Mad Men, Bad Girls

by Maggie Groff

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Heavenly Brother?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘He had a real tiny wanger. Warty, like a pickle.’

  Chapter 32

  Oh, sweet Jesus . . .

  My mind and body felt numb and I sat quietly and thought of the horrors I’d just heard. So much for my romanticised image of a Bacchus orgy where handsome young men and nubile young women laughed and made love, fed grapes to each other and sipped wine from silver goblets.

  How would I tell Marcia? How much would she want to know?

  The phone rang again. It was Dan.

  ‘I heard most of that,’ he said without preamble. ‘I need to tell you what I think the “other stuff” she referred to was, the stuff she wouldn’t tell you about. I’ve had a word with a colleague who had several patients from the cult. All presented with infected human bites on their arms and buttocks, as well as scars from previous bites. All denied they’d been bitten, blaming wounds on falls and other accidents, and none would consider laying charges. However, my colleague is certain Heavenly Brother was biting them.’

  ‘Why would he do that? Was it some kind of sexual thing?’

  ‘My colleague didn’t think so. The bites were deep and clearly defined, whereas sexual bites are simply stimulation and rarely break the skin, and they have a raised red area in the middle where sucking has occurred. These bites were definitely sadistic and intended to cause intense pain. Unfortunately there hasn’t been a lot of forensic research into the pathology of this behaviour but, in this case, it’s possible Heavenly Brother used biting as a form of punishment, an act of aggression that also satisfied his need for domination and control. It could have been a way of exerting power and demonstrating conquest over another. Human bite marks have been found on many victims of violent crime. Read up on the serial killer Ted Bundy sometime. I think he was eventually caught by forensic evidence from a bite mark he made on a Florida student.’

  I breathed in and out slowly. ‘Oh Dan,’ I sighed. ‘Were any of the cult members HIV positive?’

  ‘None that I or my colleague know of,’ Dan said. ‘But be careful, Scout. This guy’s a monster.’

  After I put the phone down I stood in the shower for a long time—to hell with water conservation. I towelled off and dressed in my favourite old cotton pyjamas and, if I’d owned a pair of slippers, I would have put those on, too. I needed comfort clothing and, oh, all right then, a nice cup of tea.

  The phone woke me again at 4 am. This time it was Rafe.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing serious. I’ve got a kid here with a poncy name who says he belongs to you.’

  I willed my heart to slow down and asked, ‘Is he tall, looks like Roger Federer in a blond curly wig and answers to Sam?’

  ‘That’d be him. He’s totally rat-arsed,’ Rafe said.

  ‘Do I need Dave?’ Goodness only knew what Sam had done, and if we needed a lawyer.

  ‘No, just come and take Pavarotti home, he’s driving us nuts. A group of them were singing “Advance Australia Fair” in the street at the top of their voices. The others ran off, but yours had lost his shoes. We hauled him in before a member of the audience flattened him.’

  ‘Is he charged with anything?’

  ‘Yeah, being out of tune.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ I said.

  After dressing and undressing three times, I settled on a black T-shirt with a black and tan sarong. Major repair was required from the neck up and I brushed my hair, retied the plait and dusted my face with bronzing powder. I applied lipstick then wiped it off, deciding that would look weird. After cleaning my teeth, I brushed the lightest touch of mascara on my lashes and sprayed a squirt of Mitsouko towards my neck. To be on the safe side, I had another squirt—I wasn’t sure how much perfume one wore for an early morning visit to a police station.

  As I was heading out the door, I grabbed a bucket and an old towel just in case the ride home got messy.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Rafe asked as I entered the police station. He was standing behind the counter, a mug in one hand and a pen in the other. He looked tired—tired and gorgeous, and my knees weakened slightly.

  ‘I had a phone call from the States about one of my cases,’ I replied casually, hoping that it sounded as though I was working on something of international importance and was terribly relaxed about it.

  ‘I thought you’d be in your jammies,’ Rafe said. He made rather a meal of looking me up and down.

