Frowning, I put my hand to my head, feeling for the lines.
‘And you’re always frowning. Just like the old man.’
‘For Christ’s sake, I hope not,’ I said, awkward as I always was when Charlie got personal with me, and thinking of the sour old man in his shed.
‘Ask him when he last had a holiday,’ Charlie said.
Iona cocked her head and looked back at me, eyebrow raised. ‘Well?’
I searched my memory.
‘See? You can’t remember, can you?’ She gave me a gentle smack and I seized her hand, imprisoning it with both of mine.
‘How is Dad?’ I asked, changing tack.
‘Same as he ever was.’
Charlie kept in touch with our father far more than I did. By the time I was fifteen, the old man had pretty well moved out of the marital home and into the increasingly furnished garage. Even after the death of our mother some years later, he’d never moved back into that house. Couldn’t say I blamed him.
Charlie was able to be more compassionate about the old bastard. He was younger and didn’t seem to remember what I couldn’t seem to forget. We were abandoned in that house; we raised ourselves, with a father who never came inside and a mother who had usually passed out by the time I’d got home from school. Somewhere in me was a hard ridge of anger, dense and dark—with my father and mother fixed in the middle of it, like corpses locked in ice. I was aware of it sometimes and it concerned me. Over the years, I’d noticed other recovered alcoholics’ behaviours, seen their clenched smiles, their hot, aggressive reactions to things that weren’t their business. I sensed their anger, cemented over with a denial that did nothing to release it, only locking it down deeper. To my way of thinking, far too many recovered alcoholics died much too early of cancer, angry down to the marrow of their bones.
‘Grandad’s the same as he ever was,’ said Greg, coming back into the room, ‘only more so.’ Neither of the kids had been able to make much of a relationship with the old curmudgeon.
‘He propositioned the community nurse last time she visited,’ Charlie laughed.
‘There goes the inheritance,’ said Greg.
I couldn’t smile at the joke. Whenever I thought of my father and that house in the mountains, with its dripping gardens in the winter and almost no sunshine in summer, it brought back memories that were still too painful to entertain very long. The place had been rented out for the many years since our mother’s death.
‘He told the nurse she had great legs and that it was a pity she didn’t have a husband,’ Charlie said.
‘I can’t imagine anyone marrying him.’ My son’s face was a picture.
One woman had married him. Our mother. Maybe only a drunk could do it.
Iona went to bed after Lateline and Greg disappeared with his laptop, either to work on an assignment, or, more likely, to tie up the landline, leaving Charlie and me sprawled opposite each other on the two big chairs.
‘I went to a crime scene today and it had been steam-cleaned,’ I said. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘Sounds like a very particular person,’ said my brother. ‘Someone who’s fastidious in their habits. Someone who very much wants to cover their tracks.’ He poked the fire and tiny red-gold sparks flew up the chimney. ‘Or,’ he added, ‘it might indicate a scientist.’
‘I’d arrived at much the same conclusion,’ I said, smiling. ‘Without all the hassle of a Master’s degree in psychology.’
‘Ah, but you don’t have the required psychologist’s concerned expression,’ he said, bunging it on, frowning and pursing his lips. ‘Only someone halfway through a doctorate gets to look like this.’
I hurled a cushion at him.
‘I’m a scientist,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think I’d steam-clean after I’d murdered you. Perhaps our killer’s watched one too many episodes of CSI.’
Charlie grinned. ‘Let’s hope.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, in CSI the killer always fucks up,’ Charlie said, deadpan, hurling the cushion back.
‘You didn’t make it to the picnic,’ he said then. ‘The riverside was unbelievably beautiful.’
‘I did, but everyone had already gone.’ I thought about how I’d sat there working. ‘Charlie,’ I started, wanting to ask my brother about this, but not finding the words easily.
‘Yes?’ he drawled, taking a drink from his second wine glass, observing my struggle.
‘I want to spend time with Iona, I make plans to do it. But something always comes up and I end up disappointing her. She’s been very patient. But I can tell she’s starting to get fed up with me. She’s given up her life in Sydney to be with me and all I have to do is make some time for her—for us—on the weekends, in the evenings, like other couples do. I found myself sitting on the river bank earlier and I was automatically in working mode. I don’t understand myself. Charlie, I love this woman. I love spending time with her.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Charlie, leaning back further in the old chair, as if to examine me from a more distant perspective.
‘Of course I am!’ I said, irritated by his challenge, my fingers picking at the worn velvet of the armrest. ‘Why do you doubt it?’
Charlie pulled a face and shrugged. ‘Oh, I seem to remember a man with a history of choosing difficult women. What about that woman down here you were involved with?’
I thought of Alix, who I used to refer to as ‘the convenient association’, and how badly that had ended.
‘That wasn’t the best, I have to admit,’ I said. ‘But I wasn’t in love with her.’
‘And what about the woman you married?’
‘Fair go, Charlie! Genevieve is a self-centred sociopath who picked a drunk for a lifetime partner!’ I said.
