The Fourth Season

by Dorothy Johnston

  Once night had fallen, I became restless, unwilling to stay shut up in the house. But I didn’t think it fair to go out again, on a night I didn’t have to. I thought about the mist, my walk to the closed-up internet cafe via the pool. I recalled the two figures and the voices.

  . . .

  When Don Fletcher answered his phone, I asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had a brother?’

  ‘What brother?’ Don sounded surprised, prepared to be affronted.

  ‘The one you were with last night.’

  There was the noise of something falling in the background. Don said, ‘That copper, he’s a mate of yours?’

  Two could play the refuse-to-answer game. I asked Don for his brother’s name. After waiting too long to make one up, he said unco-operatively, ‘Cameron.’

  Fourteen

  ‘Pammy!’ Owen leant forward in his hospital bed with a delighted grin.

  ‘Look at you, you big old bear!’

  Pam leant forward as well, and the two friends folded their arms around each other, Pam’s twisted left hand holding tight to Owen’s back.

  ‘I’m not hurting you?’

  ‘Go on girl! My top half’s in fine shape. It’s my bottom half that’s mangled.’

  Pam and Owen were red-faced, awkward in my presence, as pleased with themselves as growing children exchanging their first kiss.

  Pam drew back a little. ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘A success so far.’ Owen’s voice was careful not to express hopes that might turn out to be premature. I saw, from Pam’s swift upward glance, that she registered this too. Rita had told me the aim of the operation was to reduce pain. There was no hope that Owen would walk again.

  Pam cocked her head in my direction. ‘This kind lady drove me over so I wouldn’t have to waste money on a taxi.’

  Owen nodded thank you.

  Pam sucked in her breath and said, ‘I saw that girl who was murdered, Owen. At the club. She was with another girl.’

  ‘A big girl with spiky hair? Sandra told me, but I don’t recall her. She might have come into the cafe. I just don’t remember.’

  ‘Sandra was wondering if that diver who was killed—’

  ‘Ben Sanderson. I’ve been following the news.’

  ‘Whether you’d seen him.’

  ‘What? In the cafe?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m trying to find out if they knew each other,’ I said gently. ‘Ben Sanderson and Laila.’

  ‘Why should they?’ Owen asked. He was beginning to sound distressed.

  ‘Laila was a keen scuba diver,’ I said. ‘Sanderson was a professional. He taught at Dickson Pool.’

  ‘I see.’ Owen winced, but his curiosity was caught. ‘Well, I certainly never saw the two of them together. I would have remembered that.’

  . . .

  I’d just dropped Pam off when Brook rang to ask me what I’d been doing the night Sanderson was killed.

  Brook sounded frustrated and angry. ‘You were seen driving around Dickson pool.’

  ‘I never drive around the pool,’ I told him. ‘I walk over there to swim.’

  It wasn’t possible to drive around the pool, in fact. There was a carpark at the back, then tennis courts and a community centre. It made the question of access an interesting one.

  ‘Your car was seen,’ Brook said curtly. ‘The number plate was noted.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘What? Why didn’t you—’ I was beginning to feel angry too.

  ‘I shouldn’t even be ringing you like this, Sandra. Someone else will have to take your statement. But if it was you—if you were on your way somewhere and just happened to take a detour round the pool, tell me now.’

  ‘I swear to you I didn’t.’

  I’d been skulking around Bronwyn’s house, but I couldn’t tell Brook that.

  ‘It means fuck all that whoever it was quoted the number plate,’ I said. ‘In fact, it should make you suspicious. What ordinary citizen would take note of and memorise a random rego number?’

  ‘It wasn’t random,’ Brook said. ‘It was yours.’

  Brook hated me swearing. Against all evidence to the contrary, he nourished an image of me as a contented wife and mother. I felt like shouting the offensive word again.

  He hung up before I could compound my fault.

