Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  ‘There’s no way,’ said Cass, ‘that he’s slipped out of Tasmania, arrived secretly in Cairns using a ticket not bought on his credit card, hired a car not with his credit card or licence, kidnapped his mother, killed her, ditto his father, then returned to Hobart in time to cook dinner on Tuesday evening. Hobart have established this without a doubt.’

  Damian proved to be an engaging young man with thick dark hair, carefully gelled and spiked, and a tattoo of a lizard over his left biceps. He arrived precisely at nine in Cass’s office and sat down at the table where Lyndall and Drew were already seated.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to come up here in these circumstances …’ began Cass, but Damian shook his head.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but it’s a long time since I had anything to do with my parents. Especially my mother. She was … what can I say?’ He spread out his hands. ‘She was just so not like anyone else’s mother I’ve ever met, I guess.’ He looked across at Lyndall. ‘Doctor Symonds, you must know. Dom told me he trusted you. I went to see him in Wellington yesterday. He remembers you.’ Lyndall nodded at this.

  ‘OK,’ said Cass. ‘Well, as you know, we did have to check where you were around the end of January. That was routine. You are positively not suspected of being directly involved in your mother’s death. We don’t know about your father. We don’t know where he is. We don’t think you do either. But you may have some knowledge or ideas that might help us find him, and get to the bottom of this. So I want to ask you now: have you had any contact at all with your father in the past six months and in particular since the last week of January? Have you seen him, spoken by phone, received emails or in any other way had any news of him?’

  ‘No,’ said Damian immediately. ‘I haven’t spoken to either of my parents for more than a year. I did come up here to try to talk to them at the end of the year before last. 2009. When Dom first went to Wellington. I thought my father might go to see him there. Not my mother. But she practically threw me out of the house before I could even suggest it.

  ‘I only spent a few minutes there. Dad hardly said a word. He was always scared of her. But that time he seemed more so, terrified even. And they both seemed to have become really weird. Almost cut off from reality, from the rest of the world. Behind that wall that he must have built himself around the house. They seemed to hardly know who I was. Well, of course I’d made it that way. Dom and I left more than ten years ago now.’

  ‘How is Dominic?’ asked Lyndall. ‘You saw him yesterday? You stay in touch with him?’

  ‘Yeah, I stopped over in Sydney and went up to Wellington. He’s doing OK. You know, he just might even be better now our mother’s dead. He’s in for four years, he’s done two and he’s had good behaviour reports. He’s doing some courses in there, trying to make up for missing so much school. I want him to come to Tassie when he gets out. Get away from the drug scene. That’s what I was telling him yesterday. My girlfriend, Katie, she knows my brother’s inside, she’s totally cool with it.’

  ‘You spoke about your mother’s death?’ asked Lyndall.

  ‘Yeah. I think he’s really shocked by it. By the idea that someone must have taken her into the bush and killed her. Not because our mother is dead. But by the idea of her being murdered. Like, he’s done a few things in his life that were not totally legal. Obviously. But this, it makes you think, well, what had she done to the person who did that to her? Because we know, me and Dom, that she could do bad things to people.’

  ‘Who did she do bad things to?’ asked Cass.

  ‘More to Dom than me,’ answered Damian. ‘Dom used to stand up for me. He would get between us if she was trying to smack me. If she tied me up he would try to untie me.’

  ‘She tied you up?’ Cass asked.

  ‘Yeah. That was one of her special punishments. When we were little. Once Dom was seven or eight, she couldn’t do it to him any more. He was stronger than her by then. And he would stop her tying me too. But she also did bad things to our Dad. Like I said, he was scared of her. In a funny way. Kind of like a puppy. Always trying to please her and never succeeding and then being kind of happy when she told him off.

  ‘I remember once when I was very small, maybe the earliest thing I remember, him coming home with some flowers for her. A bunch in silver paper. And she took them and threw them back at him and they scattered all over the floor. He got down and picked them up and I saw the expression on his face – like he was going to cry, yet somehow this was what he’d wanted. It’s that look that always comes into my head when I think of him now.’