‘Granted. But why did the drunk pick her as his wife?’ Charlie challenged.
I mumbled something about physical attraction.
‘And what about the first woman you spent time with—the first woman in your life?’ he continued.
‘What’s Kerry-Anne Cooper got to do with this?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘I’m amazed you even remember her!’
‘I’m not talking about your first girlfriend. I’m talking about the first woman in your life. In any man’s life. The woman who helps set up the woman template in a man’s unconscious.’
‘You know what I think about all that unconscious stuff,’ I protested. ‘You make too much of it.’
‘Hang on, Jack! You admit it in other areas. You seek it at crime scenes!’
‘I’m not a goddamn crime scene,’ I said. But Charlie only raised an eyebrow before continuing.
‘Your hero, Edmund Locard, says whatever the offender leaves consciously or unconsciously is just as important as any other physical evidence. You’re smart as paint when it comes to offenders and the unconscious.’
‘That’s different,’ I said, irritated. What could a nineteenth-century criminologist have to do with Iona and me?
‘But what about investigators and the unconscious? You pick up things other people don’t notice. What about this investigator sitting opposite me?’ he said. ‘What about the unconscious influences of the first woman in his life and how it affects his present?’
Hell, I thought. The mother. Our mother. ‘You think I should see someone, don’t you? A professional, I mean,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ said Charlie in his non-directive fashion.
‘But what would that do? How would that help?’
Charlie stood up. ‘It would make you focus on your behaviour and its motivators for an hour or so every week. That in itself would create some space for you. Solutions might have the chance to arise then. The way you’re living now doesn’t permit any time for quiet reflection.’
‘I
think while I’m driving,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t because it sounded pathetic.
‘Plus it’s more about feeling, bro, than thinking. Either way, you’ve got a big job ahead of you,’ said Charlie.
‘What big job ahead of me? What do you mean?’
Charlie looked down at me in his kindly way. Sometimes it seems as if he’s so much older than me, despite his chronological age.
‘Think about what it means to spend time with a woman. What does that mean to you?’ he said.
I frowned. ‘Doing things together,’ I said. ‘Spending time together.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Reading books, going to the movies. Talking,’ I added, more irritated by the minute.
‘You can do all those things with me,’ said Charlie. ‘Or with a colleague.’
‘Making love.’
Charlie nodded.
‘So what are you getting at, Charlie?’
‘Iona wants you to spend intimate time with her. That means opening up. Talking about your hopes and fears. Especially your fears. Revealing who you are. That’s what intimacy is—self-revelation. But to be truly intimate with another person, you’ve got to know yourself. And while ever you’re living in your defence system, you’re never going to be able to do it.’
I didn’t much like the sound of any of that, especially the self-revelation part. Even when I was invited to speak at AA, I didn’t ever say much about that sort of thing. Just told my story about what it was like, what happened and how it was now—in terms of my relations with my kids and my work life—immeasurably better.
‘But that’s not me,’ I said, finally. ‘That’s not my style.’
‘You might have to do something about that. And then you’ve got to factor in the other part of your behaviour,’ Charlie said. ‘What happens when you are inactive? Do you know?’
‘I start to feel restless,’ I said, remembering the moment on the river bank.
‘And where do you suppose that restlessness might take you?’ Charlie asked.
‘Hell, Charlie, what is this?’
‘A simple question. Requiring only a very simple experiment to discover the answer. And now, I’m going to bed,’ Charlie announced.
He paused at the doorway on his way to the back room. ‘You’d better find out a bit more about yourself, Jack, otherwise . . .’ His words trailed off.
‘Otherwise what?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’
Seven
Charlie’s comments were still in my mind when I woke. I’d had strange dreams of trying to intervene in a violent disagreement between my mother and Iona but I couldn’t remember what the struggle had been about. Beside me, Iona stirred and I gathered her into my arms, snuggling into her warm body. I thought of the other things Charlie had said last night, that the first woman in my life had somehow set me on some dangerous trajectory when it came to affairs of the heart.
Her eyes opened and she smiled up at me.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘That you’re nothing like my mother,’ I said.
‘Thanks a lot! I should hope not!’
My heart melted and I held her as she burrowed into my chest. I felt my body respond to her proximity and realised it had been a while since we’d made love. I resolved to change that very soon, but unfortunately Charlie’s remarks and the business of the day dominated my mind and thoughts of lovemaking slipped away. I started to throw the bedclothes aside.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What’s your hurry? We’ve got all day.’
I fell back on the pillows. ‘Sweetheart,’ I said.
‘Don’t “sweetheart” me in that tone!’ she said, her smile fading. ‘You’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear.’
‘Iona, I’ve just got a couple of things to do today but I swear I’ll come home early,’ I said, sliding out of bed, shivering, and dressing quickly.
The silence in the room was deafening.
‘I’ll make you coffee before you go,’ she said finally, starting to get out of bed.
‘No. Stay there. I’ll grab a coffee from the Cretan’s café.’
