Digging Up Dirt

by Pamela Hart

  She sent Detective Constable Martin out to the yard and he came back leading the film crew. I saw that, although Terry was holding the camera across his chest rather than on his shoulder, the lens was pointed towards the pit, and the red record light was on. If mister blond cop was too stupid to see that, it wasn’t my job to tell him.

  Chloe stood back and let them out. She took a good look at the camera as Terry went past, but he’d turned it off by then and there was nothing suspicious to see. He winked at me and swung the camera up to his shoulder as soon as he was clear of the doorway, motioning for Dave to get the sound going. I realised this was my cue. Damn. I’d never wanted to be a news reporter, but I could imagine what the NewsCaff director would say if he found out I’d had a chance to do a doorstop interview and bailed out.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Prudhomme,’ I said, ‘can you tell us about your investigation?’

  She wasn’t happy, but she bit back what she wanted to say and trotted out the officialese. ‘The body of a woman has been found at this address and we are treating it as a suspicious death.’

  I wanted to call it quits there, but the other camera operators were crowding the gate, trying to get the story, and Terry nudged me firmly in the back to keep going.

  ‘Is it true that the body is that of Dr Julieanne Weaver, from the Museum of New South Wales?’

  ‘We won’t be releasing the identity of the deceased until family have been notified, and we would appreciate the media cooperating with us on that.’

  One of the things I did know about Julieanne was that she had no family—only child, dead parents who’d migrated from England, so no aunts or uncles or cousins. I didn’t have to worry about a relative finding out about Julieanne’s death on the news. I blanked on what to say next. What other questions would a news reporter ask? Then I had a brainwave.

  ‘Dr Weaver was seeking preselection for the seat of North Hughes for the Australian Family Party. Could there be a political aspect to her death?’

  But I’d pushed too far.

  ‘As I said, we are investigating this death as suspicious but that’s all the information I have at this point.’

  She turned and went back in, closing the front door firmly behind her. I resisted the impulse to use my key to follow her in for more questions. Apart from anything else, she’d just take the key away.

  I knocked on the door instead, and DC Martin whipped it open with a nasty look on his face.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you, she doesn’t have any family in Australia. Only a couple of cousins in London.’

  He scowled and shut the door in my face.

  Terry stopped recording and took the camera off his shoulder. ‘I don’t have an outside broadcast van here, so I’ve got to get this back to NewsCaff now.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good job,’ he added, and slapped me on the back.

  As he and Dave pushed out the gate, I realised that they’d given me the perfect cover. If I followed them, the waiting news ghouls wouldn’t know it was my house—they’d just think I was a strangely dressed reporter. I put my head down and crowded up behind Dave as he made his way through the rapidly growing crowd. Annandale residents may ignore a couple of cop cars, but they emerge pretty fast when the news crews show up.

  Terry was chortling when I caught up with him.

  ‘We are going to scoop the lot with this one! We’ve got footage of the house, of the pit, of her in the pit, of her talking to Poppy in the pit—it’s bloody gold, mate! Bloody Walkley Award stuff.’

  Now I wasn’t defending Terry to Chloe, I felt all her distaste for turning Julieanne’s death into a story. But it was his job, and mine, and I’ve always felt that anyone who watches the news regularly has to accept the process that gets those stories on air. It was just that right now I didn’t want to be a part of it.

  Terry and Dave packed the stuff in the car and looked around for Mirha, only then realising that she wasn’t with them.

  ‘I’m not going back in there,’ I said, but the door opened again and Mirha and Tol came out, both looking rather shocked at the pack of reporters straining forward over the fence. Tol simply ignored them and made for the gate, his face closed down, shouldering his way through the reporters and cameramen.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Mirha, implying she should shelter behind him. Mirha waited just a moment too long, and the mob closed behind Tol with her still on the doormat. Mirha looked around and her face lit with relief when she saw us.

  ‘Go get her, Dave,’ Terry said.

  Dave humphed a bit, but he went back and pulled some reporters away from the gate. The two constables looked a bit harassed and much too young to cope with all this hassle.

