Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  Most of this Lyndall had heard from Michel, over several consultations. The man always tended to ramble so it was hard to know exactly what happened when. Some she had first heard from Dominic. Michel’s version was different from Dominic’s. Dominic had just told her the simple facts as he knew them. Michel, Lyndall thought now, painted his father as the devil incarnate, whereas he was probably just a pretty straightforward bourgeois Frenchman whose family had hated the Vichy government, and who had worked hard to expand a business he wanted to hand on to his only son.

  It was Dominic who told her the details about his parents’ marriage. He said Odile agreed to marry his father when she was on the rebound. She was engaged to be married to a young doctor. They had an engagement party which her cousin attended. Within days, the engagement with Odile was broken off and the doctor was engaged, and soon married, to the cousin. This in Dominic’s opinion was the source of Odile’s obsession with doctors.

  Dominic also said that his father told his mother that if they were married he would take her to Australia where she would be the mistress of a large property, a cattle station out west, with a staff of servants at her disposition and the life of a lady. It was supposedly on the basis of this that she agreed to marry him. But although Michel had an allowance from his father it did not extend to anything like such a lifestyle. So he tried again to cook the books of the company, only this time for a larger sum, and was caught by his father before he could take the money, and Odile, out of France. This time, as Lyndall remembered it, the police were not called but Michel’s father told him that he was to leave France and never darken his door again, etcetera. He would get a modest allowance, but he would also have to work to support his wife. His father arranged his affairs so that Michel would inherit virtually nothing.

  Michel then took Odile to Australia, to Cairns where he’d spent some time. However, instead of being mistress of a grand domain, Odile found herself in a breezeblock bungalow that Michel himself was building, far from a bus route, in Smithfield. Very soon she also had two children.

  When she first heard this aspect of the story Lyndall had felt some sympathy for Odile’s position, although it was not all that different from the situation of many young women in Australia. Or for that matter in France. That sympathy evaporated when Lyndall discovered how she had treated those children. Odile Janvier was possibly the worst mother she had ever come across in all the years she had practiced psychiatry.

  Lyndall put aside her laptop to accept an entrée of lobster mousse, and another glass of wine, thinking about what she could note down next. She meditated on her professional diagnosis regarding Michel. It was a complicated story. Michel was a walking collection of psychiatric disorders. It would be better to wait until she spoke to the detectives. Michel might be dead, in which case the details of his sexual obsessions would be irrelevant.

  An Air France attendant was offering a choice of chicken or fish. Lyndall selected the trout with almonds. She saved her notes, closed the laptop and put it aside. Michel Janvier could wait. She gave herself up entirely to the pleasures of French cuisine and thoughts of Bernard.

  Cairns, 3 March 2011

  Leslie had planned an evening out that night with his wife. Dinner at the Taj Mahal and maybe a movie if there was something worth seeing. One look at Michel Janvier’s secret hideaway told him that those plans were on hold and that he would have to reschedule with Claudine.

  Drew and Troy were looking bemused but already Leslie was pretty sure of what they’d stumbled on, although the how and why of it had yet to be discovered.

  ‘This looks like cash,’ Troy surveyed the bulky envelopes. ‘Lots of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Leslie said. ‘As soon as we have prints we can look at some of this. I think what we’ve got here is a nice little earner for a Frenchman. Something that even I know the French for. Chantage. Singing. Somehow Michel Janvier’s got people singing.’

  He thought a moment and then added: ‘Or is it both the Janviers?’

  Cass’s face cleared. ‘Blackmail,’ she translated for her colleagues. She looked more closely at the shelves. Each one was labelled with a single name and on each was a Lever Arch file and several CDs or DVDs with hand-written labels.

  ‘Crikey!’ she said. ‘Look at these names! That one I don’t know, but look: Dr Wilfred Lam!’

  ‘Yep,’ said Drew. ‘I’m looking. Reads like a Who’s Who for Far North Queensland.’

  ‘Men,’ said Cass slowly.

  Troy looked at her. ‘Men?’