  ‘Jammies?’ I scoffed. ‘Please!’

  ‘Black suits you at night,’ Rafe said, and then added, ‘fortunately.’

  Stay calm, Scout!

  This was the third time Rafe had made a comment that could be related to my nighttime yarn-bombing activities, and it was most unsettling. Had he seen me dressed in black on one of the missions, maybe on CCTV? Was I reading too much into his comments? Should I be packing for Siberia?

  I was saved from further discomfort by a loud warbling noise coming from along the corridor.

  ‘Is that him?’ I asked, grimacing and blushing at the same time.

  ‘Yeah, he’s just done two rounds of the Marseillaise. I’ve no idea which country this one’s from. Let’s hope he doesn’t try to stand up and salute again on his own.’

  I followed Rafe into the room where the detectives had interviewed me. Sam was sitting on the floor in a corner and, I have to say, he’d looked better.

  ‘Thanks for not putting him in a cell,’ I said.

  Rafe shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate it was nothing.

  ‘That’s her.’ Sam stopped singing, looked up and pointed at me. ‘That’s my aunty.’

  ‘Here’re his keys,’ Rafe said, handing them to me. ‘I’ll help you out to the car with him.’

  Once Sam was safely strapped into the front passenger seat of the Lexus, I opened the window, draped the towel over his lap, secured the bucket in his hands and closed the door.

  As I turned around Rafe took hold of my hand and pulled me towards the back of the car. Gently, he lifted my chin and brushed his lips against mine. A thrill shot through my body, as though I’d had an electric shock. He lightly stroked the side of my face with his fingers and put his mouth close to my ear.

  ‘You look good enough to eat,’ he whispered.

  ‘Rafe, I’ve been dragged from my bed at four in the morning!’

  My jelly knees became jelly legs and I leaned against the car for support. Rafe’s touch had aroused all my natural urges and I realised, rather alarmingly, that I’d started to tremble with desire. Uh-oh. My defence force had retreated and Mother Nature was lowering the drawbridge.

  ‘Hey, I saw that,’ Sam yelled, leaning out of the car window. ‘You put my aunt down this instant.’

  ‘Take him home,’ Rafe said, laughing. ‘Do you want a hand to haul him up your stairs?’

  ‘No thanks, I’ll be fine.’

  Somehow, I climbed into the driver’s seat, reversed out of the parking space and headed for home.

  ‘Is that Hibiscus Man?’ Sam asked.

  Then he promptly threw up into the bucket.

  Chapter 33

  Tuesday dawned hot, humid and overcast with a promise of rain. It wasn’t exactly the weather we’d anticipated for tonight’s Guerilla Knitters Institute caper, although cloud cover would be welcome. Still, it would be rather ironic if it were raining when we undertook this particular mission. Just thinking about it made me smile.

  It was early when I left Sam snoring in the spare room and went out to look for his sneakers in the streets around the Buddha Bar. I found an abandoned pair beside a wall in Burns Street and, unbelievably, Sam’s wallet was inside one of the shoes. Harper would have had a fit if he’d lost expensive sneakers and his wallet.

  When I arrived home Sam was sitting on the sofa holding an icepack to one side of his head and his phone to the other. He looked sheepishly at me
.

  ‘Mum would be very proud,’ he said. ‘I seem to have lost my wallet. I’m just calling the Buddha Bar to see if anyone’s handed it in, but there’s no answer.’

  Smirking, I held up his shoes and wallet.

  ‘You’re a star,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got my car keys as well? I’ve got a lecture at ten.’

  ‘Like I’m going to let you drive.’ I handed him his shoes and wallet.

  ‘Oh.’ Sam scratched his head.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take you,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring you back here after the lecture and give you something to eat. By then you should be okay to drive your car home.’

  I went into the bedroom and put on my Queensland watch. With any luck I could drop Sam off at Griffith University and then catch some of the action at Harper’s school.

