‘But I loved him,’ he squealed.
‘You know what Wilde said,’ I reminded him. ‘Wilde said, “You’ll never be so wrong”. I know it’s not much of a comfort, but what can you expect from Kim Wilde?’
It was not a comfort, because he turned on me. ‘You did this. I’m going to kill you.’
‘You’re not going to kill me,’ I said casually, though there was a fair chance he would.
But he didn’t. Malone told me to go, and take the bloody money with me. Some industries seem to consider a bullet and a bribe to be bills of exchange of equal value. I put the dough in my pocket. Malone opened the door for me, told me one last time that he loved Franks, and watched to make sure I had free passage out of the Go Kat Klub.
Cassandra Russo was hopping out of a taxi, just as I reached the bottom step.
‘You don’t want to go back in there,’ I said. ‘There’s a dead body inside.’
She said, ‘You killed someone.’
I shook my head and grabbed her elbow, urging her down the street.
An Aboriginal man asked me for a dollar. As I fished into my pocket, he upped the request to two dollars. I gave him all the money from the envelope.
‘It’s got blood all over it,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
The EH found the car park of the nearest suburban hotel that had late-night music. I turned the engine off, and asked Cassandra what was the connection between her, Lavinsky and the Go Kat Klub. She said there was none. Lavinsky wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like the Kat.
‘Was someone really dead in the club?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I just wanted to find out what you knew about Lavinsky’s murder.’
Her lips quivered and her eyes reddened, but she overcame her momentary grief. ‘ProJoe’s dead? You killed him, Steele.’
‘I never killed anyone,’ I said, wondering if I had just played a part in Paul Franks’ death, when all I had wanted to do was create tension to loosen lips.
I looked hard at the girl. ‘I reckon Steven Dupont killed Lavinsky, and I reckon you know all about it.’
‘Me?’ said Cassandra Russo, soft and wide-eyed.
She turned her knees towards me, across the one-piece front seat of my car. She lowered her head and tilted it to one side to look up at me. Then she twisted some strands of her hair around an index finger. Cassandra was having some fun, trying to bury her grief over a dead man who had been close to her when closeness was something she feared.
It was time to catch her off-guard. ‘What were you warning Lavinsky about on his answering machine?’
My aim was poor. She shook her head from side to side and smiled, as if I was an amusing little boy. At least she stopped twirling her hair. ‘It was a joke, Steele. Cassandra, get it? I am named after a character from Greek mythology. She was cursed with always having to tell the truth and no one would believe her.’
I didn’t believe her.
‘ProJoe and I used to share jokes like that,’ she continued.
‘Were you and Lavinsky lovers?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, like I was that little boy again. ‘We just had sex a few times.’
That one, I had to think about.
‘And you and Steven Dupont?’
‘Yuk,’ was her only answer.
‘And your mother?’
‘I’ve never slept with my mother. Though I shouldn’t say that categorically, should I, till I’ve had regression therapy.’
‘Come on, Cassandra, you don’t have to prove you are cleverer than me. I went to grade ten at an orphanage. My life’s ambition is to back the program one day at Eagle Farm racetrack. And I’m being hunted for murder because I accepted a $50 job that I was supposed to get a grand for. Buddha, I’m dumber than Harpo Marx – don’t ask who that is. Just help me nail Lavinsky’s killer and you can go on pursuing your future, which I’m sure will sparkle with wit and wealth.
Cassandra sat up straight in the car seat. ‘You know what really scares me. What really really scares me. I’m afraid the dumb kids will pick on me all my life. That I’ll be working for the dumb kids all my life.’
‘You mean they won’t all go into pop music. Answer my question and I’ll protect you from the dumb kids. Did your mother have a relationship with either Lavinsky or Dupont?’
You could see her conquer the urge to say something smart. ‘I don’t know,’ she said instead.
‘Did Clarissa Dunne have a relationship with either of them? And it’s not your mother I’m talking about.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s helpful,’ I said. ‘That Greek Cassandra might have saved herself a lot of grief with a few don’t-knows, but they’re not doing much for me.’