  ‘So how did you deal with all this?’ asked Lyndall.

  ‘I was lucky,’ said Damian. ‘I had, still have, a really good mate here. Frankie. He lives in Smithfield. That’s where I’m staying now. We used to live in Smithfield; Frankie lived down the road. I spent all the time I could in their house. Big Italian family. He had four sisters and a little brother, they’re all grown up now. Their family was just light years from ours. A normal family. His mum was more like a mother to me than my real mum ever was. Silvia. She’s great. She taught me to cook – that’s where I first learnt. My mother never cooked – she made Dad do it. He had to do everything – cooking, washing, cleaning, and he could never do it good enough for her. She was always on at him about it. And I don’t think she ever cared how much time I spent at Frankie’s place.

  ‘Plus I had Dom looking out for me as well, at school. The only reason I ended up in court’ – here he looked across at Lyndall – ‘was because I wanted to be with Dom. I don’t do drugs. And the reasons Dom got into drugs were all to do with our mother. They made him happy, for a while, and he made money that he could use to buy things for other kids, so they would be friends with him. Simple as that.

  ‘Yeah, I try to stay in touch with him. We stayed together when we were first in Sydney. I needed him; I was fifteen. I got different jobs. So did Dom, a bit, but, well, obviously you know, he was dealing. He could make a lot more doing that. Then I got into TAFE, and finished school, and did hospitality. I met other people, and moved into a sharehouse. One of the tenants was Katie. She’s from Tassie, which is how I’m there. But I’ve been back twice to see Dom since he went to Wellington, as well as yesterday. And we talk on the phone when he’s able to call. I can’t call him.’

  ‘Do you know if he’s had any contact with your father since he’s been in gaol?’ Lyndall asked.

  ‘I’m 100 per cent sure no,’ said Damian. ‘He was, um, not exactly pissed off at me, for trying to see them, but he just said, “Look, forget it, that’s all in the past”.’

  ‘Obviously we are putting a lot of effort into looking for your father,’ Drew said. ‘Do you have any ideas at all about what might have happened? About where he might have gone? Anyone in Australia he might have contacted or who might be sheltering him? Anyone in France he might have spoken to?’

  Damian was silent for a few minutes. Then he said: ‘First, I have to get my head around the idea that maybe my father killed my mother. I’ve been thinking about it since I got the news. Because … how to explain? I don’t hate my father. I feel sorry for him, if I feel anything at all. It’s been so long since he was part of my life. But I didn’t hate him when I was growing up. I just wanted him to be different. Sometimes he would take us for walks, in the bush, up on the Tablelands or in the range. He’d take me and Dom. And for a while it would seem we were, like, normal people. A normal family. The Janvier kids and their dad. Then we would go home and the dynamics would all change back again.

  ‘And I don’t think Dom hates him, not now at least. Maybe he did once. But I think he feels like me. And like I said, he’s put it in the past.

  ‘I can’t really say that Dad didn’t kill her, because I just don’t know. He was always put down by her. But he adored her, he would kiss the ground she walked on. He bought her everything she wanted. Clothes and shoes and makeup, mostly. French perfume. You probably know that. You’ve seen their house. I wasn
’t there long that time I went but I saw it was full of her stuff, the same as the house where we lived in Smithfield. She was nuts about her appearance. Every day she dressed up like she was going to a wedding. And then she’d just hang around Cairns Central. Try on dresses and drink coffee. On her own.’ He paused and considered for a moment.

  ‘Friends? They never had any real friends in Cairns when we were growing up. Or anywhere else in Australia that I know of. Dad knew a few people who he’d worked with on a property out west, and a few he used to bushwalk with, but even before Dom and I left Cairns he’d stopped seeing them. But who he might have got to know in the last ten years I have no idea. He could have joined one of those cults, done all kinds of weird things and I just wouldn’t know.