  I stared out the window, dismayed, struggling to catch my breath. What could I tell the officer who came to interview me, when he or she turned up, except to repeat that the accusation wasn’t true?

  . . .

  ‘Kingston,’ Ivan said when I told him what had happened. ‘Of all the places to have been. Are you sure you didn’t make a detour through Dickson on your way home?’

  ‘Unless I fell asleep at the wheel and drove there in a dream, yes.’

  Ivan drank water standing at the sink. When he turned to face me, the whites of his eyes looked yellowish and sick. I felt like shaking him till they came loose, or something did.

  ‘Who are you to criticise me for driving to Kingston, or anywhere I damn well like?’ I demanded.

  ‘Keep your shirt on Sandra. It’s just a bad coincidence, that’s all.’

  Ivan frowned, then crumpled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have a shower. I feel—I don’t know, I can’t seem to get clean.’

  . . .

  The police took our car for testing. I felt like ringing Bronwyn and saying that made two of us. I felt like taking a leaf out of Bronwyn’s book and pissing off, leaving the whole sorry mess behind me.

  My interview with Detective Constable Erickson was frustratingly predictable. He was young, nervous, with an edge of aggression which coloured his questions, while I tried to keep my cool. No, I repeated, I had not been anywhere near Dickson pool on Wednesday night. The constable said that, if I knew what was good for me, I’d stay right away from the area. He made it sound as though the whole suburb ought to be off limits to me. It’s my suburb I felt like shouting at him. My suburb and my pool.

  Being told to stay away from somewhere makes going there seem the one essential thing to do. To return to the crime scene would be childish and foolhardy, I told myself as my feet began walking out the door.

  A police car was parked close to the entrance. I heard voices inside, behind the black plastic, but I didn’t recognise them. I walked around the fence, but saw no one. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself that there was no point in hanging round.

  I brightened up when Pam rang to say that Jake had something to show me.

  This time, I sat at the front of the Tradies, recalling the way Jake had flounced off on the previous occasion.

  Jake walked quickly to my table, pulled a button out of his pocket and set it down in front of me.

  I picked the button up and turned it over in my hand. It was a small wooden button, painted red, circular in shape, and roughly, inexpertly made; it was chipped on one side, so that plain wood showed through the paint. A tiny frayed end of red thread clung to the centre.

  When I asked Jake if it had fall off Laila Fanshaw’s waistcoat, the waiter went as red as the button. His scalp, newly relieved of hair, shone with youthful perspiration.

  ‘I was wiping down the table,’ Jake said, recovering his composure slightly. ‘It was underneath a paper napkin.’

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s just a button, but they’ll take it. I’ll never get it back.’

  I asked Jake if he’d tried to return it to Laila, and he started to say no. He’d done what Pam had asked him to; he’d shown it to me; and now he wanted me to leave. But I kept him talking, and finally he admitted to finding out where Laila lived. But he was adamant that he’d never been there, or spoken to her on the phone. He also admitted seeing Laila at the internet cafe, but insisted that they hadn’t spoken there either, not so much as a hello.

&
nbsp; ‘What about the night the button fell off?’

  ‘She was with her girlfriend.’ Jake blinked and a look of disgust passed across his face.

  ‘What makes you think they were a couple?’

  ‘They were holding hands, weren’t they? They were dykes.’

  ‘Would you sit down for a moment, please?’

  Jake glared at me, but did as I asked.

  I went back quickly over ground I’d covered with Owen, and with Rowan and Pam. Jake admitted that he used to wear his hair gelled and spiky. He didn’t know who the dark-haired young man with glasses had been in the internet cafe that Thursday night, but he recognised Rowan from my description. He was definite about not having seen Rowan or Laila again, except for the time Laila had come to the club with Bronwyn.

  Jake had watched Laila get up and leave. Each of her movements was branded on his memory. When the door shut behind her, he’d felt Owen’s eyes on him, ‘like some old owl about to pounce’. He’d felt embarrassed then, so he’d stayed where he was for a few minutes longer, and by the time he did leave, Laila was gone.