  ‘Get away, you lot, she’s just our PA,’ Dave shouted, and they fell back, which gave Tol a chance to walk quickly off towards the corner. I hesitated for a moment—should I go back to work or talk to Tol? Then I thought of my parents seeing this on the news and decided I’d better go and see them first. Which solved my other problem.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mum and Dad,’ I said to Terry, and took off down the street while the reporters were regrouping around the gate.

  Tol had turned the corner, which suited me because I didn’t want Terry to get any idea about me interviewing him.

  ‘Tol!’ I called, rather breathlessly, as I ran up behind him.

  He turned, scowling, but his face cleared when he saw it was me, and he waited. I didn’t know what to do. My impulse was to give him a hug, but I hardly knew the man. I compromised with a hand on his arm.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  His mouth twisted in a not-smile, but his eyes were bleak.

  ‘Poor Poppy. You’re never going to get that rewiring done.’

  I hit him on the arm. ‘Trust you to think of that. Come on, come and have a cup of tea at our place.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘It’s just around the corner,’ I offered. I didn’t think he would be tempted by fruitcake, but—‘My dad makes great coffee.’

  ‘God, I could use a coffee,’ he muttered, and fell into step beside me.

  We didn’t talk. I suspected he’d been talking to the police too long and was glad of the silence.

  When we let ourselves into the entrance hall, Mum was on the phone to one of my many aunties. She sounded both worried and annoyed.

  ‘No, I don’t know any more than you do, Maree, all I know is what I saw on the TV. A body, they said, but it can’t be Poppy because she wasn’t at the house today. She’s not answering her mobile—’

  Oops. My phone was still off.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I called, ‘but I’m fine.’

  Mum can move fast for an old girl. She whipped around, dropped the phone, took two steps towards me, grabbed my shoulders and shook me while inspecting me from top to toe, then went back to the phone. ‘She’s just come in, she’s fine, I’ll call you back. Will you tell the others? Thanks.’ Then she turned to face me. ‘Well?’

  I became aware that Tol was laughing silently beside me, and I cast an irritated glance towards him, then smiled at Mum.

  ‘Sorry, Mum. I had to turn off my phone. But I came back as soon as the police let me go.’

  Immediately my foolishness was forgotten. Mum shepherded us through to the kitchen and shouted for my father.

  ‘Bill! Bill! She’s here! And she’s brought someone!’ She put the kettle on, moving on automatic, while I gestured to Tol to sit down.

  ‘This is Dr Bartholomew Lang, Mum, from the museum. He was Julieanne’s colleague.’

  ‘Call me Tol.’ He smiled at Mum as her face filled with concern.

  ‘Julieanne? It was Julieanne who died?’

  We nodded in unison, like marionettes. Mum made the sign of the cross, her face grave. My mum and dad had met Julieanne while I was working at the museum. She’d been particularly nice to them, sweetness personified, and Mum had decided that all my ranting about her was just ‘Poppy being difficult, as usual’.<
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  ‘Was it an accident?’ Dad asked, coming in from the garage, wiping his hands free of something. Dad always had a project going—usually some kind of woodwork for one of the family, although sometimes it was mechanical repairs. Restoring furniture was his favourite, and most of our houses were graced by beautiful cedar chests of drawers or bookcases which he’d picked up cheap at auction and brought back to life.

  Tol got to his feet as Dad walked in—an automatic gesture of good manners that wasn’t lost on my parents. He and Dad sized each other up as they shook hands.

  ‘Tol Lang.’

  ‘Bill McGowan.’

  ‘Poppy tells me you make great coffee.’

  Dad’s face lit up. He’d got one of those benchtop cappuccino machines for Christmas but most of us preferred tea, so he was always glad to have someone to show off for.

  ‘Won’t take a minute. Cappuccino?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Tol said with heartfelt emphasis.

  ‘Was it an accident?’ Mum asked, bringing us back to business.

