Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  It was still very humid but there was no rain this March evening and a breeze off the water made running a delight. There were children playing on the sand that the council periodically dumped on the mangrove flats to create a beach. Families gathered around barbecues. There were other runners, some serious, some less so. There were couples ambling hand in hand, teenagers on skateboards and mums with strollers. A few black and white ibis wandered across the grass, and out on the water a flock of pelicans rode a gentle swell.

  Cass ran at a steady pace. At the end of the Esplanade she passed an impromptu folk and roots band. Tourists were splashing in the shallow pool.

  She ran on past the Hilton hotel and along the boardwalk, then back to the footpath beside the convention centre. There was less traffic here, and fewer people were about, although once she reached the end of Sheridan Street and the connecting link to the main Portsmith road there were plenty of commuters in cars heading towards the southern suburbs. Wanting to avoid them, she crossed at the traffic lights and turned into the industrial area. The only traffic here was workers heading home.

  She ran on for another few hundred metres, starting to feel the distance a bit now. Her running clothes were soaked in sweat. She slowed and took a few sips from her water bottle then picked up her pace again, matching her stride to the song in her ears, ‘Dog Days Are Over’. She was not tired. She would run all the way to the bridge over the stormwater canal and past Michel Janvier’s unit then return.

  From behind she heard a car and she moved to the side of the road. It slowed to pass her. A Subaru WRX, jet blue, brand new by the look of it. Tinted windows. With two quite big guys inside. Instinctively the detective in her noted the rego number, and the woman in her looked around – there was no-one else in sight. The car turned right about 100 metres ahead. Probably a security detail checking a factory, she thought. Snazzy car, though. By the time she also took the right-hand turn the car had vanished. Cass ran on – further down this road was the stormwater canal, and by turning right again she’d come back out on the main Portsmith road and could begin her homeward journey.

  She was panting by the time she arrived beside the canal next to Janvier’s unit. She pulled up short. In the parking spot next to the unit was the blue Subaru. The two men were nowhere to be seen. All her training told her that something was up.

  There was a scrawny poinciana tree sprouting beside the canal. She took cover behind this and dialled police headquarters. There was no obvious evidence of anything being amiss here, let alone criminal, but it would be no harm if a squad car checked it out. And she herself would pop across there just as soon as she’d given Di the information.

  A car was on its way, Di said.

  Cass looked across at Janvier’s unit. There was something odd about it. Yes, that was it, there was a small barred window in the side wall. But according to the photos Barwen had showed her there had been no interior window, either in the office or the store. And the building seemed much longer than she’d imagined from the photos – as if there was a room behind the store. But there was no door through there from the office.

  So there must be a back room entered from the narrow passage between the units and the warehouse behind it. Maybe a space that didn’t belong to Janvier. A wooden gate leading into this passage swung half-open. The passage itself was dark from the shadow of the warehouse. That might be where the Subaru men had gone. Of course they might be innocently checking out some other property in the complex, and if so, the duty cops would just leave them to it.

  Cass stepped from behind the tree and silently crossed the bridge. She passed the Subaru and inched around the corner of the building. Cautiously she swung open the gate. And realised – too late – that the men were indeed behind the building. Both were dressed in black. They were in the act of cutting the bolts on a steel door leading into the back of Janvier’s unit. They saw her as she saw them, and they acted at once.

  The bigger one – nearly two metres tall and about 100 kilos – was holding part of the lock in his hand and came straight towards her with the clear intention of smashing it into her face. The other one, smaller but not much, and solid, swung around and prepared to help his mate.

  Cass had several thoughts at once. The squad car was probably several minutes away. There was probably no-one else here in the complex. These guys were serious and they could seriously hurt her. If she told them she was a detective they probably wouldn’t believe her, or even care. She could run, but they might have guns. They did have a car, so they could chase her. She could be dead before the squad car arrived.

  She needed to take some action. Immediately.

  Tae kwon do was technically non-contact but a black-belt holder was expected to have a few tricks up the sleeve of her neatly pressed uniform. As the first guy advanced on her wielding a sharp piece of lock she stepped aside, then performed a double knife-hand strike on his throat, twisting her hand to enhance the technique. The effect was dramatic – he fell to one side, dropped his weapon, and began to vomit. There was no time to lose though: the other guy was lurching towards her. Keeping her arm straight, she closed her fist tight with her thumb around it and brought the first two knuckles into his nose, feeling a deeply satisfying crunch. For good measure she brought her knee hard up into his groin. He screamed and doubled up with pain, staggering away. Sensing that he might come back at her, she grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

  ‘Police!’ she got out between clenched teeth. After a few deep breaths she continued: ‘Detective Diamond. Don’t try anything more, either of you. There’s a squad car on its way and they’ve got your car number. Breaking in, attempted entry, attempted assault of a police officer … you’re gonna have a lot of explaining to do, fellas.’ She was relieved to hear at that moment the sound of a police siren and a few seconds later the squad car appeared. She dragged the smaller guy towards the gate so the two officers could see her.