‘Why don’t we ask Dupont?’ Cassandra said cheerily.
‘Yair, right, later on today, I’ll ask the coppers swarming all over the uni whether I might have a chat with Dupont.’
‘We can go to his unit.’
‘You know where he lives?’
‘Yes. My mother took me to a cocktail party to watch the Academy Awards on television. You wouldn’t believe it; they were all dressed up in formal gear, and arguing over who was the best actor of all time. I stole a bottle of Chivas Regal and split. But I can find the place again. For sure.’
13
CHAPTER 13 MIGHT bring bad luck. There is no Chapter 13.
14
ON LIFE’S JOURNEY the only person who will piss you off more than the directionless is someone who is certain of where they are going.
Cassandra’s ‘for sure’ navigation took us an hour, though it was only twelve kilometres from the pub. After dozens of misturns, we parked down the road from what turned out to be a townhouse, not a unit. Townhouses are more welcoming than units. Many, even in middle-class suburbs such as Dupont’s, do not have the elaborate security of the modern block of units.
I hid in the bushes and let Cassandra ring the bell. After about a minute, a light went on and Dupont came to the door in cotton pyjamas which had various pictures of Scottish singer Annie Lennox printed across them. I had never seen PJs on a performer’s merchandise table so I wondered what they were about. Before I could ask, Cassandra yelled, ‘Surprise!’
This made the lecturer open the door wider, even as a startled frown crossed his face. The girl skipped over to me, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me inside. Dupont, bewildered and still clutching the doorknob, swivelled his body to stare at us. Admitting his bafflement, he threw his hands in the air, and quietly shut the door.
Cassandra turned on Dupont, as he wiped the tiredness out of his eyes. ‘Why’d you kill ProJoe?’ she accused.
Dupont could only begin, ‘I . . .’
Cassandra continued the attack. ‘Don’t lie to us. Steele’s got a gun.’
I put myself between the girl and Dupont, and put my arm on her shoulder to tell her to back off.
‘I haven’t got a gun,’ I said calmly to Dupont. ‘I don’t like guns. Guns kill people.’
Cassandra challenged my last words. ‘Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.’
‘Fine,’ I answered, ‘the next time I want a personalised T-shirt printed, I’ll remember that.’
I looked at Dupont and waited for his contribution. He shook his head. ‘As if I’d kill Lavinsky. I would not give him that satisfaction.’
A novel denial, but I wanted more. ‘Though he was going to expose you for sexual blackmail of students. It would have finished your academic career.’
I thought he would lie, but he was the sort of bloke who liked to verbally surprise. ‘That hypocrite Lavinsky would never put me in.’
‘Are you saying you had something on him, too? You never mentioned it when you told him to get off your back.’
Dupont answered casually. ‘I may have taken some advantage of my office. Nothing worse than any employee using the resources of his employer for a little outside activity.’
�
��I doubt if you could sneak that argument past your Ethics Committee,’ I said. ‘You might have killed Lavinsky for less than what we know about you.’
‘He would never put me in. I knew it; he knew it. Lavinsky was a lecher at heart. He traded his brains for sex, and I know which party got the better of that deal. So did he. He was guilty about his own indiscretions. On and on he would go about the beauty of fresh young minds. He was after something, but if it were minds, he didn’t know much about anatomy.’
‘But he told you to stop, Dupont.’
‘Repeatedly, ad nauseam, continually. And I have stopped.’
‘Because of Lavinsky?’
‘Because I’m living with AIDS.’
Cassandra or I must have given a funny look. ‘Oh yes, I am, or was, bisexual. I’m now asexual, though I don’t think that’s the right word, because that would make me an amoeba or some such thing.’
Even if it all were true, he could still be sexually active, with a continuing reason to kill Lavinsky.
‘Couldn’t you practice safe sex?’