  ‘They’re all men. All men’s names. This is something to do with porn?’

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ said Leslie. ‘First, what’s in the envelopes? And then what’s in those videos? Meanwhile, let’s have a look at that door.’

  They studied the door between the hidden room and the front office. Prints had already been taken from the handle. Drew tried to turn it but it was fixed. Then he noticed a button on the wall. He pressed it and the door slid to the left. Immediately behind was the back of the cupboard in Janvier’s storeroom. As Drew watched, a concealed mechanism slowly moved the cupboard to the left until he could step directly into the storeroom. Not only had the cupboard moved sideways, the shelves which concealed the mechanism when the door was closed had moved forward, so that the cupboard fitted against the wall behind the shelves. But why had Janvier, presumably, done this?

  The scenes-of-crime officers were working quickly. Drew was handed one of the envelopes and a Stanley knife.

  ‘Hold that by its edges, Detective, and open it with the knife.’

  Drew slit the top of the A4 envelope. Inside were twenty used $50 notes. He looked at the pile of envelopes on the floor and whistled.

  ‘This must be Janvier’s collection for the past four weeks,’ he said. ‘If each of these contains a thousand bucks that’s about $5000 in cash here. More than $60,000 a year, if it’s the ongoing arrangement I’m beginning to suspect it is. Even if there’s less it’s a lot of cash. Enough to keep Madame in her extensive wardrobe.’

  He looked carefully around the room.

  ‘The explanation must be on the videos,’ he said. ‘And it’s probably not a pretty one. Rather than run any of them through Janvier’s state-of-the-art movie player here I want all of this bagged and labelled and taken to headquarters. Every last piece, with a description of where it was found. We’re going to have to work right through the next few days I’m afraid. But given we’ve got a body, a missing man and a probably-related suicide we have no option.

  ‘Cass,’ he turned to her, ‘you’ve done well. But you’re going to have to do more. Take one of the cars and go home and get changed and eat, then come back here. There’s several hours’ work in this.’ Looking down, Cass realised that she was still in her running clothes.

  ‘Right,’ she said, accepting the keys. She was glad she’d be involved. Having met Dr Lam, and given his abrupt departure from the world, she was particularly interested in what the file might have on him. She stepped outside. There were police cars parked out in Janvier’s parking space as well as on the other side of the bridge. There were also numerous police working in the room behind her, but for the moment she was alone in the lane at the back of the building.

  Her attention was caught by a movement to her left, further along the complex, beyond the panelbeaters’ unit. It was dark and it took a moment to focus on the spot. Then she realised there was a man there. The moment he saw that he’d been seen, he turned and ran, down the complex and away from the canal.

  ‘Not again!’ she thought. ‘Stop! Police!’ she shouted and gave one loud thump on the closed door behind her to attract Drew’s attention before starting out after the man. He’d reached the end of the units, where a security light had come on, and she could see that he was probably in his fifties. Then he turned the corner and disappeared. She was twenty years younger and conveniently dressed for active pursuit. She reached the corner in seconds and saw him heading for a car parked
on the roadside.

  ‘Stop! Police!’ she shouted again and, redoubling her efforts, came up beside him. This time there was no need for karate chops. She simply swung her fist to within six inches of his nose and shouted Ki-Yupp! with a fervour her tae kwon do instructor would have been proud of. The man stopped still, dropped his car keys and doubled up in pain, whimpering like a puppy.

  Thundering behind Cass came two officers plus Drew – all in all an alarming sight, she thought. Two uniformed policemen, a six-foot-tall ex-basketballer and a black woman in running gear suddenly appear out of nowhere, chasing a guy probably only intent on a little break-and-entry on a Thursday night. The man stopped whimpering but was still bent over, catching his breath. Plainly he didn’t get enough regular exercise.

  Coming along behind the others at a more leisurely pace was Leslie. As he arrived the man began to recover and stood up straight. Leslie stepped back in astonishment.

