I wondered what he did for sex now. Probably what most men did, with a stash of pornography hidden somewhere. The only magazines I could see in the room were some journals on genetic improvements in merino sheep.
‘It was only ever supposed to be a bit of fun,’ said Dallas, ‘with willing people who would be as discreet as I was. It was just meant to be a bit of sex on the side.’
A bit of sex on the side. The phrase made it sound so harmless, like a green salad or a bowl of chips with the main meal.
‘So Tianna Richardson could have become a member of the group after you left?’ I asked.
‘It’s quite possible. I knew that people from town joined even when I was still active in the group. She could easily have become part of it.’
‘That’s why you sacked Kevin Waites,’ I said, suddenly understanding.
‘When he told me what he’d overheard, I immediately imagined Claire’s words referred to the colour code. I didn’t want him repeating that anywhere. He’s getting too old for the job, anyway,’ he said. Dallas spread his beautifully manicured hands and the ruby winked on the little finger of his left hand.
‘The words Claire used were “Sixteen blue”,’ I said.
‘Perhaps Claire was alluding to someone in the group then . . . Although we usually put the colour first. She could have meant Blue Sixteen. Like I told you,’ Dallas said, ‘I haven’t been involved for nearly a year now. If it had come out that I was involved with a student, anything could have happened. You don’t know what it’s like these days. A complaint from a student about harassment can end an academic’s life. There are plenty of hungry young associate professors coming up through the system ready to take my place.’
Outside, kookaburras were laughing raucously.
‘Dallas, you’re hardly like an academic in a position of trust with a student. It’s not like that. This girl joined the group as an equal player.’
‘Even so, I got scared.’
Scared that the good life you’ve made for yourself might all start to unravel, I thought. ‘That’s why you didn’t find it very funny when I suggested earlier that Claire Dimitriou and Peter Yu might have eloped.’
‘It wasn’t funny. A couple of people got a bit too serious once before,’ he said. ‘That was one of the things we discussed at the beginning. It was all meant to stay light-hearted, not end up in the bloody divorce courts.’
The phone rang and Dallas picked it up while I made a mental note to talk to Jerri Quill, Claire Dimitriou’s postgrad student.
‘Yes, dear,’ Dallas was saying. ‘No, I remembered later and didn’t want to disturb you. I’ll be home soon.’
He put the phone down and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go. Please God, I can’t have a scandal, Jack,’ he said.
I felt sorry for the poor sod. I must have been getting soft in my middle years. First Earl bloody Richardson and now this fellow. Men of my vintage were starting to get to me. Did I see myself reflected back in them? It was not a comfortable thought. Maybe once I’d had a break, I’d be back to my usual self. Spending time with Iona could only do me good.
‘My interest in your personal life is purely professional. If it’s possible, I’m happy to be discreet,’ I said. ‘But you must get the names that go with the colours for me. That’s non-negotiable. And the corresponding numbers for the venues. It’s essential that I know who Blue Sixteen is. Or was.’
‘It’s been a long time,’ he said. ‘They’ll think it’s strange if I start asking questions like that.’
‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what they think, Dallas. I’m sure you can get that information somehow. Otherwise I’ll lean on you and blow the whole group wide open.’
He flashed me an angry glance then pulled out a very large handkerchief and wiped his glistening brow. I wondered if his agitation was simply the result of anxiety or whether he was still withholding something important.
He shoved the handkerchief back into a pocket. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘You get me that information. All of it.’
‘Jack, I only just hung onto my job in the most recent reshuffle. Ever since the amalgamation of the Agriculture Department with Fisheries and Primary Industry, things have felt tenuous at work. If I lose this position, I’m finished. Men of my age aren’t being hired anywhere. And then if Ellen divorced me . . .’
He didn’t have to tell me. After my divorce, I’d had to start again, like a young man in his twenties. If it hadn’t been for the windfall from the dealer, I wouldn’t have been able to buy a house.
‘So I’ve been wondering,’ said Dallas, interrupting my thoughts ‘if . . . you know . . . now that I’ve told you everything . . . you might be able to see your way clear to ruling a line under the information about my part in it.’ His voice faltered. ‘I can’t see how I could be related to anything that might be going on now. Surely my name can be left out of it?’
I didn’t envy him his beautiful house or his head-of-department salary package right this minute. Right this minute, Dallas Baxter was just a sad, frightened middle-aged man trying to wring out a favour.
‘Dallas, this is a murder investigation. Nothing and no one can be left out of it. Surely you realise that.’
Dallas went a paler shade of grey. ‘I just hoped, you know . . . I never thought that the share-mate business would end up becoming involved in something like murder. What’s happened is horrible.’
Millions of women have died at the hands of jealous men, I thought. And women, too, have wreaked vengeance on men they considered faithless.
‘You’ve lived too long in your academic ivory tower. You’re out of touch with reality,’ I said as I pulled out my notebook. ‘Okay. If someone wanted to join the group, what would they have to do?’