  Tattings High School is about thirty minutes’ drive from the Griffith campus at Southport. I’d dropped Sam off at the university with instructions to meet me at the same spot in four hours, and was sitting in the car park at Tattings waiting for Harper. It was raining and every so often I flicked on the wipers so I could see out.

  Shortly, I saw her walking into the car park in a cream raincoat and holding an umbrella printed with the New York skyline before you-know-what. I flashed my headlights and she ran towards the car and climbed in.

  ‘Was the swim class cancelled due to bad weather?’ I asked.

  Harper shook her head. Then she examined my hair, frowning slightly as she did so.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ she declared at last. ‘You look like Mum.’

  ‘Did you catch her?’ I ignored the assessment.

  Harper nodded.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was a scholarship kid called Mary Niles. She’s fourteen and she’s been expelled. Her mother collected her a short while ago. I feel sorry for her, she’s a single mother and her other daughter has cerebral palsy.’

  ‘Did Mary say why she did it?’

  ‘No, she didn’t speak. Mrs Betts, the Spanish teacher, was with Julia and me and when we walked in Mary just looked at us, sat down and put the scissors on the bench beside her. She didn’t cry or anything, just sat there looking . . . well . . . looking relieved, if you must know. Almost as if she was pleased that we’d caught her.’

  The car windows were fogging up and I switched the airconditioning dial to demist.

  ‘Do you have any idea why she did it?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, some. Mary is a good student, smart too but . . . you know . . . dumpy. She’s short and plain, with acne. Maybe she was jealous.’ Harper shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘The school won’t be happy,’ I said. ‘I assume that Mary is one of the students Tattings uses to promote the school’s benevolence at providing scholarships for the needy.’

  Harper frowned again. ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ I said, ‘it’s just like that. If Mary was a full-fee-paying student she’d already be undergoing counselling to see why she did it. And she’d have been suspended, not expelled.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Harper argued.

  ‘Doesn’t the school feel any responsibility to find out why Mary did it? There’s obviously something wrong.’

  ‘Look, Scout, thanks for your help. I’m the first to admit that I couldn’t have done it without you, but it’s over now. It’s time to move on.’

  Breathing in deeply, I bit my tongue and let out a long sigh. If Harper mentioned ‘closure’ I’d sock her.

  ‘I can’t believe you think that way,’ I said, shaking my head.

  Harper ignored my comment and I didn’t pursue the issue further. My sister is one of the world’s greatest reflectors and I knew that she would come around. It might take a few hours, but she’d get there.

  ‘Why are you up here anyway?’ Harper changed the subject.

  Mm. I thought long and hard about my answer. It was tempting to point out that she, too, had a child who’d made a mistake and people had made an effort to help him, protect him.

  In the end I couldn’t do it. Not to Sam.

  ‘Sam didn’t want to drive, so I took him to uni. He thought he might still have booze in his blood after the party and didn’t want to risk it.’ Heck, it was almost the truth.

  ‘He’s such a mature and responsible kid,’ Harper boasted.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘isn’t he just.’

  I drove down to Southport and parked by the Broadwater and watched boats chugging about in the rain. Every so often a helicopter took off from the helipad on the spit opposite. The volcano at Sea World blasted fire into the air. It all looked rather dreary in the rain.

  I tested my blood sugar level, which was within my control zone, put on a rain slicker, locked the car and walked over to a café. All the tables were taken, which wasn’t surprising as there was not much else to do in this weather. I bought a flat white and a salad sandwich to take away, and looked longingly at a tray of baklava.

  I took the food back to the car and sat and ate and watched the water.

  There was a lot to think about.

  Chapter 34

  I picked Sam up as planned and within five minutes he was asleep in the car. He woke up as I pulled into Byron Bay and announced that, as he probably still had too much alcohol in his bloodstream, he ought to spend another night with me.

