there now. They’re trying to stop the boys from filming. You’d better get over there.’
That wasn’t as callous as it sounded. Really. Terry’s instincts would all be about the story. I was more concerned about—well, yes, about my house, but also about Tol and Julieanne and … I guess she had other friends? I knew very little about her, really.
I explained to the camera crew—who said, ‘Wow!’ and ‘How awful for you!’ with equal sincerity—and left just as the giant mouth at the gate began gulping in the first of the crowds.
The trip home seemed longer than usual, and too short. I didn’t want to face what was waiting for me at home.
It was worse than I thought.
The narrow street was blocked by two police cars and an ambulance and the house was taped off as a crime scene, with two young constables, one male and one female, standing outside my gate to move rubberneckers along. There weren’t any—my house is in a side street and not too many people pass by. So they seemed quite pleased when I approached and gave them a chance to be official.
‘Nothing to see, ma’am,’ one said to me.
‘I live here—I mean, I own the house,’ I said.
The two of them exchanged glances and then the young woman went inside the house and came out a moment later to beckon me to the door. She stopped me going inside but I could see into the room.
The filming lights were still on but Terry’s camera and Dave’s sound equipment were missing. I wondered where they’d gone—I couldn’t imagine them leaving the site of a story.
A story. My gut clenched hard. This wasn’t a story. It was Julieanne, dead. Actually dead. I felt disconnected again, and put out my hand onto the new plasterwork. The smooth coolness helped, but I still felt helpless as I looked in.
My little living room was even more crowded than the day before—people in white overalls in the pit, two men watching, another man videotaping, and a woman in a straight brown skirt and cream blouse who looked strangely at home, leaning against my dining alcove windowsill and talking on a mobile. Everyone had those disposable booties on.
I caught a glimpse of feet behind the crouched bodies of the two—what? Scene of crime technicians, I guessed they were. The feet were wearing the same shoes Julieanne had worn on TV the night before, and they were stained with the dark brown clay of the pit.
They seemed pathetic. Seeing them should have made me compassionate towards her, aware of the vulnerability of human life. God knows I did feel that. But the only clear thought I had was that Julieanne would never have got down into that pit in those shoes.
‘She was pushed,’ I said involuntarily.
While I had stared at Julieanne’s feet, the woman detective had finished her phone conversation and come across to me, balancing neatly on the bearers to walk across the pit.
‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.
‘She’d never have worn those shoes in the pit,’ I said. We sized each other up. She was slightly taller, so just above average, and sort of … middling. White, with mid-brown hair that wasn’t quite mousy, mid-blue eyes, a not-stunning but not-plain thin face, a slim but not remarkable body. Ordinary, except for the intelligence in those eyes.
‘Detective Sergeant Chloe Prudhomme,’ she said.
We shook hands. One of the other detectives, a young bloke with short blond hair, very pale eyebrows and an earring, turned to listen, but didn’t introduce himself.
‘Poppy McGowan,’ I said. ‘It’s my house.’
She nodded, and flicked open one of those little notebooks that TV cops always use. ‘You work at the ABC? And that’s why there’s a film crew here?’ Her tone indicated that she didn’t much like the film crew.
I nodded. ‘We were planning a documentary for the education section about archaeology, so when we found bones under the newel post, we thought it would be a good opportunity to get footage for the show.’
I looked over at the pit, where the scene of crime officers were climbing out.
One of them had blood on his white gloves. He picked a long hair off one finger and slid it into a bag another officer held ready. I felt sick. Julieanne’s hair. Julieanne’s blood. I wanted to turn away but I felt, obscurely, that I owed it to Julieanne to face what had been done to her. Yesterday she had been energetic, ambitious, alive. Now she was lying so still she no longer looked real—just a prop in a CSI show.
&nb
sp; The detective consulted her notebook again, moving slightly to block my view. It was a relief to look at her instead.
‘Did you report the bones to the police?’ She sounded like she knew the answer already and didn’t approve.