  ‘Dr Jolley!’ he said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  Paris–Singapore, 3 March 2011

  Lyndall finished her orange tart and accepted a small glass of Cointreau to follow. She’d found it easy to adopt certain French customs. She pressed the buttons that turned her seat into a luxurious bed, and stretched out. She planned to sleep for at least eight hours.

  When she awoke, it was to the aroma of breakfast and they were three hours from Singapore. With breakfast behind her, and a wash and tidy up, she found herself with two hours to go. She would look back at her notes on Michel Janvier.

  She opened her laptop and thought for a while. Why should she not tell the woman detective with the jewel of a name about the scarves? If Odile’s body had been found with a Hermès scarf tied to it then an explanation of that peculiarity of her husband’s was going to be needed anyway.

  It seemed to have begun as a simple attachment for something that Odile often wore. Although, thought Lyndall, for a woman in her early twenties in the 1980s it was a singular choice. Lyndall had never felt any inclination to own a Hermès scarf, but she was sure they were expensive.

  They seemed to be an emblem of a certain type of lifestyle – establishment, horses, dogs, chateaux, apartments in fashionable parts of Paris (or houses in fashionable parts of Sydney or Melbourne, for that matter.) They also seemed more suited to women of the age that Odile was now. Or had been. Hell, thought Lyndall, I do need to remember that the woman is dead. Possibly in horrible circumstances.

  A Hermès scarf was also an unusual fashion item in tropical Queensland. Yet, over the past ten or so years, on the few occasions when Lyndall had seen the person she had realised must be Odile Janvier, she had indeed been wearing a Hermès scarf. Usually with a smart suit and high heels. Those were the things that made her stand out, sitting on her own in a coffee shop in Cairns Central, with every other woman in the place including Lyndall dressed in cargo pants or shorts and T-shirts. She was also perfectly groomed and heavily made-up. Michel had told Lyndall that his wife spent hours each morning getting dressed and doing her makeup. This, in order to go nowhere more exciting than Myer and Gloria Jean’s, and visit the hairdresser and beauty parlour, and for the occasional private Pilates session, which was how Michel described the fleshing out of his wife’s day.

  Lyndall added her notes on the significance of the Hermès scarf to the bottom of her short account of Michel Janvier. It was really only to get her own thoughts straight, anyway. She could choose what she wanted to tell the police when she got back to Cairns. When she knew a bit more about what had happened, and whether Michel himself had been found. She pushed the Air France headphones into her ears and spent the last hour before Singapore half-asleep, with Mozart flowing softly into her head. If she felt up to it en route to Cairns she would make some notes about Dominic.

  Cairns, 4 March 2011

  On Thursday night, Drew and his team, plus an increasing number of technical staff, worked through. They had bagged and taken to Sheridan Street all the computer equipment, files and envelopes in Janvier’s hideaway. On Friday morning, Leslie called a team meeting together with all the tech staff, in their lab, for an interim report. Everyone was red-eyed with fatigue.

  ‘You know most people use passwords that are dead easy,’ Gino, one of the technical staff, had told Cass the night before. ‘You got any suggestions for this guy?’

  ‘Hmm … what about trying “Hermès”?’ she suggested.

  Ten seconds later Gino gave a cry: ‘Eureka! Brilliant, Detective!’

  ‘Proves your point, I guess,’ answered Cass. ‘But also tells us that Michel Janvier was pretty interested in Hermès scarves. Which is what the psych told us.’

  Gino now told the team: ‘Even without the password we were able to open all the folders and download the files. Which we’ve put one by one on separate USB sticks for you all. And matched them to the emails. Already we know there’s some damn hot stuff on the videos. Not pretty. I’m glad it’s you people who are going to have to watch all this and not me.’

  ‘How big are the files?’

  ‘There are videos – thirty, forty minutes long – and short clips. Then there are emails. The guy’s had about forty or fifty email addresses over the past few years. He’s deleted most of the emails in the “Sent” boxes but we can go in the back and retrieve these. That’s what Mark’s doing right now.’ He indicated his colleague in the corner.