  ‘Over here!’ she called to the constable getting out of the car. ‘I’ve got them ready for you.’ He broke into a run, but she waved at them to stop.

  ‘I caught them cutting the lock, breaking and entering,’ she said, when the constables reached her. ‘They both tried to attack me. I was forced to defend myself.’

  ‘You took on these two guys?’

  The first constable seized hold of the man with the bleeding nose and held him at arm’s length. ‘Looks like you might have broken something, mate,’ he said. ‘We’ll take you to ED first. Then charge you.’ The man said nothing, he was too busy wiping the blood from his face on his sleeve. The vomiter, still on the ground, just growled sadly.

  ‘You’re working overtime,’ the second constable said to Cass. ‘What is this place?’ He turned around to look at the building. ‘Some kind of warehouse?’

  He made as if to enter the building but Cass stopped him.

  ‘I’m not sure what it is,’ she said, ‘but there’s something here that interested these guys, and it’s probably going to interest us. Can you give Di at switch a call, see who they can send down. Let Inspector Fernando know, if Drew’s not there. He might still be in his office.’

  ‘Jeez,’ said the man with the nosebleed, ‘we ain’t done nothing. We just work for Ji—’

  ‘Shut up!’ said the vomiter suddenly. ‘Don’t say nothing! We don’t work for anybody!’

  ‘All right,’ said the constable calmly, ‘you don’t need to say anything apart from who you are. I’ve some tissues in the car for that nose, and some handcuffs. And when our back-up arrives, we’ll take you boys off.’

  Leslie arrived within ten minutes, to Cass’s great relief. She was feeling pooped after all this excitement. But there was still the question of what was in the building. Soon Troy and Drew arrived, Drew technically off duty, and two scenes-of-crime officers. That was good. If there was something – or someone – in there, they could get to work at once. As the squad car team led the two men away in handcuffs, Cass explained the story b
riefly to the others.

  ‘They’ve made our job easy,’ said Drew, after the technicians had inspected the door. ‘Interesting. It’s flush with the wall, that door, and painted the same charming shade of grey so it’s quite hard to see even where it is. No signs, no number, no information about what’s here. Yet there’s a letterbox in that door.’

  A wide slit for mail had been cut in the upper third of the door. Leslie pushed the door open, and they went in. It was now nearly dark outside, and there was practically no light coming through the tiny barred window that Cass had noticed. One of the officers flashed on his torch, found a light switch and the room lit up.

  The side wall abutting the vacant unit next door was completely covered by a huge video screen. There was a high-quality DVD player on a stand nearby. A laptop was also connected to the viewing equipment. A leather couch was drawn up at a comfortable viewing distance. Against the other three walls were rows of metal shelves, neatly labelled with names and dates. There were Lever Arch files on one shelf, and more stacks of newspapers. There was also a pile of newer shelves, waiting to be put up.

  In the far wall, between the rows of shelves, backing onto Janvier’s storeroom, was a door. Yet there had been no door visible in the back of his storeroom.

  And just inside the entrance was a scattering of buff envelopes. Clearly these had been pushed through the mail slit, and had accumulated over some time.

  All were addressed to ‘The Controller’.

  Paris–Singapore, 2 March 2011

  Lyndall settled herself in Business Class as the plane levelled out high above eastern France. She accepted a second glass of an excellent chablis. Flying Business between Paris and Singapore made up for the harsh necessity of the budget airline from Singapore to Cairns, which was the most direct option.

  Her thoughts turned, as they did so often now, to Bernard. She was delighted that she’d plucked up the courage to call his mother’s number, eighteen months ago now. You’re being ridiculous, she’d told herself, you were just a passing fling. He’s probably even forgotten your name. He will have moved on, with many more women. Very likely married, maybe has children. And was his mother even still alive and living there?

  After two rings the phone had been answered by Madame Maupan, who was in full command of her faculties, had no problem understanding Lyndall’s halting French, and told her to wait a moment, her son was visiting and she would call him in from the garden. Within thirty seconds Lyndall was connected to Bernard who not only proclaimed himself delighted to hear from her, but seemed to intuitively understand her situation. When was she coming to France? he asked.

  Lyndall had not even considered such a thing till then but suddenly it seemed perfectly reasonable. Her house was for sale. She had emptied it of furniture. She’d bought a new apartment in the centre of Cairns so that she could simply lock up and go whenever she wanted. She had leave due from the hospital and could easily find cover for her private practice for three weeks. Before she knew where she was, she had committed herself to going to France in a fortnight. For three weeks. She had never before set foot in Europe. The United States, Bali and Fiji had been the extent of her overseas travels, and always with Trevor.

  In the two weeks before that first visit, as she rushed around renewing her passport, booking flights, arranging her practice, there were flurried email exchanges with Bernard, and then, as they discovered more about each other, increasingly lengthy phone calls.

  He had indeed married. He had also divorced, apparently fairly amicably, four years earlier. His ex-wife had custody of their eight-year-old daughter, whom he saw on a regular basis. There had been a number of women since the divorce, including one who’d lasted two years, but she too had moved on. And although there had been someone else recently, that was all done with too.

