Dirty Weekend

by Gabrielle Lord

  Blasphemy, I thought. Peter Yu had identified a blasphemy and he and Claire had died because of it.

  ‘I still can’t answer that,’ I said. ‘But the sixteen blue incident was the assay result we need to focus on.’

  Dallas disappeared into his office and returned with the copied staffing details. I thanked him and put the envelope in my pocket.

  ‘That other information doesn’t have to come out now, does it?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘I can’t say that, Dallas.’ Again I felt sorry for him. Poor bastard, with his fancy house and rich wife and storeman job trying to keep it together, except for the bit he wanted to keep well apart.

  ‘Dallas, how well do you know the Bible?’ I asked.

  ‘I used to know it quite well once,’ he said. ‘When I was younger.’

  ‘Is there any well-known chapter or verse 16?’ I said, wondering about blasphemy.

  ‘Like Micah 12, you mean? Not that I’ve heard of,’ he replied.

  We parted and I walked back to the car to find Brian half out of his seat, holding up his mobile. ‘It’s your daughter. Reckons you’ve been off the air.’

  I swore and grabbed his mobile. ‘Jass! Are you okay?’

  ‘Of course I am. Why was your phone switched off?’

  ‘I must have switched it off,’ I said, thinking this was the sort of thing that happened when a person was in emotional upheaval. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘You always ask that.’

  ‘There usually is one,’ I countered.

  ‘Well, clever dick, this time you’re wrong. Shaz’s left that bastard and Bob’s fixed her up in a nice motel while she finds another place to live. A friend of his runs it at Maroubra.’

  I knew the place and the man who ran the Maroubra motel; Bob and I had used it in days gone by as a safe house for other people who needed to lie low.

  ‘That’s good news. What happened?’

  ‘We went to her place and her flatmates told me she’d gone back to his flat. We found her there. Oh, Dad, you should have seen her. She still had the black eye and he’d split her lip too. She was in a terrible state. But the good thing is, she’s finally had enough. So she came back with us and Bob drove her to the doctor’s to get her lip stitched, then we helped her pack up while Bob organised the motel. The owner says she can stay there until she finds another place to live. I think Bob’s paying.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said, knowing my old friend and his system of leverage. ‘Great work.’

  ‘I feel so much better knowing that she’s finally free of him,’ she said.

  ‘Sometimes, Jass,’ I said, ‘I am ashamed of my sex.’

  ‘And guess what? Sometimes I feel ashamed of mine.’

  We laughed, I made some mumbling comments about her need to study and she scoffed at me with a line about dickbrains who forget to switch on their mobiles. Suddenly she was serious. ‘How’s Iona?’ she asked.

  I didn’t want to talk about that right now and told her I’d ring later when things were quieter.

  She farewelled me with a kiss blown down the line.

  I handed Brian’s mobile back to him.

  Twenty-eight

  It was bloody hard driving up in the darkness to the cottage, knowing that the place was cold and empty and that Iona wasn’t coming home. I parked the car and overwhelming grief surged up in me. What had I done? Why hadn’t I been able to give this woman I loved so much the only thing she wanted from me—my time and attention?

  I turned the key in the door and walked into the chilly atmosphere; it smelled of dead fireplace. To dispel the sadness, I went round the back and, by the shed light, swung the axe, splitting a good stack of firewood to replenish the pile depleted by my guests.

  I couldn’t settle. I paced around after making the fire but the loneliness of the place got to me. Once, I’d been content to sit here, night after night, alone, reading, watching television, reviewing some work project, but now the prospect of an evening alone with my grief seemed intolerable.

  I damped the fire down, put the wire screen in front of it and left the house. I drove out to Weston, logged myself in and walked down to the lab to check if the automated run I’d started from the samples I’d taken from the unknown male’s sandals had finished. They hadn’t so I got back in my car and drove to Ainslie, sitting across the road from the apartment where Iona’s friend, Anne-Marie someone, lived.

  The lights were on, but the drawn curtains did not permit any decent surveillance, and besides, I was feeling ashamed of myself. After about ten minutes I drove away, heading for the Cretan’s café.

  I ordered moussaka and sat in front of it, defeated.

  ‘Something wrong, Jack?’ the Cretan asked, coming over to my table.

  ‘Not with your food, Yorgo,’ I said. ‘With me.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Woman trouble?’

  I nodded.

  He left, coming back with a small liqueur glass of Aphrodite brandy which he placed on the table with a flourish. ‘You have this. On the house. Warm your heart up. Make that woman love you too much.’

  ‘Thanks, Yorgo,’ I said, looking at the volatile liquid. ‘You’ll have to drink it for me. I don’t drink alcohol.’

  ‘Just this little one. It will do you good.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, not wishing to offend his generous spirit. When he wasn’t looking, I tipped the brandy into a planter box of fake ivy beside me. ‘Here’s to you, Iona,’ I said, as I emptied it.

  Finally, I went home and, somehow, ended up going to sleep in front of the fire to awaken, stiff and cold, in the early hours when I finally went to bed.

