She strode away, back to the crossing, and Bec did not follow. She watched the movement of her, the swing through shoulders and waist, bottom and legs. Girlfriend of a dead gangster, Zames was reacting just as she should, pretty much. There’d been that moment of uncertainty, she hadn’t imagined that—but it could mean anything.
Bec groaned and stared out to sea, went over the whole case, pointlessly, as it grew dark. Stared up at the stars of the Milky Way that never changed: sometimes you couldn’t see them all, but they were still there. The problem down here was that things weren’t just hard to see, but moved from where you thought you’d left them.
Mate, on Friday night after Rafi gave his alibi we was having a celebration at the home. The trial was almost sorted and it was the time to be giving a big thank you to Salim because he was the one who had been working out all this stuff about the medical certificate and the aunt’s cancer and all. Farid was not at the house because of business, and the mama was staying at Lakemba in case the jacks came looking for her, to ask about the aunty in Beirut, but everyone else was there. Salim was like the guest of honour with everyone telling him how smart he was and talking about how the jacks would be racing around all weekend trying to find out stuff in Lebanon and they would find shit because everyone knows it is not their country. And Dalia being in London on holidays anyway.
During all the celebrations I was watching Farid’s wife Reem who was there too. She is a very beautiful woman although you cannot see it so easily now because of all the clothes she is wearing. In my memory Reem had been the party girl always with the short skirts and with the most beautiful long black hair in the world. Since having their first child Oulah she has started to wear the scarf though and long dresses. Her whole life is changing and I can see she is becoming a much more serious girl, like a woman. Once when I is asking my sister Shada about this she is telling me Reem has changed because she is now a mother and stuff and almost thirty. She is telling me, John, this is one of the things people do when they get older, they is settling down and becoming aware of the importance of religion in life.
But the next week Shada told me it is not really Reem who is doing this by herself but Farid, he is the one telling her to wear the scarf and all because he is getting more religious and she is doing these things as a dutiful wife. I is surprised by this, because it is not the thing she is telling me about this same matter before. I have noticed this about Shada though, how she is the smartest person I know but sometimes she is telling you completely different things. When you is pointing this out to her she is not minding at all and just gives me this expression with her eyes as if I am stupid, not her. Life is not a straight line, she is saying, it is a mosaic. I am knowing what to think about most things but I am not knowing what to think about this.
Anyway I am telling her this is all wrong, Farid telling Reem what to wear and I would never tell Dani what clothes she must be wearing, but Shada is telling me not to be dumb, there is things a dutiful wife must be doing and don’t I think Dani would be a dutiful wife if I married her and do what I want? Then Shada is giving me the stupid look again and walking away, except I see she is about to cry and I am confused again, which I always am with the women in my family so what’s new.
At this celebration after court I am sitting on the sofa when Jamila sits down next to me with her little boy and we start to talk. I love my sister so much it was hard when she left home to marry Salim. But the papa was telling me then it is not the family is getting smaller when someone marries but it is getting bigger, because they is really bringing in new members and making new members too when they have babies, so the family is growing stronger every year.
I say to her, You must be so proud the way Salim has handled all this. Farid is telling me on the phone this afternoon that he is telling all his people Salim Soufi is a guy who can get things done. He will be getting so much work out of all of this. Jamila says, Oh, John, our life is so good, we are so lucky. Salim is so happy spending his whole life defending all these lovely people. Well I can see this is what the teachers at school told us was called sarcasm, and Jamila has always been one for it so you have to listen to her carefully. I say, What is this thing you are trying to tell me, sister? and she is suddenly saying how Salim is going to have to leave this legal company he works at. I ask if the other lawyers there is racist and upset about him defending all the people and she says it is not that. Farid has been telling Salim he cannot defend any other families and these other lawyers she calls partners has been telling him they want him to work for anyone who pays them. Farid is ringing up one of these partners and having an argument with him and now Salim has to leave the business.
This is okay, I say. Farid will look after him he can start his own business. She says, This being a lawyer is not like a family business, John, it is like . . . She stops for a moment and is thinking, and I see she is very angry and confused with lots of emotion she is not going to tell me about because Jamila is never one for telling you what is in her heart directly. She says, It is like Toyota, where you work, you cannot choose whose cars you repair. If Toyota is doing that, it is not being a serious company and people is going to start to talk about that and maybe they will start buying Mitsubishis and Commodores instead.
I got what she is meaning. I say, That is a terrible thing p’raps Farid does not understand it, and she says, That is so right—he is tribal, John. He is not understanding how the big world works because he is spending all his time with the people. I say, I will tell him these things. I am on this side of the line in the sand so I know these things. I am thinking really I know them already, and I should have told Farid about them before, as my duty to the family. But it is hard to do this because Farid is never talking to me about the family business and stuff. I am interested Jamila knows about these things, but I tell you, the women in my family is real smart.