  Hmmm. Much as I love him, this unusually sensible decision posed a problem with regard to tonight’s GKI mission. It was something I’d been looking forward to, but family must always come first. I would either have to postpone everything, or tell Sam about my nighttime escapades.

  When Sam went off to the beach for a late-afternoon swim I sent a text to the other GKI members explaining the situation and requesting feedback. Then I put the matter on the backburner while I called Miles’s daughter, Susie Cameron.

  ‘Dad told me you’d call,’ Susie said. ‘How is the old fella?’ She had one of those joyous voices, as though she was on a perpetual holiday.

  ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘The best neighbour a girl could wish for.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. How can I help you?’

  Omitting all names except Harper’s and mine, I outlined the sorry saga of the underwear vandalism and the sexual harassment complaint against a male teacher. I didn’t mention Tattings by name, and I said the student I was interested in was the victim of vandalism but had been the instigator of the sexual harassment complaint. Then I told her that the accusation of sexual harassment against the teacher was, I believed, vexatious.

  ‘And you think this student was previously at Heathlands House?’ Susie said. ‘And that something like this may have occurred before?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Susie was quiet for some time, probably thinking through how much to tell me.

  ‘Let me guess. The teacher was a good-looking young male and the accuser is a plain unpleasant girl whose father is a lawyer,’ she said finally.

  ‘Do you know who I’m talking about?’

  ‘I believe so. The student I’m thinking of would be about fifteen now. She was expelled from Heathlands and moved to a school in Queensland called Tattings. How am I doing so far?’

  ‘Spot on,’ I told her.

  ‘Heathlands was compromised into not advising Tattings of relevant issues under threat by the father of a defamation suit,’ Susie explained.

  ‘I understand, then, if you can’t elaborate.’

  ‘Sod that,’ Susie said. ‘She wrecked the career of a dedicated and delightful teacher and almost destroyed his marriage. She fabricated a pack of disgusting lies that he was leering at her chest, feeling her up, rubbing against her . . . frequent frottage they called it . . . it was awful. The poor man’s still on stress leave. I doubt he’ll ever teach again.’

  ‘How do you know the accusations were fabricated?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, she got caught out in her little games,’ Susie said. ‘She was a bully. She’d get others to join her and target the weakes
t girls, the students who were fat, lonely, had speech impediments, things like that. Then she used the students she was bullying to come forward as witnesses to her sexual harassment claim. It was almost sociopathic.’

  ‘My turn to guess now,’ I said. ‘Did one of the witnesses have a conscience?’

  ‘Two of them did, as it turned out. They came in with their parents and made full confessions. They’d been through hell at the hands of this girl. When confronted, the girl admitted that she’d made up the accusation against the teacher for a joke. She was on the next train out of town.’

  If I was to have any hope of assisting Robert Arnold and his wife I had to be sure of the student’s name. I couldn’t take this any further unless I was certain, so I bit the bullet.

  ‘Are we talking about a girl called Brianna Berkelow?’ I said.

  Susie was silent and I waited. When she finally spoke her tone was confident, her words carefully chosen.

  ‘My father taught me that if I was unsure of something I should ask myself whether, in five years’ time when I looked back on the occasion, I would wish that I’d done something about it when I’d had the chance. In this instance the answer is yes, I would wish I had. And therefore the answer to your question is also yes, I am talking about a girl called Brianna Berkelow.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Now what are we going to do?’

  We discussed the matter for some time, eventually settling on Susie contacting her male teacher and asking if he would be prepared to call my male teacher in Queensland. Then I would track down Robert Arnold and ask him if he would accept the call and was happy for his name and number to be passed to Susie. Then Susie and I would stay out of it.

  It worked for me.

  Sam and I were sitting downstairs in Fandango’s restaurant having dinner. I still hadn’t decided if I should divulge the particulars of my nighttime forays to him. All GKI members had responded to my text. The consensus was that tonight’s mission was to go ahead and, if I was confident Sam wouldn’t blab, I was to ask him to join us and swear him in. In other words, the decision was up to me.