To my annoyance, I felt an urgent desire to explain myself. To win her approval. Was this just a response to being asked questions by a police officer, or was there something about this detective? I suspected it was her.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to bother anyone until we were sure they were human, so I called the museum, who are collaborating on this show with us, and they sent out a couple of experts to assess the finds. The bones were sheep.’ I tried not to sound too conciliatory, but also not too smug at having been right. I’m not sure I succeeded with either.
‘Hmm,’ she said. I couldn’t think of her as Detective Sergeant Prudhomme. It was too much of a mouthful. In my thoughts, at least, she’d have to be Detective Chloe. ‘And Ms Weaver was one of the experts?’
‘Dr Weaver,’ I corrected automatically. It made me sound like a prig, though Chloe just nodded and made another note. The experts at the museum were fanatical about keeping up the distinctions between them and the students, and had drilled us all about using their proper titles. My mobile rang and Detective Chloe frowned, so I just reached into my bag and turned it off.
‘And Dr Lang,’ I added. I arched my eyebrows. ‘Where is …?’
‘Dr Lang, the students and your film crew are in the backyard,’ Chloe said, still looking at the notebook. ‘You worked with Dr Weaver?’
‘I used to work at the museum a couple of years ago, before I went to the ABC.’
‘Did you get on with her?’
I froze. Now, suddenly, I understood all those stupid people in crime shows who lie to the police even though they know they are innocent. I think it goes back to childhood: never admit doing something wrong—you’ll get punished for it, even if it isn’t what the adult is asking about. I overcame the eight-year-old in me who wanted to say, ‘Yes, miss, I’m a good girl’, and shook my head. Surely it would be less suspicious to admit to not liking her than to have them find it out later?
‘No, actually, I didn’t like her at all, and she didn’t like me.’
Detective Chloe seemed surprised at the admission, and the corner of her mouth quirked. I suddenly thought that I might get to like her. The blond guy wasn’t so impressed. He made a satisfied noise and wrote something in his notebook. Chloe ignored him.
‘Fair enough. Thanks. We’ll need to speak to you again when we have a time of death confirmed, but could you just explain where you were last night after seven and this morning until nine?’
I gave her all the details: my parents’ address, phone and so on; Luna Park from six-thirty; contacts there; the film crew’s names and contact numbers. But my mind was racing.
‘If you’re asking about my whereabouts … does that mean it wasn’t an accident?’
She cast a quick glance behind her, where the police camera operator was leaning over the pit. I tried not to think about what he was filming. The blond cop cleared his throat in what he probably thought was a menacing manner. Or maybe he was just reminding Chloe to be careful, because she shot him an amused glance.
‘We’re treating it as a suspicious death,’ she said, her voice conscientiously formal. ‘I’m not at liberty to say anything else at this time.’
A scene of crime person, a young woman with pink hair peeking from under her overall hoodie, came up to me. ‘We’ll need your fingerprints,’ she said, holding out a scanner like security systems use. I went through the process, not just with one finger like you do for security, but with all ten.
‘Got that? Good,’ Chloe said to the techie. She turned to me. ‘We’ll need the prints of everyone who’s been in the house lately.’
I gaped at her. ‘Are you kidding? I’m renovating. This place has had tradies in and out for weeks.’
She looked annoyed. ‘You must have records.’
‘Sure. But—my family’s been here, my boyfriend …’
‘We’ll need their details,’ she said firmly.
Detective Chloe followed me as I went to get the renovations file folder from the small upstairs bedroom I would eventually use as my office, carefully not looking down as I climbed the stairs. Julieanne deserved some privacy, I felt. These other people had the right to be inspecting her, but I didn’t. I could accord her that dignity, at least.
All the bedroom had in it at the moment was a small card table and a plastic stool. I handed the folder over with some reluctance. It was my bible—all my quotes, all my notes on internal hardware, plaster roses, plumbing fixtures, colour schemes.
‘Please don’t lose that,’ I said.
Detective Chloe nodded without speaking, flicking through the pages as we went down the stairs and looking less and less happy when she saw how many quotes I’d had.
‘Names and addresses of other people who’ve been in the house?’
‘Um, the film crew and the museum people—’ I started.
‘Done,’ she said.
‘My boyfriend.’
‘Details.’
I gave her Stuart’s contact details.