I went outside to bring in some more firewood from the sheltered stack near the old laundry shed. It had rained during the night, not enough to penetrate the deeper soil layers, but enough to turn the driveway into mud. A soft mist hung over the garden, staining the air in pastel tones around the drooping roses. I could capture that, I thought, with watercolours. If I had time.
Nothing moved in the paddocks, not even the odd rabbit. I guessed the stock had been sold some time ago, soon after the drought began to bite. If this was how it was at the end of summer, God help the landscape over winter and the next hot season.
A flock of gang-gangs screeched overhead and I went inside, unloading the wood in the chest beside the open fireplace in the lounge room. I scribbled a note and put it under the butter dish on the kitchen table, envying my son and brother their leisurely day in the company of Iona. I went into the bedroom to say goodbye, but Iona was sound asleep again. I leaned over and kissed her hair and she stirred and even smiled.
Heading towards the front door, I passed the photograph of my sister Rosie and remembered how Jacinta had called her a guardian angel. Show me, Rosie, I prayed. Teach me about how to slow down so I can be with Iona.
Then I picked up my leather jacket from the hall table, together with my briefcase, and set off for Weston, rolling the car slowly down the dirt drive because of the sleeping household behind me, only starting it near the gates.
My feelings for Iona Seymour were very powerful. We’d talked about it like adults and her acceptance of my proposition had filled me with wonder and gratitude. And yet . . . I had to face the fact that I was sometimes made very uneasy by her. Also, only a day or two earlier I’d had several days’ leave ruled off on the calendar, yet somehow I had become involved with two major new cases. These thoughts and the Light Cavalry Overture on the car radio were interrupted by the sharp tones of my mobile.
‘Yes?’ I said, more sharply than I’d intended.
‘Am I interrupting anything important?’ Harry Marshall asked.
‘I was thinking about men and women,’ I admitted, ‘and what my chances of domestic harmony might be. What do you think, Doc?’
‘You’d have to ask my wife,’ said Harry. ‘That’s her area of expertise.’
I swerved to miss the carcase of a large wallaby on the roadway.
‘When you can,’ Harry continued, ‘come over and have a look at Tianna Richardson’s body. I want to show you something.’
Harry greeted me at the front desk of the morgue and took me through the building which had recently been recarpeted and smelled of new, slightly damp wool. The door of the pathology lab was open and I caught a glimpse of the exhibits as we passed. Diseased or poisoned tissues hung in formaldehyde for the education of student pathologists, and I also spied the exquisite skull of a baby with its pearly milk and permanent teeth arranged in double rows like tiny shark’s jaws.
‘You’re busier than usual,’ I said to Harry, thinking that in the nearby refrigerated room lay the bodies of the two women whose crime scenes I’d attended.
‘I like being busy,’ said Harry, as we stepped inside his office. ‘I was in here before five this morning,’ he continued, ‘catching up with some paperwork. No rest for the wicked.’ He laughed.
‘Tell me something, Harry. What does your wife think of the hours you keep?’
We had stopped in a small cul-de-sac lined with cupboards and shelves.
‘She knows that I’m an overworked, under-appreciated pathologist. Sometimes when I go home she points to the door and shouts at me, “Out! You stink of the morgue. Don’t come inside
until you’ve had another shower and dumped those clothes!”’
‘But what about your life away from here?’ I persisted. ‘Your private life.’
‘I don’t have one of those according to my wife. And she thinks I should.’
‘Are you going to do something about that?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ Harry said. ‘But sitting around idle doesn’t suit me.’
He passed me a gown from one of the cupboards and I pulled disposable gloves and plastic booties from a dispenser before following him into the brightness of the large post-mortem room with its several tables. Sitting around idle wouldn’t suit me either, I thought.
My mobile rang and I fumbled under the light blue gown to unhook it. Brian Kruger was on the other end of the line.
‘I’m calling from Tianna Richardson’s place,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like to have a look around. Also, her boyfriend’s agreed to an informal chat.’
‘Give me the address. I’ll get there once I’m finished with Harry.’
I scribbled down the details, aware that Harry had gone ahead and that a morgue attendant was wheeling in the body of Tianna Richardson, her blue bag zipped up to her chest.
‘In a few years you’ll be retiring, Harry,’ I said, joining him near the trolley.
‘That’s right,’ said Harry. ‘My wife is leaning on me to take up bowls.’
‘Make a change from bowels,’ I said, unable to resist. In the harsh white light, I clearly saw the tiredness and strain on his face but turned my attention to his words.
‘You can see these marks on her much better today,’ Harry said, unzipping the rest of the bag. ‘I know you got them on video and Brian took the stills, but we could need more shots.’
Beside the restitched dark incision in Tianna Richardson’s chest cavity, Harry’s probe pointed to the odd marks I’d noticed near her left breast and jaw line. They were no longer the reddish colour of yesterday, but had taken on a grey-purple colour. I looked more closely at the small, semi-circular bruises.
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