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said. I helped as she got the mugs down and brought out the inevitable fruitcake, then sat down. ‘The police say they’re treating it as a suspicious death, but they’re asking people where they were last night and this morning, so I think they think it’s very suspicious. They want to fingerprint everyone who’s been in the house, including you two.’

  Mum paused, kettle in one hand, teapot in the other. ‘Murder?’

  It’s a strange word. We use it all the time: ‘I’m going to murder that kid if he leaves his bike in the driveway again’, ‘I could murder a beer’, ‘The traffic was murder tonight’. But when it’s real, when it’s someone you know, that word echoes around a room and around your head. Perhaps it was because I was sitting down quietly and thinking for the first moment since I’d arrived at my house, but suddenly I felt shaky.

  ‘She was wearing the clothes she had on last night,’ Tol said softly. ‘I don’t understand why she would have gone to the dig dressed like that.’

  ‘To meet someone?’ I wondered.

  ‘She was supposed to meet me at my place,’ Tol said. ‘I waited until midnight before I went to bed.’

  The coffee machine starting hissing and spitting, cutting off conversation, and Dad looked at Tol shrewdly. He reached into the bottom cupboard and brought out his treasured single malt scotch and poured one. He handed it over silently, and Tol took it just as silently with a nod of thanks and sipped it. I saw his shoulders relax a little as its warmth hit him.

  Mum poured tea for the two of us, and I thought hard.

  ‘So you don’t have an alibi?’ I asked delicately.

  He shook his head. ‘What about you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I was here,’ I said. ‘But I suppose I could have slipped out after everyone was asleep.’

  In fact, this would have been impossible, as my siblings had discovered long ago (one of the advantages of being the youngest is that your older sibs get to make all the mistakes). Mum sleeps poorly and has the ears of a cat. No child of hers had ever succeeded in making it out of the house after hours. But I couldn’t expect the police to believe that.

  Dad handed Tol his coffee and made one for himself.

  ‘But why would anyone have wanted to kill that lovely woman?’ Mum asked. ‘Perhaps it was political! Terrorists, maybe.’

  My imagination baulked at terrorists targeting someone who hadn’t even been preselected. Knowing Julieanne, it was far more likely to have been personal.

  ‘She probably smacked someone across the face and they hit back,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Poppy! As if she would. You’ve never been fair to that woman and now she’s dead—’

  ‘She threatened to hit me right across the face the day before yesterday,’ I protested. I turned to Tol for support. ‘Didn’t she?’

  ‘She did,’ he said.

  My mother’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you say to her to make her do that?’ she demanded. You can’t win. Really.

  ‘I told her I didn’t want her digging a twelve-foot hole in my living room,’ I said.

  There was a silence. But my mother knew me too well. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I may have said it more—metaphorically.’

  That was enough. Mum was off. ‘You can’t go around swearing at people—’

  ‘Um, Mrs McGowan,’ Tol interrupted. ‘It really wasn’t Poppy’s fault. Julieanne was being quite unreasonable.’

  Hardly anyone had ever stood up for me. I felt a surge of warmth and gratitude, especially considering it was his dead girlfriend he was talking about.

  ‘Oh.’ Mum wasn’t satisfied, but of course she would believe a total stranger before she would believe me. That’s what being a mother does to you.

  ‘So this girl had a bit of a temper?’ Dad asked, putting his finger on the nub, as usual.

  Tol nodded, reluctantly. ‘I’m afraid so.’ He took a big swig of coffee.

  ‘I’ll say a novena for her soul,’ my mother said. She’s really very kind. My eyes filled with tears and I grabbed her hand.

  ‘Say one for us as well,’ I said. ‘We’re going to be prime suspects.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tol didn’t want to go to back for his car in case he was ambushed by the media, and neither did I, so I borrowed Mum’s and drove him to the museum. The networks were there, too, but I went around to the staff entrance.

  The museum is a big old sandstone building which has been dragged into the twenty-first century by adding a glass and steel exhibition hall. It looks out over the botanic gardens and down to the Opera House, which was shining white in the sun as we drove around the back to the service road and pulled into the loading dock.