  ‘That fat boy was standing on the footpath, staring down the street.’

  ‘Do you recall seeing anybody else?’

  Jake frowned.

  ‘Please try and remember,’ I said.

  ‘I think there was someone. I didn’t really take any notice. But—a figure—maybe.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What kind of man?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Honestly. It was just a glimpse out of the corner of my eye.’

  ‘What about Pamela?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Didn’t she leave the cafe at about the same time?’

  ‘Pam was—’ Jake broke off, then began again. ‘She was talking to the wheelchair guy.’

  ‘What else was Pam doing?’

  ‘Look—Pammy and the wheelchair guy are friends. I wasn’t there to spy on them.’

  I told Jake I respected their right to privacy as well, then asked him, ‘Where did you go after you left the cafe?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘By car?’

  Jake nodded, and, in answer to my next question, said his car had been in the Tradies carpark. He’d not had far to walk.

  ‘How did you know Laila would be there that night?’

  He’d seen her from the club, where he’d called in to put himself down for extra shifts over the weekend and to check the roster.

  ‘Who else besides Pam knows that you kept the button?’

  ‘Al does. No one else.’

  ‘The waiter you were with the other night?’

  Jake nodded. He looked up and frowned, then swiftly returned the button to his pocket, and was through the swing doors in a few long strides.

  I turned around to see who’d caught his eye. Sam Borich, the Dickson Pool manager, was walking towards the counter. I had only to take a few steps in order to cross his path.

  Sam smiled a greeting and said it was a coincidence, bumping into me, because someone had called asking about me just the other day.

  The caller hadn’t volunteered his name. ‘He asked if I knew who you were. I said you swam regular in the summer. Tell you the truth, I didn’t take too kindly to someone quizzing me without being willing to say who he was.’

  I wrote down my mobile number. ‘Could you let me know if he rings back?’

  Sam nodded, glancing at his watch.

  ‘How’s Joe bearing up?’ I asked.

  ‘Totally spooked,’ Sam said. ‘He’s nineteen, for Christ’s sake. Poor blighter was scared even before any of this happened—the last person you’d wish it on, as a matter of fact. He’s been living with his Mum and step-father, and not getting on with either. His real Dad’s in Queensland. He walked out on them when Joe was a little fella.’

  I knew what that was like, but Sam was in a talking mood and I had no intention of interrupting with a story of my own.

  Sam checked his watch again and frowned, then ordered coffee and asked me if I wanted one. We took them to the nearest tram to drink. I noticed that Sam sat facing out, with a good view of the rest of the cafe and the entrance.

  ‘Ah, that’s better,’ Sam said. ‘Joe had a big row with his step-dad, and told me he was moving out. It was just after that break-in at the pool. I suggested he could sleep in the office while he was deciding what to do. The kid’s got no money apart from what I pay him. My wife and I feed him as often as he’ll let us, but he’s too proud to let us all that often.’

  ‘Who knew Joe was sleeping at the pool?’

  Sam made a face and said, ‘We didn’t keep it a secret, couldn’t have. But we don’t broadcast the fact either. Joe’s ashamed of taking charity, like I said. I told him he was doing me a favour, but he saw through that right quick. The other staff know. Apart from that, it’s impossible to say. Anyone who looked through the window and saw the bed, I guess.’

  Whoever had dragged Sanderson’s body through the hole in the fence and across to the water had done so either in ignorance of the fact that Joe had been sleeping twenty metres from them, in defiance of that fact, or, just possibly, because of it.

  It seemed Sam Borich was following my line of thought, or had got there first.

  ‘Joe’s clean,’ he said. ‘I’d stake my life on that. He was asleep when it happened, and thanks be to God he never woke up. The police have been through him like a dose of salts. They’ve found nothing to incriminate him.’

  I asked Sam how well he’d known Ben Sanderson.

