Digging Up Dirt

by Pamela Hart

  I nodded thanks, but knocked on the door anyway.

  A middle-aged Anglo woman peered out suspiciously and glared around, but seeing that I wasn’t followed by a camera crew, she reluctantly opened the door a crack.

  ‘Yes?’ she rapped out.

  ‘My name is Poppy McGowan,’ I said quietly. I bent closer and cast a look back at the reporters and camera crews, implying the need for secrecy, and lowered my voice almost to a whisper. ‘It was my house that Julieanne Weaver was found in.’

  I would have kept my voice down even without the need to impress her. The last thing I wanted was for the other crews to figure out who I was and ambush me instead.

  The woman’s eyes lit with interest—everyone loves a murder—and opened the door. She took my arm and pulled me inside, then slammed the door shut and locked it firmly.

  ‘Vultures!’ she said.

  The room seemed very crowded. Half the space had been partitioned off into a private office, and the rest was full of desks and people—a dozen or so, some working the phones, some on computers, and half just there because they could be. I saw Carter’s daughter, looking more believable in jeans and a hoodie, but neither Carter nor his wife were visible.

  ‘I hoped to talk to Mr Carter?’ I asked.

  The door guardian nodded. ‘Just a minute.’ She went back to the office and disappeared inside, leaving me with all those pairs of eyes staring at me.

  What the hell. In for a penny …

  ‘Hi,’ I said. I repeated what I’d told the door guardian, and there was a rustle of interest, but no one said anything, although several people nodded. One guy in the corner immediately got on the phone. I tried to listen, but all I heard was him asking for ‘Mr Stephenson’. Interesting that Samuel Stephenson kept a spy in Matthew Carter’s office.

  I smiled, casually walked over to the desk where the daughter was standing and leant against it, as though preparing myself for a long wait.

  ‘You knew Julieanne?’ the daughter asked. Her name was Patience, I remembered from the file I’d gone over again on the drive out.

  I gave that half-smile/half-grimace which is good manners when claiming acquaintance with the recently dead, and nodded. ‘I used to work with her,’ I said.

  ‘She was seeking preselection,’ Patience noted, her voice flat, eyes on the phone in her hand. Her earbuds were in, but I couldn’t hear any music and there was no video playing. I was used to my nieces, whose faces showed every fleeting emotion, but Patience’s face gave nothing away. I couldn’t tell if she had liked Julieanne, but I suspected not. This girl didn’t seem like a fool to me.

  ‘So I heard,’ I said, putting just a little disapproval in my tone.

  Her eyes flicked up to mine and her mouth curled very slightly at the corners, as though she were satisfied that I shared her own opinion of Julieanne.

  The door guardian came out of the office and beckoned me over. ‘Mr Carter will see you now.’

  It reminded me of taking one of my aunties to an appointment at a specialist’s office. They always seem to have those older receptionists whose main job is making sure you appreciate the Great One’s condescension in agreeing to see you at all.

  Matthew Carter got up as I came in and walked around his desk to shake my hand. Although he gave me the twohanded politician’s shake, his face was befittingly sombre. As phony as a designer knockoff. His wife was sitting in a guest chair facing the desk, and she swivelled around to look at me, her face calm and politely interested.

  ‘Miss McGowan,’ Carter said. ‘How can we help you?’

  I returned the pressure of his hand and finally he let me go, stepping back around the desk but not sitting down, as though ready to usher me out at any moment. I sat in the remaining guest chair and saw Eliza’s eyes flicker, but made sure my face showed nothing but mild concern. Carter sat down slowly.

  ‘You know it was my house that Julieanne was found in?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, terrible,’ Carter said automatically.

  ‘Um, I’m not a member of the party, but my family are very supportive of your ideals,’ I said hesitantly. Which was true. My parents think the Australian Family Party makes a lot of sense. Thank God the sitting independent member in our electorate is a Catholic, or they might even be voting for this lot. ‘I guess I just wanted to talk to you because we’ve both sort of been dragged into this … It would be a shame if Julieanne’s death hurt anyone else in the party.’