‘They need to be nominated by a member.’
‘Like joining a club?’
‘That’s right. And the first time someone partakes of a partner . . .’ He hesitated.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘It’s like an initiation—they don’t know who they’re meeting. They have to go to the nominated place and see who’s there.’
The lucky dip game, I thought. ‘How do they know what the nominated place is?’
‘They meet up with the group and take their chances by picking a number and a colour at the pub, or if they don’t want to go out, someone does the selection for them and then rings through with the information,’ said Dallas. ‘It’s always up to the lady to leave a message at Reception so that her visitor can find her.’
I thought about that a moment and got up. ‘Okay, Dallas. I’ll do what I can to keep your name out of this.’
‘That’s good of you, Jack.’
‘You can do something for me.’
‘If I can . . .’
‘Give Kevin Waites his job back. You said yourself how hard it is for men of your age—his age—to get another job.’
‘If I do, you’ll keep quiet about this business?’
‘I’ll do my level best,’ I said. ‘And as to the swingers group . . .’
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Get me those names and place numbers.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘And one more thing?’
‘Anything I can do, Jack. I swear.’
‘Get someone who’s still a member to nominate me.’
Fourteen
I left Dallas Baxter in his office, probably succumbing to a third brandy, while I hurried back to my car and rang Brian. I told him about the partner-swapping group and also stressed that I didn’t want any dickhead detectives charging in and frightening the horses. I didn’t tell him my plan to infiltrate the group and I had to bargain extremely hard to buy a little time from him. I asked him about Vera Hastings, the street gossip who lived next to Tianna Ric
hardson’s place.
‘I’ve contacted her,’ said Brian. ‘She’s expecting someone to call round. Let’s hope she’s the busybody she’s supposed to be.’
‘They can be goldmines,’ I said.
I drove a little distance until I came to a pleasant roadside spot with a cement table and two cement benches on two sides. I pulled out the souvlaki and salad containers and sat down to have some lunch, noticing a ‘missed call’ on my mobile. It was my daughter, asking me to call her about something important, but before I had the chance, a call from Harry interrupted me.
‘Come over,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to show you. I want you to take a look at what I’ve found on Albert Vaughan.’
It didn’t take me long to get to the morgue where the receptionist called through to Harry.
‘He’s being cleaned up now,’ Harry said, arriving a few minutes later and leading me through the secured door. ‘I need to leave here quite soon but I wanted to give you this in person.’
Harry passed me one of the two gowns he’d picked up and I entered the main post-mortem area, following him down to the table where the pale body lay, waiting to be bagged. On the counter behind it, the samples Harry had taken and weighed stood in labelled specimen jars.
‘What did you find?’ I asked. In death, all Albert Vaughan’s fragility was visible; the skin on his face and neck translucent as an embryonic bird’s.
Harry pulled gloves on and checked one of the specimen jars, then put it down again, before turning to me.
‘Very strange,’ he said, rolling the head over to one side to reveal the damage at the back. ‘I found something here that will interest you,’ He pointed with a pair of long-nosed scissors. Then he looked about, frowning. ‘Now where is that bucket?’
He was looking for the brain, which he’d previously removed and weighed and which was now hardening in solution before it could be sliced and examined by the neurologist.
‘It’s okay, Harry,’ I said, raising a hand. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Just at this moment, with my head aching and stuffed up, brains in buckets weren’t my cup of tea.
‘A severe wound to the back of the head.’ He turned and waved his gloved hand over the body. ‘I’d say it was made by some blunt instrument—maybe a piece of timber or metal. Delivered from behind, as your crime scene people found. I found evidence of three separate events.’
‘Whack, whack and whack,’ I said.
‘And I found coarse sandy particles embedded in the wounds. I think you’ll be very interested in these,’ he said, frowning over his bifocals. ‘You’re going to have to take soil samples from around Albert Vaughan’s place and Tianna Richardson’s.’
‘I’ll get our palynologist on the job,’ I said, making a note.
I pulled gloves on and took the specimen jar Harry passed to me. ‘I took two samples of these particles from the head wounds one for me and this one for you. I knew you’d want your own,’ he explained.
I looked down at the fluid in the tightly sealed specimen jar, gently shook it, then held it up close to my eye, watching the large particles swirl around in the fluid. Then I refocused to see Harry’s intelligent eyes magnified through the container.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I’ll need to analyse them officially. But I’d put the rent on this being the same material we found in Tianna Richardson’s wounds.’
Somehow, an elderly man living on the outskirts of a small hamlet north of Canberra and Tianna Richardson, murdered in a suburb over thirty kilometres away, seemed to be connected.
After getting rid of our sterile gear, I walked back to Harry’s office with him, double-bagging the specimen jar and then slipping it into a thick envelope. I could feel myself being drawn further into this investigation. Now that their deaths were linked by unique evidence, I had to know everything I could glean about the last hours of Tianna Richardson and Albert Vaughan.