She says, Have you tried talking to Farid about anything, John? For a while he was in Imad’s shadow, but now he is making so much money he is feeling so proud like he can do anything. With Imad it was the ice but with Farid it is just pride, pride is his drug. The sad thing is he doesn’t know what to do with his pride. It is like Toyota had all those beautiful cars and workshops and stuff but no strategic plan, you is knowing what a strategic plan is? I tell her of course I know, I have a copy in my room and is often reading it at night. It is telling the people at the company where we is going in three years and five, stuff like that and our total dedication to quality and selling as many cars as possible.
Jamila’s baby wakes up and begins to cry, and she pats him on the back and says, Farid has stopped growing John and that is a sad thing in life. Sad to say he has the power to stop other people from growing too. I think she is talking about Reem maybe but then she says, Is you noticing the changes to Shada lately, my little brother who lives in the same house as her? I say, No, and she goes, Well she has bought a burqa and last week my friend saw her wearing it at Westfield with two of her friends. They is going up to her and she is making my friend swear not to tell anyone, but this is very troubling, John.
I do not know what to say, one because I am not knowing this before, and two because no woman in our family has ever worn a burqa and we is all laughing at it even and Shada has always called it primitive, that is the word, something for people from backward places like Afghanistan. This thing goes down to the ground and has a slit for the woman to be looking out and that is all, she is completely covered up in the material and everyone in the street is looking at her and wondering why she is living in Australia if this is how she wants to dress.
Is the mama knowing this? I say, and Jamila tells me all about it, how Shada was going to wear it to court yesterday but the mama is taking it out of her room and the papa is hiding it and there was this big argument. I tell you, the things that can happen in a house you is living in and you do not know them, it is a big thought.
I am hearing she is going to buy another one tomorrow, John, says J
amila and I ask why Shada is doing this thing. Everyone has always been saying how smart she is, and never before has she been real religious. It was her told me after we went to Lebanon when I was fifteen how the people there dressed less modestly than in Sydney, how strange that was. She is always seeing things and complaining about stuff like the parents not letting her go on a school excursion to the Jewish Museum and how Imad and Farid had to approve her boyfriends when she was growing up and stuff. So why is she going now like backwards?
She is the smartest one in all our family, says Jamila, and she is working at some dumb office job because the family will not let her use her talents. She is turning to religion as an outlet for her sadness. That is my opinion. I say, She should have been a school teacher like you was before your children is being born. Jamila says, She did not want to be one, she wanted to be a doctor. People should not have to be what they is not wanting. Women is just like men John, they is having feelings too.
Of course I know that, I say to her as she is standing up and looking down at me with this strange thing in her eyes. Then she is saying to me, John, sometimes I am having this thought about you: being honest is your way of not seeing all that is happening to this family. She is walking away then and I sit there trying not to think about her words and looking at all the people in the room, looking at Salim who seems so happy and Shada who started wearing a veil last month although I did not talk to her about it because so many women wear the veil I was not thinking anything. I look some more and see that Salim is a dickhead but p’raps there is more reasons for this than I am knowing, and remember when Shada started crying at dinner last Tuesday and went into her room for the rest of the night. I wonder if I have been looking at things all this time and not seeing them and then Dani comes over and sits down next to me where Jamila was sitting. I feel sad, but it is not the sort of sadness I can talk to Dani about, because she is one of those people who just want everything to be all right.
Saturday Bec spent in the office with Wallace, reviewing some of the material collected by the investigation. She couldn’t think of anything better to do. They tracked down two of Teller’s former associates, not close ones. Talked to them, got nothing.
There were a few incoming calls. Beirut had located Aunt Dalia’s residence: she and her family were away, no one knew where and the local police were trying to find her. Harris said he was at Coffs Harbour, heading into the mountains to burn a marijuana crop. ‘I hear you saw Sharon Zames.’
‘How?’
‘Someone saw you talking to her at Bondi.’ Small world. ‘Attractive woman. She got a new bloke?’
‘We didn’t talk for long.’
‘Uncommunicative?’
‘Very.’
‘Keep in touch, won’t you, you find anyone else? Tell Russell.’
‘How’d you know I met her?’
‘Campbell Parade’s a busy place, lot of gear. You know we have every public phone around there off?’
‘You’re watching the gym?’
‘We watch everywhere. It’s our job, we’re good at it.’
Prick. ‘She’s been there all the time, you didn’t know?’
‘How do you know she’s been there?’
‘She told me.’
‘She’s lying. And no, we’re not watching the gym.’
‘You told—’
‘Crooks lie, Detective. Sharon Zames is a crook, all the secrets she’s carrying.’ This was hard. ‘She’s been in to the Commission.’
‘Why? What’d she say?’
‘Nothing about this case. Still, lucky she’s not in jail.’
‘You—’
‘Knight know you met her?’
‘No.’
‘I told you yesterday, keep him informed. Specially if you’re going to start second-guessing his investigation.’
Bec got the triangle: Knight, Harris, her. Got the shape but not the content. Got that no one was going to tell her.
‘What?’ Wallace said when she disconnected.
‘Nothing.’
