Armed with this information, I switched on my email system and found Interpol, London. Lily Richardson, née Meadowes, I decided, you’re going to have to show up. I’m going to make sure you know that your son Jason, whom you dumped when he was just a baby, is facing the possibility of being charged with murder. I want you to know that. I want you to have to face that.
I filled in a Missing Person file, listing her name and the approximate year of her arrival in the UK. That amount of information faxed to Interpol would, I hoped, be sufficient for the authorities to track her down quite soon. Maybe my motivation for doing this was because of my own problems in this area, as Charlie reckoned. Maybe I was acting as fate in the life of an irresponsible woman. Whatever reason, I felt better after I’d done it.
The next thing was to be in Sydney with my daughter. I called her but the phone went straight to voicemail. I left a message saying I’d be at Malabar later that evening. It was unlikely that Docker would do anything more than try to hide. But I didn’t like the idea, no matter how remote, of a man with a nine-inch blade, whose girlfriend had been spirited away from him with the support of my daughter, discovering where Jacinta lived.
Thirty-two
When I switched off the ignition, the swinging surge of the Tasman filled my ears, louder because of the silence of the night. In the living room, the lemurs, embracing tightly, swung gently from the central light fitting. I rang Charlie and then Jacinta from the empty house but both mobiles were switched off, which didn’t do anything to relieve my anxiety about my daughter.
I poured myself a drink of orange juice and rang Greg, who said he’d catch up sometime this week.
My phone rang and I pounced on it. ‘She’s here, and we’re both fine,’ Charlie said in answer to my questions.
‘So she doesn’t know about Shaz yet?’ I asked.
‘She just knows you’re coming over,’ Charlie said.
‘I’m on my way,’ I replied.
During the drive to my brother’s place at Little Bay I was nervous about how I was going to tell Jacinta about Shaz. The ringing of my mobile made me jump. Bob.
‘Have you got Docker?’ was my first question.
‘Not yet. But I’ve had a chance to talk to one of the girls who lives in the same building,’ said Bob, his voice heavy, and I knew something was troubling him. ‘Seems like Shaz got lonely at the motel. She rang Docker.’
‘Jesus, no,’ I said.
‘Then she packed up and went back to his place,’ Bob continued. ‘And he sure was waiting for her.’
Now I understood the reason for the quiet despair in Bob’s voice.
‘We can only offer people limited protection from the predators, Bob,’ I said. ‘And there’s no way on earth that we can protect people from themselves.’
There was a silence from the other end.
‘Gotta go, Bob,’ I said, ringing off, preparing myself in the few minutes I had in the drive to Charlie’s place for what I had to tell my daughter.
My brother was opening the door as I walked up the path and behind him I could see my daughter’s apprehensive face.
‘Jass,’ I said, putting my arm around her shoulders, pulling her to me and kissing the top of her head.
‘Something’s wrong!’ she said, hurrying ahead of me, turning to study my face as we reached the light of the living room. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s Shaz,’ I said and her hand flew to her mouth to cover it, as if suppressing a scream.
I told her what had happened and she listened in silence until I’d finished. Then, with the tears running down her face, she sat slowly on Charlie’s lounge, hugging a cushion to her. ‘But why? Why did she do that? After everything we talked about. She knew what he was like! She knew!’
I shook my head. ‘That’s just it. She didn’t know. She was living in a dream, a delusion. You explained it to me earlier. She didn’t know what love looks like, feels like. She believed someone’s words more than the evidence of his behaviour. Shaz mistook violent attachment for love.’
My daughter came over to me and I hugged her, holding her lightly, letting her sob, trying to comfort her, but she pulled away.
‘We should have stopped it! Nobody did anything!’ she said.
‘Not true, Jass,’ I said. ‘You think about it. At least three or four people, including yourself, were so concerned they got together to remove her from a dangerous situation. Bob went out of his way. You did. I did. Bob’s motel mate.’
‘We should have stopped her! Locked her up!’
‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ offered Charlie, who’d been quietly standing near the entrance to his kitchen.
‘I don’t want bloody tea! I need something stronger!’
‘Do you think that’s really a good idea?’ I didn’t want to sound too censorious, but ex-heroin addicts were better staying away from alcohol—addiction to one substance seemed to automatically confer immediate addiction to another. I’d seen the way addicts ‘weaned’ themselves off one drug by taking on another.
My daughter didn’t answer; instead, she was weeping, hands over her face. When she looked up there were tears running down her cheeks. I passed her my big handkerchief and she blew her nose and wiped her eyes, shaking hair out of her eyes.
‘It’s so damn sad,’ she said. ‘I thought she would make it. I thought that by leaving him she’d break the pattern and make it.’
I thought of beautiful Shaz and wanted to cry too.
‘I want to know what happened,’ Jacinta said. ‘I want to know everything.’
I sat down beside her and put an arm around her, remembering not to pat her.