‘I did for a while, but it became a bother. I discovered that abstinence has pleasures not unlike promiscuity. Abstinence is its own reward. As time passes, hypocrites like Lavinsky won’t have examples with any currency with which to persecute me.’
I was dealing with a very sick man here, with a chronic illness that predated his AIDS. But illness is no crime, and I had to call it one way or another. My call was that Dupont was not a killer. I told him we were going, and asked him not to call the police.
When we got out the door, Cassandra spoke sarcastically. ‘Well, that went well. Good interviewing technique, Steele. He was lying through his teeth. That crap about AIDS. God, he only had to mention that and you went all soft and blubbery. What a sook.’
‘You finished?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Why didn’t you hit him? Or at least make him think you had a gun? Like I said.’
I was about to ask her to shut up, when I heard someone calling my name across the dark. Turning, I saw Dupont standing in the doorway, spot-lit against the night. He screamed at me, ‘The cowardly lecher does it with a compliment, Hill.’
I yelled back. ‘Didn’t Kim Wilde say that?’
He shut the door on the darkness.
Cassandra was still in my ear about my slack efforts, but what Dupont said twigged my memory of one of Lavinsky’s raves. The professor was disappointed in how students, and even academics, compared two things without considering the degrees that made them different. Like two killings with guns.
Malone had killed his lover with a fast draw from a drawer, but the spray of bullets could have gone anywhere. Dumb bad luck killed Paul Franks. There were a few bullet holes around Lavinsky’s heart too. But also one in the head. That was the difference. The killer left her signature, and I figured I had a match for it.
Cassandra protested against my driving her home, but she looked tired and appeared glad to see me pull up to her mother’s house, in another middle-class suburb. No lights on here.
Hoping to be caught by an outraged parent, Cassandra invited me in for coffee. I accepted. I had a couple of sips before the parental radar kicked in. Jan Russo, in nightgown, appeared in a corner of the lounge. I had not heard her footsteps and she announced her presence with three short coughs and a shake of her head. She ordered her daughter to bed. Cassandra refused. I asked Mum if I could have a few parting words alone with Cassandra. Jan Russo begrudgingly withdrew.
‘Cassandra, could you wag school tomorrow arvo. Meet me in your mother’s office at 3:15, awlright?’
I said I had to talk with her mother, but that she wasn’t to know Cassandra was coming the next day. The intrigue was enough for her to agree to go to bed. I continued to sip my coffee as I watched the teenager enter her bedroom, out of hearing range of adult conversation. Her mother reappeared in the lounge as soon as Cassandra shut her bedroom door.
‘Well, aren’t we the persuasive one?’ said Jan Russo, settling into an armchair.
‘Do you know where your daughter goes gallivanting around at night?’
She was affronted. ‘Of course I do.’
I took that as a no.
‘What I didn’t know, Steve, is that she’s been hanging around with a murderer the police are looking for.’
So the cops had found Lavinsky’s body. Homicide was probably still at Queensland Uni, trying to fit me for the deed.
‘The police are always looking for a murderer,’ I said. ‘Sometimes they find the right one. Who’s dead this time?’
She smiled thinly. ‘You won’t be on your own, protesting your innocence from a prison cell.’
I let that pass, putting on a braver front than I had a right to. ‘Dupont has already put his hand up for killing Lavinsky. Tomorrow, he’ll make it official before the coppers.’
Jan Russo didn’t blink. ‘That’s it, then. It’s all over. Goodnight.’
She did not move from her armchair.
‘Why do you think he did it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think he did it. I don’t think he confessed. I think you want some sort of reaction from me.’
‘Yair, you’re right, Jan. By the way it’s Steele, not Steve. And I do know who killed Lavinsky.’
She countered well. ‘I should think you would.’ She was obviously sticking to the story, popular with almost everyone, that I did it. But I was getting somewhere, because she could not hide a look of worry.
‘Cassandra doesn’t think I did it,’ I said.
‘Leave Cassie out of this. You seem to think, quite ignorantly, that I am a neglectful mother, because I allow my daughter her freedom. You may know she is only fifteen, but do you know what her IQ is? What was your IQ when you were fifteen, Steve, Steele?’