  Carter warmed slightly, and Eliza smiled.

  ‘I work for the ABC,’ I said (hiding nothing, so they couldn’t accuse me of setting them up later), ‘and the word around the newsroom is this may have a political link.’ I’m not a liar by nature, and I wasn’t going to tell any lies, but this wasn’t how I usually got interviews. Trickery was what it felt like.

  ‘No!’ Eliza said vehemently. ‘This has nothing to do with the Party!’ You could hear the capital letter. She sounded vaguely Marxist, which was funny, really.

  ‘The news director can’t see why her museum work would have led to this. And her personal life seems … stable.’

  ‘That woman’s personal life was as disgusting as a sewer,’ Eliza said, her voice thick with contempt.

  Carter made a sound of protest, and Eliza’s whole manner changed immediately.

  Casting her eyes down, she murmured, sweet as pie, ‘But I shouldn’t judge.’ She looked up at him through her lashes and I saw that he was smiling down at her. The smile had something odd at the centre of it—it wasn’t simple affection; there was a dark edge to it, as though he liked seeing her back down completely at the merest hint from him. Power. He liked power. No surprise there. And she adored him. What do the Americans say? She thought he hung the moon.

  ‘I’m absolutely sure that Dr Weaver’s political ambitions had nothing to do with her death,’ Carter said. ‘Dr Weaver’, not ‘Julieanne’—he was distancing himself as fast as he could. ‘It wasn’t as though she had been preselected. In fact …’ He leant closer and dropped his voice. ‘I can tell you in confidence that the party had reached a decision not to preselect her.’

  Yeah, right.

  ‘It’s a shame you can’t make your position clear to the electorate,’ I said.

  Carter cast a glance at the door. ‘A media scrum isn’t the right place to make a considered statement,’ he said ruefully. ‘They’d try to derail me, put me on the defensive.’ He laughed a little and spread his hands. ‘Sorry to insult your profession, Miss McGowan, but in my business you learn to treat the media with caution!’

  ‘Oh, I know. I work in the education department myself. News is a bit too cutthroat for me.’ So true.

  They relaxed even further. Education is such a nice department. So worthy.

  I hesitated, then said, ‘Um … I just dropped in on my way from a shoot … my camera crew is outside in the car … If you wanted to do a proper interview, I could get it to news …’

  Carter and Eliza exchanged glances and I saw her nod fractionally.

  ‘That might be very helpful,’ he said.

  So I went out through the office, told the door dragon I’d be back in a minute, returned to the car and leant in through the open window.

  ‘Would you like to do an interview with the delightful Mr Carter?’ I said.

  ‘Good job, love,’ Terry said.

  As we went past the media contingent outside the door, the Channel 10 reporter asked querulously, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘ABC exclusive,’ Dave said smugly, eliciting an interesting range of swear words from the waiting journos.

  While Terry and Dave set up the lights, I stood in a corner of the office and wondered why neither Eliza nor Carter had asked me a single question—about the house, about Julieanne’s death, about my involvement, not even about why I was there. Could they be that self-centred? Or did they already know the answers?

  Patience came to stand beside me.

  ‘Are you a reporter?’ she asked accusingly.
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  ‘I’m a researcher for ABC Kids,’ I said. ‘But I had a camera crew with me, and your father thought it might be helpful to do a more controlled interview than he’d get from that lot out there.’ I nodded towards the windows. Even through the blinds, you could tell that there was a crowd outside. More were arriving every minute.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Did you know Julieanne well?’

  ‘I hated her,’ Patience hissed. Her face contorted. She really had hated Julieanne. Then her expression melted into confused sorrow. ‘But hate’s a sin. And now she’s dead and I can’t make amends.’

  She brought out all my auntly instincts.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said bracingly. ‘When you’re as much a bitch as Julieanne was, hatred happens. Just shows you’ve got good taste.’

  This was an approach to sin that Patience had clearly never encountered before. ‘But I should repent my sin,’ she said. ‘For the good of my own soul.’

