‘Sometimes I can find her hanging round near the Civic mall,’ she said.
‘Have you a photograph of her that I can copy?’ I asked.
‘I have, but it wouldn’t be helpful,’ she said, and I followed her gaze as it lit on a framed portrait of beautiful, beaming girl with classic features in mortarboard and robes, holding her furled degree. ‘She doesn’t look like that any more.’ Mrs Tobin’s eyes filled with tears.
I stood up and so did she, accompanying me down the hall back to the front door.
‘I’m very sorry to hear what’s happened to Cheryl,’ I said. ‘If it’s any help to you to know, I have a daughter a little younger than yours and she was living the life of a street addict. She’s now clean and straight, studies hard at university and cares about herself and others. People can get well. They can learn to grow their spirit—learn to deal with the problems that drove them to drugs in the first place.’
I wasn’t sure if she could hear me, but it was the best I could do as I took my leave. I turned back to her and saw the grief and anger in her eyes.
‘You must look after yourself, too,’ I said. ‘Be gentle with yourself. You look worn out.’
I left her with the tears running down her face. I knew how she felt.
On the drive through town back to the cottage, my own words kept ringing in my ears. Had I learned to deal with all the problems that had driven me into alcoholism? I thought long and hard and came to some conclusions. I may have learned how to be a responsible father and workmate and possibly even brother and friend. But when it came to romance, I had to admit I had a big problem.
Women had always confused me. Beginning with my mother. I didn’t understand what was going on with her when I was a kid and, forty years later, I still seemed powerless to decipher what a woman wanted. I knew how to comfort women, but that wasn’t enough. Healthy people didn’t need comforting. They needed an equal relationship. I thought of my various misdemeanours with women over the years—not a huge number, but all had ended in tears. I recalled the words of Annette Sommers as she described Peter Yu and the thought that my relationship with Iona was doomed to the same sad ending evoked in me a dark and desolate mood.
Unlike earlier occasions when my heart would lift at the sight of Iona’s car and the lights on in the cottage, I felt tired and defeated as I walked inside. Noting the closed door of our bedroom and the absence of the letter I’d written her that morning, I hoped Iona was having a nap and had forgiven me. Again. I decided to leave her be and followed my nose to the kitchen where Charlie was making pizzas.
‘Have Jacinta and Greg gone?’ I asked. ‘Her car’s gone.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Back to Sydney. Jacinta was really worried about Shaz and said to say goodbye and that she’d ring later. Want a drink?’
Charlie passed me the wooden spoon and pushed me towards the tomato sauce simmering on the stove.
I started stirring the sauce when my mobile rang and I cursed it.
‘Yes?’
‘Damien Henshaw didn’t get to Kylie’s place till well after 2 a.m. the night Tianna was murdered,’ said Brian. ‘She’s just made a statement.’
‘Is he trying to tell you that he was with another woman but he won’t give you her name to protect her honour?’ I suggested.
‘Not quite,’ said Brian.
‘He reckons he doesn’t know her name?’
‘Got it in one,’ said Brian.
‘Years of experience.’
‘I’m not letting him go now. I’m counting on you, Jack. Give me more physical evidence.’
‘More than those boots?’
‘The boots are okay. But someone else could have worn them. I want something that can’t be explained away by counsel. I want something that puts him right there at the killing. I’ve got a feeling about this guy. He’s a smug little shit and if he did it, I’d hate to see him getting away with it.’
I recalled the epithelial cells Vic had told me about from the half-smoked joint. ‘I’ll check up how we’re doing with our analyses. We might have a DNA result for you soon.’
‘I thought you said the palynologist found some rare native orchid pollen? That could help us pinpoint the primary crime scene.’
‘Sadly,’ I said, ‘that evidence was compromised. Contamination by floral tributes at Tianna’s place. Our palynologist could probably make a reasonable case around prior deposition—’
‘Sorry?’ Brian said.
‘She could probably show that one type of pollen was laid down at an earlier time than the pollen introduced to the scene, but it’s still not the sort of clear-cut evidence that a jury likes.’
Brian grunted.
‘And before you go,’ I added, ‘there is no venue sixteen used by the partner-swapping group. I spoke to the person coded Blue and she denies knowing Claire Dimitriou.’ I gave Brian the details, rang off and returned to stirring the sauce and filling Charlie in about the arrest in the Tianna Richardson case.
‘What about the son?’ Charlie said when I’d finished.
‘Stepson?’ I said. ‘He’s definitely a possibility.’
‘Why not have a look at their family of origin?’ said Charlie. ‘That could help you close in on one rather than the other. If there’s a violent family background in one case and not in the other, I know which possibility I’d put the money on.’
‘Maybe one day we’ll get to that sort of sophistication,’ I said, ‘where we can run the factors through a program and come up with a statistical result. It might point us in the right direction quicker.’
When dinner was almost ready, I went to the bedroom door, intending to let Iona know. I knocked gently before going in. Iona wasn’t having a nap.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, not prepared to believe my eyes.
Two suitcases lay on the bed, one of them filled to capacity, the other with an assortment of her clothing.