‘We were a deprived lot in the orphanage. The nuns would never let us have an IQ.’
She ignored that remark. ‘Cassandra has an IQ of 155. That’s approaching genius territory. So I owe it to her, I owe it to Australia, to let her mind roam free. Apart from that, I would do anything to nurture and protect my daughter.’
‘Including covering up murder,’ I said.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.
‘That’s a good tip. I’ll try to remember that in future. Only, first, I need to know if Clarissa Dunne has classes tomorrow.’
‘I think so. In fact I’m sure she has. At least one at 2 o’clock I know of, Introduction to Australian Society, in Lecture Theatre three. I’ve given a couple of those classes.’
‘And what about you, Jan, have you got any class around three tomorrow?’
‘I don’t think so. Two to three is the last one, I think.’
‘So what do you do between classes?’
‘I don’t know why you’re asking all these questions. I’m usually in my office. It really is getting late. I’d offer you more coffee, but . . .’
I could take a hint. I was in the dark night again, but spoke before she could close the door on me.
‘Why did you kill Joseph Lavinsky?’
Jan Russo shut the door in my face.
___o0o___
I WAS HANGING around Lecture Theatre three at ten to three. I soon spotted the red wavy hair of Clarissa Dunne, one of a group of students happily withdrawing from their Introduction to Australian Society. Dunne spotted me and excused herself from her companions.
She smiled. ‘How are you, Steele? We could have used you in that lecture. Boring. Got time for a coffee?’
I had time. Clarissa Dunne certainly was not letting a little murder interfere with our contribution to café society.
Over our cups, I asked, ‘Clarissa, what was the relationship between you and Lavinsky?’
Her face clouded. ‘I don’t think I did anything wrong. He’d buy me things, but I only accepted them because it upset him when I didn’t. You don’t know what it’s like at uni, Steele. A lot of us students are totally broke, living on government assistance. I work t
wo part-time jobs, which really makes it hard to find study time. And all Joe did was shout me dinner and some clothes. Only once did I have to ask for some money towards the rent. And . . .’
I was starting to see where Clarissa Dunne was coming from.
‘I know bugger all about uni, Clarissa. I always thought you were kids from rich families, just doing the apprenticeship to carry on the tradition of privilege. I guess I was wrong.’
‘You are wrong, Steele. My father works for the railways, and Mum is only part-time.’
I mustered as much sympathy as I could. ‘I guess you really shouldn’t worry about what you and Lavinsky had going. You only have to answer to yourself.’
That cheered her up. ‘I probably overreact. I just want to get ahead on my own ability. This university is like a game of snakes and ladders. Personality, politics, physical appearance, family background, can all hold you down or push you up. For a lot of students, their entire future is at stake. Has anybody told you about Steven Dupont?’
I nodded to let her know I was aware of Dupont’s activities, and she continued. ‘His kind is the worst, but there’s all sorts of pressure on students to get the best results, any way they can. I just don’t want to play that game, whether I’m sliding on a snake or climbing a ladder. Fortunately, I’ve been surviving with medium grades so far.’
‘On more mundane matters, Clarissa, how good a shot are you?’
‘You mean with a gun? I’ve never had a real gun in my hand in my life, Steele.’
‘Yair, that’s what I reckoned. You know, you could probably end up a professor like Lavinsky. You seem smart enough.’
‘Maybe in twenty years’ time. For the next five years, I’ll be living in poverty and finishing my arts-law. Then I’m going to live like a queen, keeping rich corporate criminals out of jail.’
‘Someone’s got to do it,’ I said. I glanced at the clock. ‘Better go, Clarissa. Keep up those medium grades.’
After I left, I realised Clarissa probably did not know Lavinsky was dead. I had not mentioned it and the coppers would have told uni staff who did know to keep it to themselves. I wondered how she would react, but only for a moment. I was more concerned to track down someone who did know Lavinsky was dead, his killer.
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