  I shrugged. ‘Okay. If it makes you feel better. But if God is just, He’s not going to blame anyone who hated Julieanne Weaver. At least, I hope not, or I’m in real trouble!’

  Patience laughed, and then covered her mouth with her hands, glancing around to see if her parents had seen. ‘Are you a believer?’ she asked. Which meant: Should I be talking to this heathen?

  I tried to imagine one of my nieces—who all go to Mass every Sunday—asking a total stranger if they believed in God. Not only would they not do it, it wouldn’t even occur to them that it might matter. Maybe I should introduce Patience to them.

  ‘In God? You bet,’ I said.

  She relaxed and leant her shoulders against the wall. ‘There are so many people who aren’t,’ she said, as if that were both inconceivable and frightening.

  ‘Like Julieanne?’

  ‘Her! She pretended. She’d pray with us at home before meals, and she’d even started coming to church on Sundays, but it was just politics.’

  My imagination boggled at that. Julieanne in church? Then something else clicked.

  ‘So Julieanne visited you at home?’

  Patience nodded. ‘The last few months, she was there all the time. In meetings with Father, and with the other elders.’ So much for Carter pretending he hardly knew her.

  Carter ushered his daughter out and closed the door behind her, then took his seat behind the desk. I was surprised that Eliza wasn’t there to watch.

  Terry signalled he was ready and I took my position, remembering watching senior journos do hard-hitting interviews. With government ministers, they usually went for the jugular straight away, but with other people, they often started out nicely and then put the knife in. Hmm.

  ‘Rolling,’ Terry said.

  ‘Mr Carter, Julieanne Weaver was found dead this morning and the police are treating it as a suspicious death. Do you have any comment?’ There, a nice straight question to let him get his prepared statement off his chest. I couldn’t believe it had only been this morning, though. It felt like a year, at least.

  ‘Dr Weaver’s death is a tragedy, and our thoughts and prayers are with her family at this tragic time.’ Oh, he was good. Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.

  ‘Dr Weaver was seeking preselection for the seat of North Hughes. Do you believe that her political ambitions may have led to her death?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Carter leant forward. ‘There can be no possible link. I’m sure the police will find that Dr Weaver was killed by an intruder.’

  Nice theory, except for the fact that the house was locked up tight.

  ‘Would Dr Weaver have gained preselection?’

  He hesitated. It was nicely calculated, and it looked convincing. ‘I haven’t received permission from the party to announce the candidate yet, but I can tell you that it would not have been Dr Weaver.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He blinked. He wasn’t expecting that one. ‘While Dr Weaver was an intelligent, energetic person, we felt that she was not quite the right person to represent the party.’

  ‘Was that because she was a woman?’

  He blinked again, and ran a hand through that carefully cut blond hair. ‘No, certainly not! Women have a great deal to offer as MPs.’

  ‘Because she wasn’t married, then?’

  He hesitated. ‘We are a party which represents the family. It’s difficult to understand the needs of families if you don’t have one of your own.’

  Really? My single-woman hackles rose and I started to enjoy grilling him.

  ‘So if she’d been a married woman with children, she would have been preselected?’

  ‘Not necessarily. It would have depended on the qualities of the other candidates.’ He smiled. ‘And I’m glad to say that the quality of the other candidates is very high indeed.’

  ‘But she would have had a better chance if she’d been a mum?’

  He shrugged a little. ‘As I said, it’s important that our MPs fully understand the needs of families.’

  ‘But doesn’t Australian Family believe that a mother should be at home, looking after her children?’

  He hadn’t seen that coming and he’d walked right into it, but he was quick. ‘Whenever possible, we believe that children should be raised by the people who love them the most, yes. But someone also has to look after the needs of children in the wider arena, and that’s what Australian Family is dedicated to.’

  He’d be ready for any other challenges on that subject, so I changed tack. ‘Dr Weaver has spent a great deal of time with your family over the last few months. Is this a personal tragedy for you?’

