The Fourth Season

by Dorothy Johnston

  Ivan turned away from me, slumping down into his pillow. For the first time since we’d started living together, I wished for a single bed.

  It was then that I remembered Don Fletcher’s phone call and how I’d meant to tell Ivan about it, ask him what he thought. I decided that I would meet Don and find out exactly what he wanted. I could always tell Ivan afterwards, if I decided to take Don up on his offer. If I decided against it, then there was no harm done.

  Four

  Gail Trembath phoned first thing in the morning and talked me into coffee at Parliament House. Gail was always good at smelling weakness, and I felt too tired to bother making up an excuse. Besides, it allowed me to put off ringing Don back. The idea didn’t seem such a great one in the light of day.

  I’d used the Parliament’s underground carpark maybe half a dozen times in all my years in Canberra. I didn’t like it, preferring the open air, a few minutes extra walk up the hill. Dim, enclosed spaces brought on a mild, yet persistent claustrophobia. Easing my car into what seemed too narrow a space, I realised that if I’d been Laila, I would have avoided the place at night, and wondered where she’d been intending to park.

  I got out and locked the car. At ten am, there was plenty of light from the entrances, and from fluorescent tubes. There was a camera every couple of metres at roof height. Nobody else was there, and I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t look around.

  I hadn’t realised how extensive were the road works going on all around the carpark. The hole had been repaired, and no drill would force its way through that bit of concrete again in a hurry. I walked up the stairs and examined the repair from the outside, from as close as I could get. There were several lines of orange tape around it, as though it might still present a hazard to pedestrians. I continued on to the security checkpoint, where my person and belongings were subjected to a thorough inspection, then waited at a desk after ringing Gail’s extension and filling in the details necessary to be issued with a visitor’s pass.

  . . .

  Gail stirred froth into her cappuccino and took a big bite out of her choc chip muffin. She’d put on weight since she quit smoking. She’d been promoted, and now wore the uniform of the successful female executive—black suit with a straight skirt, a little too short, a little too tight for her age and size. Red hair curled against her collar. I knew from long experience that her blue eyes could turn from friendly to ice-cold in less time than it took to blink.

  Gail narrowed her eyes over the steam from her coffee, then said, mildly speculative, ‘Laila was young, idealistic, beautiful. She had admirers from here to Bondi.’

  When I didn’t respond beyond raising my eyebrows a fraction, Gail went on, ‘Brian Fitzpatrick was her mentor. Funny word, that. Covers a multitude of possibilities.’

  ‘How’s he taking it?’

  ‘How would you? Brian’s got everybody after him, and he’s not saying a word.’

  ‘What does he have to tell?’

  Gail made a face, eyebrows gently raised, gently mocking.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Sandy. I thought you might have had a chat with that copper who’s a friend of yours.’

  I told Gail Brook was in Thailand with his girlfriend.

  ‘That’s bad luck.’

  Gail knew that Brook had ‘borrowed’ statements for me to read in the past, and done me other small and large favours besides. She knew our friendship contained the kinds of ambiguities that had made me jealous of his girlfriend more often than I cared to recall.

  When I asked what Brian Fitzpatrick had to hide, Gail watched me with a calculating, half amused expression. But I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying. I was tossing words out, at the same time hoping to head off in advance the questions I knew Gail wanted to ask about Ivan.

  ‘Brian lost his temper once and threw a book at Frances,’ Gail said.

  Now that was interesting. Some politicians had famously bad tempers. Not Senator Fitzpatrick. I’d never heard him speak without knowing exactly what he was going to say and delivering it straight. Frances Hollinger was his most junior staff member, and could have expected the senator to show her the calm courtesy he was known for.

  I waited, knowing that, now Gail had started, she wouldn’t be able to resist giving me the details, or some of them at least.

  ‘It was all around the gallery, but Fran told me herself. She said he apologised afterwards, but she doesn’t trust him any more. She wants out as soon as possible.’