  Next morning, I woke from a dream where Iona and I were translating something from a book together down on the river bank. It took me a second or two to catch what had happened and, as I swung out of bed in the darkness before 6 a.m., I tried to remember what had been written in the dream book. I took a shower, distracting myself with making a list in my head of jobs that needed to be done today.

  As I swiped myself through to the office area at Forensic Services, I decided I needed to talk to Sofia, but before that I hurried down to the laboratory where I’d started the amp run yesterday. The green light indicated that the run had finished, genetic material had been extracted and amplified and now it was a matter for Profiler Plus, the DNA program, to construct the profile of Bob’s unknown male 17/2000 into a graphical diagram. If possible. I wasn’t all that hopeful as I set the next step in motion. But, fingers crossed, we might have something.

  I rang Sofia’s office phone. Despite the early hour, she was in and yes, now was a convenient time. Her voice was clipped, artificially polite. That, at least, was something, I thought.

  As soon as I’d closed the door behind me, I could see she’d been crying.

  ‘I’m fine!’ she said defiantly, when I asked her what the matter was. ‘And I’m very busy.’

  ‘I realise you’ve been under a lot of stress,’ I said, grabbing the spare wheelie chair and sliding it towards me so I could sit closer to her. ‘And I can see you’re upset right now.’

  She went to interrupt me, but I silenced her. ‘What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to fight me to get what you want. Why don’t you just ask? If there’s something worrying you—and I have reason to believe that there is—why the hell didn’t you just knock on my door and come in and sit down and have a chat?’

  She looked at me in disbelief. ‘You think it’s that easy?’

  ‘With me, yes. It is that easy. And before you say anything else, I want to tell you something about me. Maybe that’ll make it clearer to you. I want to tell you something personal. And no, it’s not about sex.’

  At those words, she raised her head. She sure hadn’t been expecting this.

  ‘It�
�s much more intimate than that.’

  I had her full attention now.

  ‘Sofia,’ I started, ‘I’m a recovered alcoholic. Until twelve or thirteen years ago, I lived life very differently. I want you to know I’ve done every stupid, cruel, self-centred, bloody-minded, phoney and plain wicked thing that you can think of. So I’m in no position to judge anyone else. But in leaving that life and making another one, I’ve learned a few things and I’ve noticed things—things that often people who haven’t lived two lives fail to notice.’

  She was silent, listening—bristles, hackles, defences, for the moment, folded down.

  ‘So when I tell you that I’ve worked out what’s going on with you, I hope you don’t feel any sense of shame. I know what it’s like to have a past that is painful, that you’d prefer to keep hidden.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was full of fear.

  ‘It’s very important that, as scientists, we remain uncompromised. Objectivity must be maintained at all times. All we have is our objectivity, our impartiality. Some time back, a fellow at another lab falsified his findings. Certified that he could find no evidence of heroin in an item—when, in fact, there was a lot.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I would never do that!’

  I ignored her interjection. ‘He later suicided. He knew he was finished as a scientist. Because of his own addiction, he was also pretty well finished as a human being. At least in his own eyes. He’d sold himself to a crim. Because he had a secret that he believed he had to protect. I think of that poor bastard from time to time.’

  She shifted uneasily in her seat, eyes wary. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because I believe you are potentially being drawn into a situation that could one day—maybe quite soon—turn round and bite you. It could also cast a shadow over your objectivity—your scientific honour, if you like. A situation that could destroy you.’

  I heard her sharp intake of breath and she jumped up and stood near the window, turned away from me. Then she leaned against the window, head down.

  ‘Shit!’ she said.

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  An hour later, we sat in my car, overlooking a pretty valley about fifteen kilometres away from work. Sofia had been crying a lot and I’d made no move to stop her, apart from passing the tissue box to her now and then. I’d learned to let angry people be angry and let crying women cry.

  ‘That’s how I supported myself while I was doing my postgraduate studies,’ she said. ‘I was a worker three nights a week. Because I was young and good-looking and was free to go away with guys for the weekend, I made quite a lot of money. Mostly overseas businessmen from repressive countries. They loved going with a blonde woman who could fuck.’ Her voice was hard and contemptuous.

  ‘That’s why you reacted so strongly when I said you were a good worker,’ I said. ‘I meant it in the context of your work here.’

  She nodded. ‘I realised that. But when I heard that word—it’s a loaded word for me. It’s so hard maintaining privacy.’

  I watched a small hawk hanging in the air beneath us, head turning from side to side as it sought movement on the valley floor, and thought about an old saying: ‘We’re only as sick as our secrets.’

  ‘But someone from your past recognised you?’ I asked.

  ‘He said he’d tell my boss if I didn’t have sex with him for nothing. I told him I didn’t do that any more. Then I had to buy him off.’

  ‘But he kept coming back. That’s what they do,’ I said. ‘Who is he?’

  She leaned back in the car seat, covering her face with her hands.

  ‘The guy who manages the Blackspot. Endo Bremmer. He recognised me that morning, despite the glamorous Tyvek overall. Later, he accosted me when I was packing my gear in my car. It didn’t take him long to find out my real name. He’d only known me as Demi from Bondi.’