  ‘I’ll fill Annie in,’ Tol said, looking tired.

  ‘No, I’ll do that,’ I said, and immediately felt stupid. He was a grown man, he didn’t need me to nursemaid him.

  He didn’t seem to mind. ‘Thanks, but there’s no point wasting your time. I’ll just have to tell the story a dozen times and work out what we’re going to do about the dig.’

  ‘The dig?’ I was surprised. I’d assumed that the dig was over, even with the historical preservation order. Without Julieanne to push it through, the council probably wouldn’t have been that interested in a couple of sheep bones. It wasn’t as though I was trying to tear down a lovely old house—just the opposite, in fact. And I’d been fairly confident I could talk my way out of the order.

  ‘I know Julieanne was the most interested, but if your site is connected with pastoralism in the early colony, we really should investigate. The police got me to give them the photos of the site from before—before Julieanne died. So they didn’t have to take the bones as evidence, I suppose. That means the dig can still go on.’

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ I said.

  He smiled sympathetically at me. ‘We’ll get the carbon-14 results back soon, and then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.’

  I was reluctant to end the conversation. I knew that when he stepped out of my car, I’d be cold and vulnerable. With him there, I felt safe. But that was ridiculous. For the first time, I seriously considered the idea that Tol might have killed Julieanne. Surely that wasn’t possible. Was it? How could I be sure? I was sure, deep in my gut, that it was impossible for him to do it deliberately—but it could have been an accident. In which case, I argued to myself, I was perfectly safe with him.

  I’d been silent too long, and I saw Tol brace himself.

  ‘Poppy?’ he said hesitantly, his voice going up as though he were unsure of himself. ‘Are you upset about the dig?’

  ‘I’m not happy,’ I admitted, ‘but I think we have more to worry about than the dig.’

  ‘I saw her, but I still find it hard to believe she’s dead. She just looked—unconscious.’ Tol stared blindly out the windscreen. I gently touched his arm and he covered my hand with his own. His was cold, but that wasn’t why I shivered.

  He turne
d to me and stared into my eyes. ‘I—’

  And then my bloody phone rang.

  ‘I’ll let you get that,’ Tol said briskly, and jumped out of the car as though the devil himself were after him.

  I snarled ‘Yes?’ into the phone as I watched him go across to the entrance. He paused in the doorway, then turned and waved at me before he disappeared inside.

  ‘Yes?’ I said again, more politely, feeling ridiculously happy that Tol had waved.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Stuart’s voice was high and disapproving. Bugger, I should have called him. ‘I just heard some story on the news about a woman’s body being found at an archaeological dig in Annandale.’

  ‘Julieanne,’ I said automatically.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ he said. ‘I thought it might have been you!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re right, but the police have been questioning me.’ It wasn’t a lie. Not really.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, placated slightly. ‘What about?’

  Sometimes I wonder about Stuart. I know he’s intelligent. He got the university medal for accountancy. He’s considered brilliant in his field. But sometimes he seems to have no grasp of reality.

  ‘Uh—because they found a dead body in my house?’

  ‘But surely it was an accident?’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  I really didn’t want to have this conversation. ‘Stuart, look, I have to get back to work. I’ll see you tonight and fill you in then.’

  I hung up. I didn’t want to sit in the car and stew—Tol would have had enough time to see Annie by now. I needed to decompress, and there was no one better than Annie to do it with.

  But before I got to the back door of the museum, she came out at a clip, clearly looking for me. Bless her.

  How to describe Annie? She’s my age (six days younger, actually), incredibly competent, chic in a way I’ll never be, organised, whip-smart, and does not suffer fools. At all, let alone gladly.

  We met on the first day of uni and have been friends ever since. I rely on Annie for a regular dose of common sense and endless kindness. She’s the most generous person I know. She also manages to be a great mother to three kids and has a very lovely husband. There are times I feel quite incompetent in comparison—but she just laughs at that.