  I could see him restrain himself from glaring at me.

  ‘Dr Weaver, as a candidate for preselection, clearly needed to meet with party officials. My house was often the venue for those meetings, but they were purely business, as was my relationship with Dr Weaver.’

  ‘Did you like Dr Weaver?’

  ‘Yes! Everyone at Australian Family liked her.’

  I smiled confidingly. ‘Now, you know that’s not true, Matthew. Her opponents for preselection didn’t like her.’

  It was a guess, but it was close to a certainty. I followed up while he was choosing his words.

  ‘Isn’t it true that there were sections of the party who felt that Dr Weaver’s personal life didn’t match the standards required by Australian Family? That her commitment to God, for example, was suspect?’

  Carter licked his lips. Hah! I had him on the run.

  ‘A commitment to God isn’t a prerequisite for joining our party. Only a commitment to the needs of the family.’

  ‘But it is a prerequisite for preselection, isn’t it? Aren’t the members of your preselection committee overwhelmingly members of the Radiant Joy Church? And didn’t some of them question Dr Weaver’s true beliefs?’ I would have, if I’d been them.

  ‘All the candidates’ backgrounds are carefully checked before we select them,’ Carter said, dropping into safe explanation mode. ‘Dr Weaver was no exception.’

  ‘Checked by a committee made up of church elders?’

  ‘By a private investigator, actually,’ Carter said disingenuously.

  ‘And the committee?’

  ‘Many of our committee are, indeed, members of local churches. But not only the Radiant Joy Church. Many Christians understand what we are trying to defend, and they support us.’

  Back on message. Very good, Mr Carter. He was getting impatient and angry. I probably only had one more question. Let’s make it a doozy, I thought. I made my voice as earnest as I could.

  ‘Mr Carter, do you believe that Julieanne Weaver is in Heaven?’

  He looked like I’d poleaxed him, and didn’t reply for quite a few seconds, which would stretch out meaningfully on screen. Surprisingly, I caught a glimpse of tears in his eyes.

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ he said slowly. ‘But no one can judge anyone but themselves.’

  ‘Matthew Carter, thank you very much.�
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  ‘Thank you, Poppy,’ he said automatically.

  Terry said, ‘Cut!’ and then turned the lights off and started to move the camera to the other side of the desk. ‘Right, let’s get the noddies and the questions from you, Poppy.’

  Carter glared at me and stood up, and I thought I’d better pre-empt his explosion.

  ‘You were so good, Mr Carter! I knew you would be.’ I dropped my voice and gestured him aside as Terry brought the camera around his side of the desk so he could get the reverse shots of me. Carter was crowded out and stepped across to me automatically.

  ‘I thought I’d better ask you some difficult questions so the news director wouldn’t think it was a whitewash. I knew you’d be able to answer. You were great,’ I simpered. Could he really believe that? But his ego was big enough to believe any amount of female adoration, and he calmed down.

  ‘I see. That’s a dangerous game, Poppy.’

  ‘But you were terrific! Wasn’t he, Terry?’

  Terry shrugged. ‘Sounded okay to me.’ He gestured for me to sit back down. ‘Let’s get the questions.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Carter turned at the door and looked at me. ‘I’m not sure whether to thank you or not, Poppy.’ There was a little humour in his eyes. It was the first time I’d come close to liking him, and I realised that when he was relaxed he did have a real charm. I wondered if Julieanne had fallen for it. I smiled back at him and pretended to misunderstand.

  ‘I don’t need thanks, Matthew,’ I said. ‘I was glad to help.’

  He went out looking slightly chagrined and closed the door behind him.

  Terry and Dave filmed me asking the same questions over again, and then a series of ‘noddies’—me appearing to listen to Carter’s answers and nodding in comprehension or encouragement. The two bits of vision would be cut together so it looked like it had all been shot at the same time: my question, his answer, my nod, and so on. A little piece of television illusion that happens every day.

  As Terry and Dave were packing up the lights, Carter came back.

  ‘So,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘All finished?’