  I closed my eyes. Demi from Bondi was now an analyst in my team. This might turn very nasty. Murky, murky waters. A crime scene professional gathering evidence at a murder scene connected to a man who was blackmailing her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, picking up my mood.

  ‘Think about it. You’re working crime scene and being blackmailed by someone who might be involved in the crime scene you’re investigating. Can you imagine what the defence could do with our evidence if that came to light? Prosecution scientist named in evidence scandal,’ I intoned, as if reading headlines. I leaned back in my seat, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.

  ‘What am I going to do, Jack?’ This time, I heard the little girl’s voice instead of the angry bitch. She might have been Jacinta.

  ‘Leave it with me. In the meantime, tell him it’s finished. No more money. Never, ever. No matter what he threatens.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s grab a takeaway espresso and get back to work.’

  When I drove into the car park, I saw Vic Agnew give me a look as Sofia climbed out of the passenger seat.

  ‘It’s not what you think, sonny,’ I said, as I walked past him.

  ‘How do you know what I was thinking?’ he called after me.

  At the top of the stairs Sofia was waiting for me to catch up. ‘I meant to give you the final analysis from the pollen assemblage and soil profiles when you came to my office earlier, but I forgot what with everything,’ she said. ‘I feel like a huge weight has been taken from me. This is the first time since I’ve been here I haven’t felt completely alone. And in danger.’

  ‘We’ve got to deal with this Bremmer character first. He’s poison,’ I said.

  ‘I had a very strange family,’ she said, wanting to explain more. ‘A very odd upbringing and I never learned the ordinary niceties. Plus, I don’t trust anyone, especially men.’

  ‘How come you talked to me?’

  ‘Because you told me a big secret of yours. And I believed you weren’t judging me.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘Maybe one day you might tell me some more about yourself.’

  She cocked a fair eyebrow. ‘You know too much already. Demi from Bondi is enough.’

  I waited near my office door while she disappeared, returning a few minutes later with two folders, one containing the third attempt to get clean results from the body and surrounds of Tianna Richardson, and the second from unknown male 17/2000 and whatever she’d been able to extract from the sandals, the few strands of hair and the rags of clothing that accompanied the bones.

  I thanked her and took the complicated analyses into my office. I glanced through the pollen assemblage that gave an indication of the general vegetation of the two areas, the differences between the car park area of the Blackspot and the bushland of the shallow gravesite. Then I saw that Sofia had highlighted the pollen she’d found, the rare indicator species, and, if I was reading these diagrams correctly, she’d found this rare pollen at both places. I looked again, switching from one diagram to the other, while walking back to her office.

  ‘Sofia,’ I said, knocking on the door. ‘These results. Does this mean what I think it means?’

  ‘That’s the anomalous result I was telling you about,’ she said, bringing me inside. ‘The mystery. I’ve checked that pollen out with my former doctoral supervisor. Native orchids are his specialty. This one’s very rare. Only grows in two places in Australia. Well, that we know about, because its needs are very specific. That’s why I kept redoing the samples. I used separate labs for each of them. In spite of all the care I took, I thought I must have contaminated them somehow.’

  ‘So is there a rare orchid growing near the Blackspot?’ I asked. ‘Is that one of the two places?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a trace of it. As I remember, the two places it’s been reported are both in Victoria.�
�

  Yet 17/2000 must have come into contact with the orchid too. The coincidence was staggering. Then I thought of something obvious. ‘But pollen can be windborne. Couldn’t it have blown onto them? Our topsoil is already decorating New Zealand’s high country.’

  Sofia shook her head. ‘Not this orchid. It only makes a tiny amount of pollen. It’s one of the types that disseminates pollen via insects, or birds. Something has to actually brush against it to pick up traces. It’s not designed to be windborne at all. So you’re going to have to get that suspect to confess. Tell us where the primary scene is. My old orchid-crazy supervisor will love him for that.’

  ‘He’s still denying he knows anything about the murder. He’s light years away from spilling the beans about the primary crime scene.’

  ‘Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he really doesn’t know?’

  I shrugged.

  Her frown deepened. ‘And the reason I know it’s associated with the primary crime scene is because it only appeared in conjunction with those grey particles.’

  ‘On Tianna’s injuries?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m surprised you found such a rare orchid pollen on 17/2000,’ I said.

  ‘I found some very small residual traces in the hair strands.’ She looked up at me from her detailed charts. ‘That egg-shell fracturing of the skull . . .’ She paused. ‘Did you notice? I thought it was odd that they both had similar injuries. And this pollen in common, too.’

  ‘And you’re sure there hasn’t been any contamination?’

  ‘As sure as a scientist can be,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I followed the strictest protocols.’

  Knowing Sofia, I was sure she would have.

  ‘It’s the sort of coincidence that makes me want to write an article for the palynological association,’ she said. ‘It’d be interesting to do the stats on such a thing happening twice in two such different murders and dump sites.’

  ‘What about the Albert Vaughan samples?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. The granite particles turned up in his injuries, but no orchid pollen. The pollen profile in his case was what I’d expect—consistent with local vegetation.’