Bec read until her eyes glazed and she lost all sense of chronology. Going over the information like this was desperate stuff, Wallace unimpressed, making personal calls as the day dragged on. What she needed was insight, and she didn’t have it.
At four, Wallace said he was calling it quits. After all their reading, the occasional futile call, they’d got nothing. Asking Wallace to work today had been her first serious management decision as the new OIC Beldin, and it had been a waste of resources. He said, ‘My brain is no longer operating.’
How can you tell the difference?
‘Go. I’ll be leaving soon myself.’
Wallace gone, she flicked through the [email protected] index and found the exhibit matrix, went through that idly and saw the list of letters seized from Teller’s flat. It took her back to the first day of the investigation, the dreary wait in the corridor at The Surry. At the end of the list was an envelope from Grainer and Reiss in St Leonards, a laboratory. Open when they found it, there’d been no letter inside, or anywhere else in the flat.
Bec stood up and stretched, walked across the office to the room where they’d stored the seized material that was not needed for the trial, found the bag with the envelope inside. There was a note with it, saying someone should contact the lab, but back at the computer she could find no sign this had been done. It was a slip, a tiny one in an investigation that had involved thousands of actions.
Bec found the phone number and called, was surprised when someone answered. His name was Barry and he rang back through the switch to confirm her bona fides, told her they had done a job for Jason Teller, and he would email a copy of the report now. She asked what Teller had requested and Barry politely declined to answer, said there were confidentiality issues and she’d need to take it up with his boss on Monday morning.
Bec said, ‘So you can send me the report but not talk about why you did it?’
‘Yes.’
When it came through the report meant nothing to Bec: every second word was unfamiliar. She gathered that something had been tested and something had been detected. Beyond that, darkness. Called Jen, who was at home and about to leave for a shift but said she’d have a look, said Grainer and Reiss was a big outfit, reputable. Bec forwarded the email and waited impatiently, thinking of labs all over the city working 24/7, producing a great tide of information.
‘They tested some vegetable matter,’ Jen said when she rang back, ‘found it had been affected seriously by a combination of chemicals not found in nature. I’d be guessing some sort of powerful weed spray.’
‘Affected?’
‘As in killed. This means something to you?’
‘Nothing. What sort of vegetable matter?’
‘It doesn’t say. Can I go now?’
Bec hung up. Probably someone had checked out the envelope, just as she had, called the company and got the report, realised it had no relevance, forgot to log it. She yawned, turned off her computer.
On the long drive home, she tried not to think about the case. Everything she knew about it, every scrap, even at this late date, told her nothing, except there was even more they didn’t know than she’d realised. Maybe drug work was like that, as Knight had said. Murder inquiries had beginnings and ends, usually; drugs went on forever.
So Steve Beric was still missing, along with several other known associates of the late Jason Teller. They should have been among the witnesses at the trial. Either they’d disappeared, or they’d been excised from the story. Bec had the feeling reality had been rearranged. She’d had a similar reaction when she’d read the brief. It was a version of a version, of whatever it was that had happened. Maybe that was how it could be in major crime—too complicated for anyone to comprehend the whole truth. Mabey had had no issues with the brief. It was only Bec’s second big investigation, after all. There was still much to learn.
What about the vegetable matter tested by the lab? Maybe Teller had had a dope c
rop, and someone had sprayed it. Bec thought of Harris up in the hills, pulling out plants. But Teller had been into cocaine, not marijuana. Coca was grown far away, in Colombia.
She dropped by the nursing home, a big old brick complex, two storeys high, lots of trees. As always told herself it could be worse. Tiny was agitated that she was late and she apologised, settled him down. Got him into a bath by herself, as always the nurses too busy to help. Occupied by patients without visitors. She talked to Tiny, a rambling conversation, occasional moments of lucidity. Hugged him a lot, they both liked that. By the time she looked at her watch, two hours had gone. She wondered how many more years of this lay ahead.
At home she took off her clothes, wandered around the empty apartment allowing her skin to dry. Then she put on a T-shirt and shorts and went for a run, choosing her route carefully because it could get rough on Saturday night, if you were unlucky.
Back home in the bright lights, bare walls painted pale, she showered and heated a pre-cooked meal, turned on the television to fill the emptiness, did the crossword while she ate.
Her brain stretched and relaxed, she thought about the case, about Sharon Zames. Recalled her nose and the shape of her lips, the new lines around her eyes. Wondered how anyone could grieve for an animal like Jason Teller. Yawned and was in bed by 9.30, hoping sleep would bring insight.
At three she woke in the dark, the man in her head again. ‘Piss off,’ she called in the darkness. He was lying on the grey carpet, adding to its stains as the liquids seeped out of his mouth and joined the slick of vomit below his chin. She was more outside the memory than she’d been previously, saw herself crouching a few metres away, yellow pyjama pants but no top, patience on her young face— patience?—watching the man and refusing to act. The significance of that refusal struck her fully for the first time: by not seeking help she had killed him, at least in this story. She sat up, sweat on her brow, and considered the awareness she’d always had, on the edge of her consciousness, of having once done something terrible.
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