  ‘I’m pretty sure he’s not close to anyone in France anymore, though. I never knew what happened but basically his father pays him to stay away. My mother got ditched by some other guy and married Dad on the rebound. When they had fights we’d hear all about it. How she should have married this doctor but her cousin stole him from her. How that was supposed to be Dad’s fault I never understood. But it was a big deal between them.

  ‘The only thing I can suggest since he’s missing and the car is missing is that he’s gone bush. He’s pretty good in the bush. He can shoot and fish and look after himself.’

  ‘Shoot?’ asked Drew quickly. ‘He doesn’t have a gun licence. We checked that.’

  Damian raised his eyebrows. ‘Well he certainly had a rifle and several guns when we were kids. He did his time in the French Army. National service. He learned how to use a gun. I would have thought he still had one. Or more than one. Licence or no licence. He used to shoot kangaroos. Rabbits. Ducks. He was a good shot.’

  Damian thought for a moment then added: ‘I think if you haven’t found any guns it’s because he will have made a secret hiding place. Probably in the backyard or the shed, if there’s a shed there at Earlville. He did that in Smithfield, he mostly built that house himself and he made a lot of hiding places. He dug a hole in the backyard and covered it with a vegetable patch in a planter box, and he put the guns there. He thought Dom and I didn’t know but we did. We were always too scared to dig it up and have a look. There was no way he wouldn’t have known if we’d done it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Drew, mentally cursing himself for not having thought of this earlier, and making a note to get the Earlville house checked for guns as soon as they’d finished with Damian. The man who’d made the concealed door in Portsmith and probably set up the surveillance of Odile’s trysts was obviously a master of the techniques of camouflage. Maybe he’d learnt something about those as well as about guns in his time in the French Army.

  ‘So any ideas about where he might go? Would he stay in Queensland? Or the Northern Territory, maybe? New South Wales?’

  ‘He’s really only ever been in Queensland as far as I know,’ said Damian. ‘Even when he first came here. He was out near the Gulf, and on the Tablelands, and in Cairns. That’s why they came back here. My mother had no idea what she was coming to. She thought they’d have some huge property. Staff to do all the work. He must have spun her a story in France. That was another thing she’d go on about.’

  Lyndall nodded.

  ‘How long are you staying in Cairns?’ asked Drew.

  ‘My boss gave me a week. I didn’t know what I’d have to do here. I guess I’ll have to arrange, I don’t know, some kind of funeral. I don’t know anything about how you do that.’

  ‘That can all be done for you by a funeral company. Once her body’s been released – and that may take some time. You should also get yourself a solicitor here. There’s a list at the front desk, ask Di or Tracy there. Because you’ll have to deal with your mother’s estate if we don’t find your father. And I have to say, as I’m sure you understand, we may not find him. And, well, he too may be dead. So perhaps try to prepare yourself for that.’

  Damian nodded. ‘One thing: do I have to go to the house?’

  ‘The Earlville house? You don’t have to go there. You don’t want to?’

  ‘No. I’ve only been there that once. That house, it’s kind of isolated from the street. From the rest of the world. What would happen to it, if my dad’s not found?’

  ‘I think it would become yours and Dominic’s,’ answered Cass, ‘but I can imagine there would be a lot of legal paperwork and time involved. And of course we still have to find out what happened to your mother.’

  ‘But,’ put in Lyndall, ‘there are people, services, who would clear the house out for you, if you couldn’t do it yourselves. You don’t have to worry about it.’

  ‘It all seems unreal,’ said Damian. ‘Just finding out what’s happened, and where my father is, is all I can manage at the moment.’

  ‘Well thanks for coming in,’ said Cass. ‘We have your mobile number; we’ll call you if we have any news. Or any other questions. And let us know when you’re going back to Hobart.’

  They shook hands and Damian left. When the door was closed Drew said to the two women: ‘He seems as straight as a die.’