  ‘What’s Frances supposed to have done?’

  ‘She took a call for him from someone at CSIRO. He was in a meeting and she didn’t think he’d want to be interrupted, so she put the caller off. He acted like she’d committed a major blunder.’

  Gail didn’t know who the call was from, or else she wasn’t telling me. We regarded one another levelly. I knew that Gail was close to Frances Hollinger, and that, since her promotion, she’d been ­cultivated as a pro-Green journalist by Fitzpatrick and his staff.

  ‘Fran says it’s bullshit by the way, the rumour that Brian and Laila Fanshaw were having an affair.’

  ‘How did the rumour start?’

  ‘Does it matter? This building’s just one big sexual sandwich. Gossip links everybody in it sooner or later.’

  There was no point in reminding Gail that Laila hadn’t worked in Parliament House. I knew that what she said was generally true.

  Gail spent a few minutes trying to get me to talk about Ivan and his relationship with Laila. I told her there had not been a relationship, but I could see she didn’t believe me. Either I was in denial, Gail’s expression said, or else Ivan was lying to me.

  When she realised I wasn’t going to open up, Gail’s eyes went hard and she said she had to get back to work.

  . . .

  I phoned Don Fletcher from my car. He sounded pleased to hear my voice and said there was no time like the present.

  On the way to Civic—I’d nominated the cafe where we’d meet, and it gave me an absurd feeling of being in control—I recalled a job Ivan had done for the Environment Minister’s office last year.

  The Minister’s principle advisor had asked Ivan to investigate some attempted break-ins to his computer that had not been reported to the police, or not at that stage. Ivan had traced the attempted break-ins to three—if I remembered rightly—internet cafes around Canberra, but had got no further.

  An odd choice for the portfolio, Richard King was better known as a numbers man than a politician with a track record of concern for the environment. He was also known for secrecy. Ivan had been expected to work with his hands tied and a patch over one eye. He couldn’t ask to see files; his questions went unanswered. It was a familiar story. Familiar also had been the way the trail had quickly fizzled out.

  . . .

  At first glance, Don Fletcher reminded me of Ivan. Not in terms of physique or facial features—Don was of medium height and neatly made; his dark brown hair was straight, not curly. Where Ivan’s skin was white and thickly-textured, Don’s was pale olive and so thin as to seem transparent. It was his expression of reproachful sadness that struck me as the same; sadness with anger knotting just underneath the surface. A wrong word or move by almost anybody, friend or stranger, might expose this anger and cause it to pour out.

  Don wore a hip-length brown jacket over dark green cargo pants. Both garments had seen better days.

  I realised that it wasn’t only Ivan this man reminded me of, but Tim Delaney as well. I was seeing the mixture of grief and barely contained fury common to those men who had been in love with Laila Fanshaw.

  ‘I’m glad you called,’ Don said with a smile that struck me as sad as well.

  He couldn’t have known it, but the pile of bills shoved to one side of my desk were a powerful incentive. I told Don that it sounded like he needed a good lawyer.

  He suggested mildly that I should let him be the judge of that, and repeated what he’d said over the phone, adding, ‘I�
��ll pay above your standard rates.’

  When I warned Don that I wouldn’t be able to save his marriage, his expression indicated a rueful acceptance of the fact. ‘Of course that’s what I want.’ And then, more humbly, ‘I’d be happy if you’d help demonstrate to my wife that I’m not a murderer.’

  When I said I’d have to talk to her, Don made a face and said, ‘She barely talks to me.’

  Then he changed the subject. ‘That detective who’s in charge, he likes taunting people, doesn’t he? He told me about all the other men Laila had wrapped around her little finger. He wanted me to see how stupid I’d been. I’d already seen that, actually, without any help from him. He told me about your husband. He implied that Ivan—is it Ivan?—had a better alibi than I did. What’s he hope to gain by playing us off against each other?’