‘So who’s going to do the fine work on this?’ said Harry, interrupting my thoughts.
‘I’ll try to woo Ellis Smith out of retirement for it,’ I said. ‘I think he lives somewhere in Sydney these days.’
‘Good idea,’ said Harry, pushing open the door for me. ‘We’ll need the best man for this.’
Back in my car, I found the number of Ryan Holbrook, a smart, young detective I’d met on an earlier case in Sydney, and asked him to track down Dr Ellis Smith. Ryan promised he’d ask around and get back to me.
All the way to Tianna Richardson’s street, I wondered about how these two murders might be connected. Was it conceivable that Albert Vaughan was a member of the partner-swapping group? I dismissed the notion smartly as I tried to imagine him throwing a leg over Tianna. He looked so frail in death that I couldn’t imagine life would have made much difference.
Vera Hastings, a fair woman with her hair pulled tightly back from her forehead in a high bun near the top of her head, had two grey, tadpole-shaped lines drawn above her eyes instead of eyebrows. After I’d identified myself, she walked ahead of me in a bright purple tracksuit, showing me through into her living room. Several striking orchids displayed their floral spikes in pots and containers around the room.
‘It’s good of you to help us, Mrs Hastings,’ I said, looking around past the orchids. Too much heavy dark furniture cluttered the room so that when I sat opposite her, I felt too close.
‘Please, call me Vera. My late husband was in the job,’ she said, turning to a portrait of a chubby man in uniform hanging on the wall, ‘so I know how important it is to get as much information as possible. It’s a terrible thing to have a neighbour murdered.’
I made sympathetic noises and she lowered her voice. ‘I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but just between you and me, I’m not so surprised about Tianna coming to such an awful end.’
‘Why is that?’ I said, as if surprised.
‘Since Earl left, Tianna’s been out with quite a few different men. I feel sorry for him. He wanted her back, you know. Came up just a week or two ago,’ she said, offering me a ginger snap. I declined and she took a couple herself. ‘She wasn’t a bad girl, you know. But she was left on her own a lot.’
I had a sudden vision of a woman eating her evening meal alone and it wasn’t Tianna Richardson.
‘And Tianna liked to party,’ Vera Hastings was saying. ‘Loved dressing up and going clubbing and dancing. That sort of thing. She asked me if I was interested once, but I’m a bit beyond that.’
I took out the photograph Brian had removed from Tianna Richardson’s bedroom of Tianna with the unknown man. ‘We were wondering if you might have seen this man?’ I said, passing it to her.
She studied the photograph a few seconds, frowned and then I saw recognition dawn on her face. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘That good-looking fellow. He dropped by from time to time. Always parked his car way down the street and then walked to the house. But he didn’t fool me.’ She looked up from the photograph. ‘He was here not so long ago.’
‘What sort of car did this man drive?’ I asked, taking the photograph back from her.
‘A white one,’ she said. ‘Ford, Holden, I don’t know. An ordinary sort of big white car.’
‘Sedan?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It was a station wagon, like yours.’
‘And you never heard his name?’
She shook her head. ‘Tianna and I didn’t talk all that much, just a nod hello from time to time. Or we’d bump into each other in the Plaza shopping.’
‘Mrs Richardson had a son that we’re trying to locate,’ I said.
‘The surfer?’ she asked. ‘Jason?’
I nodded.
‘Oh dear, oh dear. He visited once.’
I nodded again, encouragingly. This woman clearly kept the entire street under constant surveillance.
/> ‘You’re wondering how I know?’ said Vera Hastings, reading my mind. ‘The whole street knew! There was a terrible row. Ended up with him storming out of the house. Everyone was screaming and carrying on.’
Interesting, I thought, and made a note of it. ‘When was that?’
Vera shrugged. ‘Can’t really say. Sometime last year. July, August.’
‘Did you hear what they were arguing about?’
‘Can’t really say.’ She frowned. ‘And by the way, he was her stepson, not her own blood.’
I made another note, more interested than ever in finding Jason Richardson. He might have had more than a filial interest in his father’s wife. ‘Any idea where Jason might be now?’
‘Who can say? He follows the surf, I heard. Lives all over the place apparently.’
‘What does he drive?’ I asked.
She gave me a vague description of a van with a board on top. It wasn’t much. Clearly, her nosey-parkering didn’t include cars. ‘If you think of anything else,’ I said, handing her my card.
‘Thanks,’ she said, propping it up against a pot plant.
As soon as I’d taken my leave, I rang Brian, passing on the information about Jason Richardson and agreeing he should now alert the police in other states too. Sometimes this worked. Jason Richardson was certainly shaping up as a potential suspect. Then there was the mystery man. If he was part of the partner-swapping group, he might very well have visited their favoured pub. I pulled the photograph out of my pocket again and studied it. The know-all barman at the Cat and Castle might be helpful.
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