‘As you can see,’ she said. ‘I’m packing up.’
‘But you can’t!’ I said, ‘This is crazy.’
She paused in her folding of a large creamy jumper that I loved to see her wearing. ‘No, this isn’t crazy. What’s crazy is what I’ve been doing the last six months, Jack,’ she said gently. ‘Having the same conversation with you over and over. Waiting for you to give me some scraps of your time.’
‘Scraps?’
She nodded. ‘One picnic, duration two and a half hours nearly six months ago. Do you have any idea how many times you rang me to say you’d be home late? That I should eat alone? Most weekends you’re not here.’
‘But why suddenly now?’ I asked. ‘Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. It’s not as if you haven’t expressed these concerns before.’
‘After the other night’s conversation . . .’ She paused, then said, ‘I realised I was turning into one of those women.’
‘What do you mean? That conversation had nothing to do with you. With us. I was talking about a case I’m working on,’ I said.
‘That’s right. And I had to ask myself the same question: why am I staying with a man who keeps hurting me?’
Her words hit me like a stunning blow. I felt winded. I hadn’t realised that I was hurting her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘Jack, I’ve been asking you for months. I’m starting to feel like some pathetic supplicant, begging for favours. I’m not doing this any more and I’ve made my decision to go.’
‘But where will you go?’ I said when I could speak. ‘Where will you stay?’
‘I’ll look around for a short-term lease in town. Finish the term up at the college. Then I intend to go back to Sydney. I’ll stay with a friend for the rest of the year and then move back into my house when the lease runs out.’
; I went over to her and held her. Tears were running down her face.
‘Please, Iona. Please,’ I said. ‘Give me another chance.’
She gently disengaged from me, searching her pockets for something to wipe her eyes.
‘Here,’ I said, passing her my handkerchief. ‘Use this.’
She took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, tucking the balled-up hankie into her sleeve. ‘I’ll take these things with me in the morning and come back for my other stuff later,’ she said, indicating the scattered possessions. Then she gathered up her towel and dressing-gown and headed for the bathroom, leaving me sitting on the bed, my head in my hands, exhausted and with no words left. I wasn’t used to this sort of ending. The end of all my other affairs had exploded with screaming accusations, recriminations, pent-up fury finally unleashed. Not this sad and resigned dignity.
When I could, I stood up and walked out through the front door onto the verandah overlooking the garden. The night air was sharp with frost and an eroded moon hung over the hills, etching the edges of trees along the skyline. Small night creatures rustled in the old hedges. I couldn’t remember when I’d last felt so bad. This was so different from all previous separations and I didn’t know how to deal with this sad, steely resolve of hers.
Aware of a presence, and for a moment absurdly hopeful, I swung round but it was only Charlie.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow, bro.’
‘So’s Iona, Charlie.’
A long pause.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What can I do, Charlie? She’s made up her mind.’
Charlie put a hand on my shoulder and I was grateful for its warmth. ‘You know what to do, Jack. The problem is, you won’t do it.’
‘Jesus, Charlie, I can’t! I’m in the middle of three really tough cases. I can’t just walk away from them at this stage.’
‘I guess you can’t,’ said Charlie. ‘And that’s the whole problem in a nutshell.’
I looked up at the sky to see a shooting star sliding through the immense and silent blackness. In ancient days, such things were seen as bad omens and that seemed very apt just now. Charlie left me and I stood a little while longer in the cold night air then I went back into our bedroom.
It looked sad and stark because Iona had taken down her paintings and stacked them, faces against the wall, and her other personal items, like the old-fashioned silver-backed hairbrush and mirror set that I’d first seen on the Victorian cedar dressing-table in her house at Annandale, were missing. Iona was kneeling back on her heels, wrapping tissue paper around something fragile.
‘This can’t be the end, Iona. I’ll meet you tomorrow. We can find a way through this.’
‘Don’t, Jack,’ she warned. ‘The time for talking has come and gone. Several times. I’m starting to lose my self-respect.’
‘But you can’t just go like this,’ I said, watching her helplessly as she battled with the lid on the bulging second suitcase. Instinctively, I went to help her.
‘Why am I doing this?’ I said, pulling back. ‘I’m not going to help you leave!’
But I ended up zipping the suitcase all the way round while Iona sat on it.
‘This is crazy,’ I repeated. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I’m weary, Jack. I can’t keep arguing like this.’ She walked to the door. ‘I’ll sleep in Jacinta’s room tonight.’
‘You’ve got to tell me where you’re going,’ I said.
‘I’ll be staying with a friend in town.’
‘What friend?’
She told me. It was one of the women she taught with who had an apartment in Ainslie. I scribbled down the address, vaguely remembering the place from the time we gave Anne-Marie a lift after school.
And that was it.
I looked at the two bulging cases and rebelled against carrying them out to be near the front door. Charlie could do that, not me.
I tossed and turned and once even got up and went down the hallway, wanting to knock on the spare bedroom door and talk her out of it. But I knew when I was beaten. There was a steel in Iona that had helped her survive the events of her life and now she was using it against me.