  I wasn’t about to attempt an answer to this, and gathered that Don did not expect me to. He continued with only the briefest pause, ‘I thought of a way to thwart him at his little game. Joining forces.’ He smiled again, more of a grin this time, and so lacking in humour that it made my stomach turn.

  I asked Don if he’d mind going back to the beginning.

  ‘There’s the short version and the long version.’

  ‘Try the long one,’ I said.

  A student had phoned him needing help with an assignment. She told him she’d been put through to him by the department switchboard, and that her assignment was on biodiversity in Bass Strait’s underwater canyons.

  ‘I was interested because we actually had very little information about them, the canyons I mean. If science students could help us by researching a few details, then that might be a help. “A free kick”, I said. I remember she laughed at that.’

  ‘I told her I was doubtful we’d have anything that wasn’t in the scientific papers she could access through the ANU, but she was welcome to come over and have a look. And that’s what she did. I sat her down in front of my computer, and went off to a meeting. It was only supposed to go for twenty minutes, but it ended up lasting over an hour.’

  Don paused again, and I could see him framing the next point, choosing his words. ‘We’d chatted for a while on the phone, and she’d told me about the group she belonged to. She didn’t seem to have preconceived ideas about public servants, and I was conscious of the need to improve our relationship with the conservation movement. This was when negotiations over the proposed marine park were at a delicate point. We hadn’t exactly won over the environmental activists. I saw giving Laila a hand as an opportunity to build a bridge.’

  It was the first time he had actually said her name. He licked dry lips, then told me the rest in a frank, though solemn manner. Laila had got hold of his password somehow, and had used her hour at his computer well. The oil and gas companies wanted the freedom to explore promising sites in areas overlapping the park boundaries, and the commercial fishing industry was pushing its rights too. Huge unexplored canyons, lace coral, sponge beds and seamounts weren’t about to be sacrificed by conservation groups, or by Don and his team either. Having parks declared multi-use, the green groups argued, would hardly protect them at all. Worse, such a classification would fool the public into thinking that unique marine species and habitats were being preserved. Proposals and counter proposals had been flying back and forth, deals had been brokered, then undermined by one group or another.

  ‘I could have papered the walls twice over if I’d printed out the emails.’

  The information Laila gave to the press painted a picture of the Environment Department bending over backwards to satisfy the oil and gas and fishing industries. I recalled that Gail Trembath had been at the forefront of the media accusers. It had put her in good odour with Brian Fitzpatrick and his office.

  ‘Why wasn’t Laila named at the time?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m coming to that. You see, some of these green groups refuse to enter into any kind of a debate with industry. They don’t seem to understand that if no consensus is reached, then there’ll be problems all the way along. There were always going to be some multi-use, and some total sanctuary zones. That was, and still is, the government’s position. The task is to get agreement in the negotiation stage, so that once the reserves have been declared there’s no immediate incentive to break the rules. And multi-use doesn’t mean open slather for fishing either.’

  Don spoke as though his opinion still mattered, as though he was still in the thick of things. When he’d got back from his meeting, Laila had greeted him with a grateful smile and promised that her group would give his team their full support.

  ‘She leaked the negotiations, quotes and all. Well, you remember, don’t you? You remember what it was like. The industries were ropable, not to mention the Prime Minister. The day the story appeared, I went to my director and told him what I believed must have happened. He understood where I was coming from, what had prompted me to make documents available to a student. He believed in my good intentions and backed me all the way. But the FAS is a bitch who never liked me anyway. She took it straight up the line and encouraged the minister to throw the book at me. Which he did. At least the inquiry was internal. My name wasn’t made public and I wasn’t charged with a criminal offence.’

  ‘Did you have any contact with Laila after that?’

  ‘None at all. I was instructed not to and I didn’t.’

  ‘Let me get this straight—Laila’s name wasn’t publicly released, but she’s referred to by name in the inquiry?’

  ‘That’s why Brideson’s onto me. He’s a prick of the first order, by the way.’