  Lyndall nodded. ‘And remarkably unharmed by his upbringing. There’s one thing that struck me, though. And that’s his feeling that his father wouldn’t kill his mother. He talked about him almost worshipping her, kissing the ground and so on. I know you two were sceptical when I said the same thing, that I couldn’t imagine him killing her. And you’ve met more killers than I have, though I’ve met a few. But it’s something that Damian feels instinctively even after ten years away from them. I haven’t seen Michel often but I have seen him professionally and fairly recently and that’s also the gut feeling I get. So maybe there’s another explanation.’

  While Cass and Drew were talking with Damian, Leslie had been meeting with Arthur Mellish.

  Leslie had met Mellish on several occasions over the years. When Leslie’s daughter Lily was eight, Mellish had operated to remove her appendix. Inside her, rather than appendicitis, he’d found something very rare called a Meckel’s diverticulum: a bit like an extra appendix, he’d explained. He’d removed this and her appendix at the same time, so that she didn’t get appendicitis in the future. ‘Par for the course,’ he’d told Leslie and Claudine, following the surgery. To Lily he’d said she’d now be able to go to Antarctica; you had to have your appendix removed before you could work there. ‘Ready for battle, young lady,’ he’d said. Lily had liked that idea.

  Leslie had found the doctor polite, but reserved. By their second meeting, when Mellish did some painful but necessary things to a hernia Leslie had developed, Leslie had realised this was entirely a matter of skin colour. Mellish had no idea how to talk to someone who wasn’t white. Or at least, no idea that it was just the same as talking to someone who was the same pinky-grey shade of white as Mellish himself.

  Having sat through the Mellish video the previous evening, Leslie had not been surprised to hear that the man had called. He was also not surprised when Mellish called again on Friday morning just as Leslie got into his office. At the other end of the line the doctor was not his usual bluff self.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Inspector. I … ah … you know I’ve arranged to come and have a word with you? I’d, ah, rather explain in person what it’s about. I’m a bit … on the ropes, so to speak.’

  ‘I’m happy to see you, Doctor. Your appointment is for ten o’clock. You’re OK to come down to my office, or shall I come to see you?’

  ‘Oh definitely I’ll come down to Sheridan Street. That is – there wouldn’t be any of those reporter chappies hanging about there, for any reason, would there?’

  ‘No no, anything for the press is done via our media unit. Just go to the front desk and tell Di or Tracy that I’m expecting you.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. As it happens, it’s been a bit of a knockout punch.’

  Leslie crossed the room and picked up the file labelled Dr Arthur Mellish that Cass had prepared the previous day.

  Rec
alling his consultations with Mellish, he wondered what were the odds, that in his opening sentences Mellish would describe Odile Janvier as having moved the goalposts …

  But Mellish, when he arrived, continued with images from the ring. And for a while he came out of the corner swinging and stood toe-to-toe with Leslie. It seemed he was taking it on the chin.

  ‘This unfortunate woman who was found in the rainforest. Mrs Janvier. Bit of a low blow for her family, what? I just wanted to tell you that she was a patient of mine.’

  ‘Really? Are you able to tell me anything about her? As you probably know we are still investigating the case.’

  ‘She came to see me several times – referred by Trevor Symonds, poor chap. With bellyaches. Very consistent story for gallbladder stones. Only problem was we couldn’t see any stones on her ultrasound. But several times she came back with this same story. A lot of pain, just exactly where you’d expect it with gallbladder colic.

  ‘She’s a damn persuasive woman. Ah, I mean she was … an attractive woman, but a dark horse. She kept coming back to see me. Wanting her gallbladder out. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally I threw in the towel and took out the gallbladder. Precious little wrong with it.’

  ‘It does seem,’ said Leslie, ‘that she had a fascination for doctors …’ He looked across at Mellish, who slowly began to change colour.

  Leslie continued: ‘I have to tell you, Doctor, that since Wednesday evening my team has been going through a large amount of material found in premises belonging to the late Mrs Janvier’s husband. We haven’t yet been able to locate Mr Janvier himself. We don’t know whether he is alive or dead. But we do know that over the past few years he has used, ah, compromising images of a number of Cairns doctors, and others, for the purpose of blackmail. Apparently very successfully.’