‘Most of my family haven’t been here for a while,’ I said. ‘Since before the plastering was done. Except Mum and Dad.’ Something occurred to me that I really had to clear up now. ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Should I change my locks?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Julieanne had my spare key. Was it with her? Or should I get the locks changed?’
Impatience, annoyance—they passed over her face in a flash and vanished. ‘Martin?’
He consulted a list. ‘Yep, there was a key in her purse which fitted this lock.’
That was a relief.
One of the constables came up behind me and signalled to her. We both turned. A man in a council uniform was standing just inside the gate.
‘What’s this?’ Chloe asked.
The council guy waved his clipboard. ‘I have to inspect this site and deliver a historical preservation order.’
Oh, shit. Julieanne really had gone to the council. When had she had time?
Chloe noticed my expression and jumped to a conclusion. ‘Who applied for the order?’ she demanded.
The man read his notes. ‘A Dr Julieanne Weaver.’
‘Did you know about this?’ Chloe asked me.
‘Julieanne talked about it, but I didn’t think she’d actually do it. I mean, I was letting them dig. She didn’t really need an order.’ I knew I sounded defensive, but that was how I felt.
Chloe had taken the clipboard from the council man and read it over. ‘This could stop your renovations completely,’ she said slowly. ‘At least for some time …’ She let the implication hang in the air: I had a motive to get rid of Julieanne before she applied to the council. ‘What happens now?’ she asked the council man.
‘After I inspect the site—’
‘You can’t inspect this site,’ the blond cop butted in. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘Confidentially—and I do mean confidentially—Dr Weaver is dead,’ Chloe said. ‘How will that affect your order?’
The council man looked confused. ‘I don’t know, to tell you the truth. I’ll have to check with the planning department.’ He reached for the clipboard, but Chloe held it back.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Marco Fozina.’
‘I need a copy of this,’ she said. She handed over a card. ‘Get it couriered to this address care of me.’
Fozina nodded, then peered into the open doorway, clearly fascinated. ‘Is that where …?’
Blond cop moved across to block his view. ‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Fozina.’
Reluctantly, the man left, casting glances behind him.
Chloe turned and looked at me.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ I said. ‘I’m not that much of an idiot. Even if she got the order, all it would m
ean was more time. It isn’t like they can take my house away from me.’
‘Are you sure?’
I hesitated. I couldn’t remember the exact wording of the Heritage Act, but I was pretty sure that no politician would have voted for a bill that would enable the government to take away voters’ houses over a few bits of bone and pottery. New bypasses, that was different.
‘Pretty sure,’ I said. ‘And I would have checked before I killed anyone over it.’
‘If you were calm. But if you were angry with her?’
‘Hah!’ I said. ‘I’ve been angry with her lots of times, and I’ve never laid a hand on her. Why would I start now?’
Blond cop laughed bitterly, trying to show his cynicism and world-weariness. ‘People snap sometimes,’ he said.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! ‘What is your name, anyway?’ I asked him.
He looked startled. ‘Detective Constable Martin.’
‘Steven Martin,’ Chloe said, her tone slightly rebuking. I guessed it was police procedure to give full names to civilians, but I understood why this guy didn’t. He must be very sick of the jokes. I immediately thought of two I could make, but I resisted. I am capable of controlling myself.
‘What about Tol and the guys?’ I asked.
I saw her note my use of Tol’s name.
‘They’ll be allowed out as soon as the deceased has gone to the mortuary.’
‘Oh, come on,’ I protested. ‘That’s not fair. At least let Terry get some shots of the body being carried out. The other networks will be here by then, and they’ll be filming.’
She stared at me. ‘Are all you television people this callous?’
I flushed. ‘Terry used to be a news cameraman. And well, frankly, if Julieanne Weaver has died in my front room, I think the ABC should get an exclusive. It’s my job to think like that, detective sergeant.’
It was a tense moment, and Chloe opened her mouth to say no, I’m pretty sure. But then two TV news wagons from the commercial stations roared up the street before being stopped by the barriers. Their cameramen jumped out, cameras on shoulders. I looked pointedly at them and then back at Chloe.
‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘But no filming until they’re outside the front door.’