  I’d formed the same opinion, but I wasn’t about to share it with Don. ‘And after it was over?’ I asked him.

  ‘After I’d been sacked me, you mean. I had counselling. My wife insisted on it. But the way I saw it I’d done nothing wrong. An unscrupulous young woman had taken advantage of me. I was punished for that. Counselling—well, at the time it felt like extra punishment. Now Laila’s dead, and I just think it’s incredibly sad. Whatever she did, whoever else she may have hoodwinked, she certainly didn’t deserve to be murdered for it. I think of her parents, and what they must be going through, and—well, I can’t bear to think of it.’

  ‘Where were you on the night she was killed?’

  ‘That was the first thing Brideson wanted to know, of course. I was having a drink with a friend.’

  We discussed the timing, how long they’d been together, and where.

  ‘The trouble is, you see, I didn’t go straight home. I drove around. I know that sounds suspicious, but it’s a thing I often do. My home—Clare and I—well, let’s just say home’s often not the most relaxing place to be.’

  Don’s replies had a wooden, embarrassed stiffness. I asked if he and Clare had children and he shook his head.

  ‘Did you have a particular interest in marine conservation before you joined the team working on the park proposals?’

  ‘Of course. We all did. But it’s funny you should ask that because my interest really came alive when I started talking to that girl. Before then it had been academic. Oh, I cared what happened to our oceans, but I didn’t know how much I cared.’

  ‘How many people know what Laila did to you?’

  ‘It’s hard to put a figure on it. People gossip, you can’t do anything about that. I haven’t spoken to anyone from the department, haven’t been near the place since I was forced to retire. A lot of people got to hear about the inquiry, knew I’d made a major blunder, but those who knew all the details—well, there was my director, of course, my branch head and division head, and the secretary. The minister. The department’s head of IT. The officers at my level—there were six of us working on the park proposals—I never referred to Laila by name. I don’t know how much they worked out. They would have been told to keep quiet. And they gave me a wide berth. I’d get sympathetic looks from time to time, but that was all.’

  ‘You were ostracised?’

  ‘That’s putting i
t too strongly. I wanted to keep to myself. I was in a kind of shock. I talked to my director. He was the only one whose sympathy I could bear to face, or maybe the only one whose sympathy I felt able to accept. You asked how many might have known that it was Laila. That depends on whether or not she was acting on her own. There’s that group she belonged to. Maybe they put her up to it. Then there’s the stakeholder representatives who were at the meetings, who were angry and embarrassed at having their comments splashed all over the newspapers.’

  ‘How would they have got hold of Laila’s name?’

  ‘By asking questions. You can caution individuals to keep their mouths shut, but that’s all you can do.’

  ‘Did any of your colleagues meet Laila the day she came to see you?’

  ‘Again, that’s hard to say exactly. I never introduced her. I signed her in at the security desk and we went up to my office. I can’t remember who was in the lift. She was at my desk, as I said, for over an hour.’

  Tears came to Don’s eyes. ‘I cursed her, called her the worst names I could think of. But to be bashed to death and her body thrown in the lake? No, that I never imagined.’

  In Don’s face I saw the corrosive shame of having been proved unreliable, never again to be trusted even with a country’s milder secrets. How easy had it been to persuade Clare of her husband’s guilt? That, presumably, was the reason he’d approached me, in the hope that I could change her mind. Did he think Ivan could have murdered Laila? Exactly what did he think of the position I was in?

  I had no answer to any of these questions, and put them to one side. Don gave me the impression of having acted on impulse, of a man whose behaviour had become erratic, unpredictable. Several times while we were talking, he stared at me as though suddenly wondering what I was doing there.

  I told him again that I thought he needed a good lawyer and that I wasn’t sure what I could do to help him, if anything. I said I’d talk it over with Ivan.

  When we parted, Don gave me the impression that he’d leave me alone to make up my mind, so I was surprised when I picked up the phone soon after I got home and heard his voice on the other end.