  ‘Sanderson was a good diver.’ Sam nodded as though reminding himself of this, and possibly of other things that Sanderson hadn’t been so good at. ‘Very experienced.’ I noted that there was no sadness, certainly nothing that could be called grief, in the pool manager’s voice.

  While we spoke, he kept looking up towards the entrance. He ­muttered something about people with no sense of time.

  Sam told me that Ben had taught on his own at Dickson because the classes were small. School groups normally hired their scuba equipment from a shop in Lonsdale Street, the same one that organised dive trips to the coast. Ben was often down there. Sam had no idea why anyone would want to kill him. He returned to Joe Bianchi, about whom he was obviously more concerned than Ben.

  ‘Joe phoned me, you know, first thing in the morning. When I got there, he was out the front, shaking and white as a sheet. I thought he was going to faint. I made him sit down with his head between his knees while we waited for the cops.’

  Ben had been floating face down at the shallow end of the fifty metre pool, and it was clear that he’d been bashed. ‘There was quite a lot of blood in the water. I saw the hole in the fence right away.’

  When I asked how Ben had seemed in the days before his death, Sam replied, ‘Normal. If Ben had worries, he didn’t bring them to work.’

  Sam half stood up, grinned and raised two fingers. I followed his line of sight, but didn’t recognise the middle-aged man who greeted him in return.

  I said quickly, ‘I heard Ben had a local girlfriend.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. Ben’s private life was his business.’

  I thanked Sam for talking to me and we said goodbye.

  Fifteen

  The door to the dive shop in Lonsdale Street stood wide open, and through it walked a small man with a goatee beard and pony tail, carrying a rack of sale-priced wetsuits, which he set up on the footpath. As I turned towards the door, he glanced at me and said, ‘Be with you in a minute.’

  Security cameras had been fitted both at the front and back of the shop, which sold every kind of diving accessory imaginable. My eye was caught by some fancy weight belts with pockets full of lead shot. PADI certificates on a wall declared that Roger Stanton was qualified to instruct other divers as well as to teach children. Australian certificates declared that he was commercially qualified to level three. A small photograph in the corner of one identified Roger
Stanton as the goatee man.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, as he came up behind me.

  When Stanton asked how he could help me, I told him I needed a new face mask.

  ‘These ones just came in.’

  Stanton led me to display shelves where a glossy tag caught my eye, promising that Orion masks would provide a two hundred per cent increase in my field of vision. A useful asset at this point. I noted the price, which would set me back a couple of week’s groceries.

  ‘Perhaps something a little less expensive,’ I said.

  There were rows and rows of masks. Stanton demonstrated a selection with the carefully controlled expression of someone understanding that he was dealing with a customer who, if she bought anything at all, would buy at the bottom of the range.

  I picked a mask at random and rummaged in my wallet, hoping I had enough cash since I didn’t want to use a card.

  ‘Do you find it frustrating living here?’ I asked, folding my receipt. ‘I mean, there can’t be many diving opportunities in Lake Burley Griffin.’

  Stanton inclined his head and bared his teeth a fraction. ‘There’s a farm-house and racetrack underneath the lake,’ he said.

  ‘Have you been down there?’

  ‘A few times. It would make a better dive if the water was clear.’

  ‘What about the south coast?’

  ‘The south coast? Great for diving.’ Stanton looked me up and down. ‘If you’re interested in scuba lessons, I can give you a good price.’

  When I asked where he taught, he replied, ‘In a swimming pool to start with. Half of successful diving is confidence, you know. Most people don’t know they have it till they try. And they won’t develop it unless they can trust their teacher.’

  I waited. Now was the moment for Stanton to tell me about losing one of his valued instructors to a homicidal maniac. He didn’t.

  ‘Do you have a brochure—something with prices and dates?’

  Stanton produced one and I pretended to look over it.

  ‘I don’t know how I’d go, though I do enjoy snorkelling.’