  Lyndall, who was forty-two and had only the same unfaithful husband to report on that she’d had at the time of their Australian liaison, had no illusions about any of this. Bernard was thirty-eight and his emailed photos showed him in the prime of his middle years, still with all his hair and as trim around the middle as he’d been at twenty-six. But she was going to France and if things worked out when she got there, well, she would enjoy it while it was on offer, and accept it philosophically when it ended. And if it didn’t work out, well, she was still going to see France.

  She’d learnt that Bernard taught music at a lycée in Clermont-Ferrand, as well as having private pupils and playing in a chamber music group. His mother was living in her own apartment in the centre of the city, but, although spry, she was increasingly dependent on him, which was why he’d stayed in his home town, a charming and sophisticated place, Lyndall found, when she eventually had a chance to explore it.

  She had expected to book herself into a hotel in Clermont-Ferrand, to stay for a few days, and then travel on her own a bit around France. But Bernard announced that he would come to Paris to meet her, make all necessary arrangements, and show her the French capital when she recovered from her jetlag.

  And there he had been, at Charles de Gaulle airport, with a bouquet of lilies and a booking for two rooms in a small and beautiful hotel close to the Palais Royal, with a statue of Molière right outside. A hotel where it quickly turned out that Lyndall’s jetlag was not as bad as had been predicted, and only one room was needed, in which a good deal of champagne was available. It was a full twenty-four hours before they re-emerged onto the streets of the city, and Lyndall felt twenty-three again.

  Since then she’d been to France four times. Over the eighteen months the relationship had deepened and her French had improved, but she still wondered how long-term it would be. His mother’s need for him meant that Bernard could not contemplate coming to Australia, although they’d managed some wonderful weekends in different parts of France. So far it had been very much up to Lyndall to make the long journey between the two countries. And of course she had no idea what he might be doing when she was not there. For the moment though, she was happy just to enjoy things as they were.

  She put down her glass and took out her laptop. She must think about what she would say to that detective when she got back to Cairns. She had not given a single thought to Dominic Janvier for years, and very few to Michel outside of working hours. Opening the computer, she created a new folder labelled ‘Janvier’. Then she made a new file which she called ‘Dominic’. She thought about this for a moment. She then opened another new file, called ‘Michel’, and began to type into it. She would make notes now, she thought, so that she had it all in order when she arrived home, undoubtedly jet-lagged. If the police were treating Odile’s death as a murder they would want information sooner rather than later. She’d need to think about what information she could give them, and what was confidential.

  Michel Janvier. Lyndall had first met him at the end of 2000, when he came with Dominic for consultations. It didn’t surprise her that it was Dominic’s father, not his mother, who brought him along. Odile had been an appalling parent. At the beginning, Michel seemed self-absorbed. It was only after she’d had several meetings with his son that Michel asked if he could see her himself. She’d been reluctant but he’d said he needed help and would see her privately. It was true, he did need help. And he still does, thought Lyndall, if he’s still alive, but he was never ready to accept the kind of help he needed.

  She’d quickly learnt that his French family was wealthy, in some kind of timber and construction business. There was also quite a lot of inherited family money. In a narrow sense, Michel was quite intelligent. He’d finished school but he failed his final exams, which didn’t please his family, and which meant he didn’t go to university. He did his national service and started working in the family firm when he was about nineteen. He was not particularly good at this and there was tension with his father.

  What happened then? Lyndall cast her mind back to those first sessions with Michel. Ah yes … things went further downhill when it was discovered that he was siphon
ing money from the firm’s accounts and also from the account of a long-time client and family friend. The client made a fuss, went to the local police, and Michel was charged with fraud. Michel had made no secret of this with Lyndall. One day he left home with nothing but his passport, and used some of the stolen money for a one-way ticket to Australia. This must have been in the late 1970s when immigration rules were more relaxed, Lyndall thought.

  Michel made his way to outback Queensland and worked there doing various building jobs, she seemed to remember. Certainly he had obtained permanent Australian residence and then citizenship. Lyndall was no longer sure in what order things happened, but at some point his father appeared in Australia and found him. His mother had died, his father had somehow arranged to pay off the defrauded client and had the charges lifted, and he wanted Michel to come home. Michel agreed to do so only if his father gave him a regular allowance and a nominal role in the affairs of the company. Lyndall recalled that this caused a good deal of argument with the father, not surprisingly, but the result was that Michel did go back to France.

  However it seems he hadn’t changed. Somehow he met Odile – was that on a train somewhere? She couldn’t remember the details. Anyway, he fell passionately in love with her. After the war her family had moved to where Michel’s family lived. They moved because her grandfather was a prominent supporter of the pro-Nazi Vichy government during the war and after the war he went to prison for a long spell. It was quite a notorious case in France. As a result, Michel’s family strongly disapproved of Odile’s family and the marriage, which made Michel more determined to go ahead with it.