At about 3 a.m. I got up and went out to the lounge room and rebuilt the fire. Even when it was crackling along, I felt cold to the bone and I couldn’t tell if my head cold had turned into a fever or if I was just sick and cold with grief.
I ended up dozing off on the lounge and woke just as dawn was streaking the skies above the eastern hills. I wrapped one of Iona’s mohair throws around me, went out to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I didn’t think I could bear being here when Iona moved out so, while it was still dark, I wrote a note, rolled the car down to the gate and left for work. I made a plan that I’d go round to Anne-Marie’s later in the day. Maybe by then I might have found the words that would make Iona change her mind.
Twenty-three
At Forensic Services, there was no one else around at this hour on a Saturday, just the soft hum of automated processes moving through their cycles behind closed doors. I was relieved because talking to anyone just now would have been a strain.
I sat at my desk, staring at the Venetian glass paperweight, a gift from Iona in happier days. Restlessly, I got up and paced around. Finally, I rang the cottage then killed the call. There was no point and I didn’t want to become a nuisance. Work, I told myself. The old standby.
I pulled out the results I’d got back from Vic, laying them out on the low coffee table together with my own findings and those of Sofia Verstoek: the tables of soil analysis from around the grounds and gardens of three houses—one in Kincaid Street, another from a tiny hamlet on the Ginnindera Road and the last from Damien Henshaw’s place. Apart from botanical variances, the statistical measurements for the soils at all three places shared certain characteristics of the locality: various degraded metamorphic rock mixed with mineral inclusions, as well as diatoms, pollen both fresh and fossilised with clay fractions. But there was no explanation for the coarse grains we’d found embedded in the head wounds of both Tianna Richardson and Albert Vaughan. Someone had brought those particles in. From somewhere else. And that someone was their killer.
I glanced over the soil analysis from Damien Henshaw’s place; stapled to it was a fourth profile, from the house he was currently painting. Finally, I read and reread through the complicated graphs and charts. Nothing Sofia had found matched the coarse sandy particles. The rare native orchid pollen could not be accounted for either, in any of these locations. I threw the report down. The soil profiles would not help us locate even the general area of the primary crime scene.
My mobile rang. It was Brian, wanting my company on a visit to the remand centre. ‘Damien Henshaw tried to off himself last night. I told you he’s guilty as hell.’
‘Is the remand centre open for business already?’ I asked, looking at my watch.
‘Crime never sleeps,’ said Brian, ‘and neither does the remand centre.’
‘Could be hopelessness,’ I said, thinking of Anthony Dimitriou as well as the hanged man whose death still haunted me. ‘I had a case once where a suspect suicided when we confronted him with bootprint evidence.’
‘Case closed,’ said Brian. ‘Good as a guilty plea and saves the state a motza.’
‘Except the evidence didn’t exist,’ I said. ‘I was just a youngster then. And when I did examine his boots, they were completely different.’
That took Brian aback a little. ‘Then why did he off himself?’
I paused, though I’d had years to consider this one. ‘Because,’ I said finally, ‘he knew he couldn’t win against the cops. He was a nobody, a petty crim. It was despair, not guilt.’
‘Don’t let that get in the way of your dealings with this little shit,’ said Brian. ‘This isn’t just any old boo
tprint, remember. We’ve got other ways to hang him out to dry. The bootprint, the admitted argument, the dodgy alibi. Shit, Jack, I reckon it was him. When you get the DNA results we’ll able to nail him.’
I couldn’t argue, but something was still worrying me.
I recalled part of my earlier conversation with Charlie. ‘Did Damien Henshaw grow up in a violent household?’ I asked.
‘His parents are Quakers,’ said Brian. ‘Complete pacifists. So the little creep’s got no excuses. But I’m determined to find out why he killed Albert Vaughan, and I want him to tell me. I don’t like mysteries.’
‘Albert Vaughan was out late Monday night, remember,’ I said. ‘He told the pharmacist he’d just seen someone he knew.’
‘Yes, but who?’
‘He saw something that he shouldn’t have,’ I went on. ‘And that’s why he had to die.’
‘If you’d just seen someone murdered, you’d say to the pharmacist “ring the police” or “I’ve just seen a woman murdered” or something like that, asthma attack notwithstanding,’ said Brian. ‘All Vaughan said was he’d just seen someone he knew. It could’ve been anyone.’
I climbed back into my car and drove to the remand centre where I met Brian and sat with him and Damien Henshaw in one of the sterile visiting rooms, a staff member of Corrective Services standing discreetly nearby. Opposite me, Damien Henshaw, no longer the cocky little rooster I’d seen last time, sat hunched in his too-big jacket. His hair was cut short back and sides and he looked like he’d already lost weight.
‘Damien, you’d feel a lot better if you just got this whole business off your chest,’ said Brian. ‘You don’t look well. I hear the medical staff are concerned about your mental health. You tried to kill yourself last night? Tell me why you killed Tianna and Albert.’
Damien looked up from under his eyebrows. ‘You don’t know what it’s like in this place. I’d rather be dead than in here.’
‘Answer the question.’
‘I didn’t fucking kill anyone,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be in this place.’
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