  ‘What’s on this laptop seems to be a duplicate of what’s on Gino’s,’ Mark said. ‘We’ve got a long way to go through all this. But we’re starting to see a pattern.’

  Drew had inserted one of the USB sticks into a spare computer in the corner. The others pulled up chairs as the first of Michel Janvier’s creations began to roll.

  Dr Wilfred Lam’s name appeared on the screen. Then there was footage of Dr Lam’s surgery, taken from across the building’s car park. To dispel any doubt, the camera lingered on the sign: Dr Wilfred Lam BDS. Dental Surgeon. Cosmetic Dentistry. The time of the filming was noted, 5.30 pm, 14 June 2006. The filming was slightly shaky but the images were clear. After a moment Cass saw Leanne, the receptionist, come out of the building, soon followed by another woman in a white uniform, presumably Lam’s dental nurse, Rhonda.

  There were a few moments of inactivity in the car park, then the women drove away in separate cars.

  Next, the back view of another woman appeared on the screen, walking towards the steps leading up to the surgery. She could be seen only from behind but her dark hair was sleeked back and held in place with a band. She wore high heels, fishnet stockings and a suit. Around her neck was tied a scarf. No, Cass corrected herself. Not tied. Draped.

  Odile Janvier.

  She disappeared up the steps and into the building.

  Now the camera seemed to change. There was footage of – what? Blurred images that cleared and then a door opened and a figure swam into view. Wilfred Lam. He came closer and Cass realised that the camera must have been in, or attached to, Odile Janvier’s handbag. It was recording continuously as she moved towards the dentist. He disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, in focus, walking ahead of Odile into the room where Cass had interviewed him. Odile hesitated a moment; maybe she was shutting the door. Then she must have set the bag down on a chair beside her. There was now an excellent view of Wilfred Lam and a partial view of Odile talking across his desk to him. There was no sound, but she appeared animated and smiling. He too was smiling, he shook his head a little as though she had complimented him in some way that he appreciated but didn’t want to seem too flattered by. This went on for some minutes.

  Then there was a sudden flurry of activity.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said Drew. ‘Did you see what I saw?’

  He pressed stop and rewind, and went back to where Odile was still talking. Then, yes, they had all seen what Drew had seen. Now they saw it again.

  She casually undraped her scarf, and then in an instant was on his side of the desk, where she tied his hand to the back of his chair in o
ne swift movement, then flung her leg over his lap, straddling him, and began to kiss him hard on the mouth. His free hand flailed in the air but he did not resist, in fact it quickly came to rest on her right leg, tracing a path upwards under her skirt and revealing the garter holding up her stocking. He tugged frantically at this and after a moment she removed her mouth from his and stood up, hitching up her skirt. She unzipped his fly, then bent down. The camera could take in only a partial view but there was no doubt from Wilfred Lam’s delighted expression what was happening.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Drew. ‘Giving your dentist a blow job – that’s a new take on oral sex!’

  ‘Maybe she just wanted to show him how good his dental work was,’ said Gino.

  The sequence continued for what they later learned was 70 seconds but seemed much longer. Cass really did not enjoy this kind of stuff although she knew the Internet was awash with home videos of porn. She could see that her male colleagues, although joking and somewhat aroused, were also pretty pissed off. They were all wondering – what was done with this material? Was it the source of the cash-stuffed envelopes? Had it been used to blackmail Wilfred Lam? The answer seemed unavoidable.

  The segment came to an end and the screen went blank. But soon there was a second, different date but the same initial sequence: departure of Leanne and Rhonda and arrival of Odile Janvier. This time Wilfred Lam was prepared. He sat grinning in his chair and put out his arm to be tied to his chair with the scarf. He was obviously willing to have his trousers removed. The rear view of Odile showed her hitching her skirt to her waist to reveal sheer black stockings and suspenders but an absence of other underwear. She straddled the dentist, clenched her buttocks and began to move rhythmically on top of him. Drew pressed Escape.