It was going to be a long night.
Before she went to bed, I did everything I could to convince Jacinta to come back to Canberra with me, but the best I could do was get her to promise she’d stay at Charlie’s place until Docker was locked up.
I left her writing a letter to Shaz.
Charlie had heated up some of the soup he’d made earlier in the evening and I was happy to eat a bowl of it while he read and relaxed in his armchair, a man at peace with himself and his world.
‘You look worried, bro,’ he said, looking up from his reading. ‘Not that you shouldn’t be. You sure blew it with Iona.’
‘Thanks a lot, Charlie,’ I said. But he was right.
‘I did,’ I admitted. ‘I find it hard to stop and just do nothing. Spend easy time with the woman I love.’
That wasn’t quite what I meant and Charlie recognised it straightaway.
‘You mean if you did such a thing, you’d have to talk to her about yourself—eventually,’ he rephrased. ‘About your hopes and fears, your feelings. And you don’t really want to do that, do you? You don’t want to have to examine why you feel obliged to work rather than enjoy the activities that bring pleasure and happiness into our lives.’
‘Obliged?’ I said. ‘I’ve already explained that to Iona—that I have an obligation to the dead—’
‘Which dead?’ Charlie interrupted. ‘Your mother whom you couldn’t save? Rosie who you still somewhere believe was taken on your watch?’
I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. ‘Why are you saying these things to me?’
‘Because they’re questions you should be asking yourself and you’re not!’
‘Look, Charlie. You’re way out of line. I can partly understand why you questioned me when I said I wanted to spend time with Iona—’
‘—but you didn’t really want to,’ he interrupted with a smile. ‘Did you?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, unsure.
‘If you do ever get round to looking at some of these issues, what are you going to do? What changes could you make?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you,’ I said.
‘Just tell me what you think,’ I persisted.
‘It’s not about what I think,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to find the answers for yourself. Jeez, Jack, you insist on doing that in every other area of your damn life. Why can’t you do it in this one?’
Next morning, early, after a restless night on Charlie’s lounge, where thoughts of what my brother had said to me circled my mind all night, I finally got up and put the coffee on. I checked on my daughter—a lump with tousled spiky hair under the doona in the spare bedroom.
After a quick breakfast, I knocked on Charlie’s door to say goodbye and he grunted back.
Then I loaded myself and my briefcase back into my wagon, all the time wondering whether Charlie was right. That I felt obligated to ‘save’ these women because I hadn’t been able to help those nearest to me. I wondered again why I turned to work instead of the pleasures of companionship and relating with Iona and my children more. What was I avoiding by doing so?
I’d failed Iona because of these hungry ghosts and the parts of my heart they’d eaten; it was these very missing parts that Iona wanted—and now it was too late. Hell, I thought as I turned the ignition. Here I was driving to Canberra. Again. I’d had enough of this.
Before I was clear of Sydney, I rang Bob. He wasn’t at work but he hadn’t heard any news about Docker, who was still out there with his nine-inch blade. I told him of my concern for Jacinta and that she’d be staying at Charlie’s place.
Bob knew the address and, although agreeing that it was highly unlikely Jacinta was in any danger from Shaz’s killer, promised to keep an eye on her.
First thing I did when I walked into my office at Forensic Services was nod a greeting to Ms 17/2000. From her position in the corner, she gave me her customary sideways glance. I stood a moment, admiring her, and noticing that if I moved just a little out of her direct gaze, the position of her lifelike eyes gave the illusion that she was looking sideways at me. I came up close and studied the face of the unknown woman. Again, I was sure she wasn’t unknown to me. In fact, the sense that I knew her was growing stronger every time I looked at her.
I called Brian. Jason Richardson had not been found, but he was confident the youth was still in the area and that it was only a matter of time before he showed up. Brian had someone keeping a discreet eye on Alana Richardson’s house on Sparrows Ridge Road and it was fine with him, he said, if I wanted to go and check out the bottom of the ravine. The crime scene people had finished with the area. ‘The samples we took are probably with you already,’ he said. ‘Or they’ll be arriving today.’
‘Did the Kiwi Krait turn up?’ I asked, smiling as I used his term.
‘She was there. And she was much less officious today. You know,’ he added after a pause, ‘she’s not a bad-looking woman.’
I set about tackling another pile of paper that had somehow found its way onto my desk in my absence.
Some time later, while I was immersed in trying to make the next month’s roster work, a knock at the door caused me to swing round.
‘Come in,’ I said.
Before I’d finished speaking, the door was flung open to reveal Earl Richardson. Of all the people I didn’t want to see, he headed the list.
‘Jack! God bless you! It was so good knowing you were on the job at such a dreadful time!’ said Earl, looking very dapper in an expensive Italian suit. ‘So this is where you hide away, eh?’
Moving fast, as if I’d been on the way out as he knocked, I grabbed my briefcase, intending to head him off at the pass, make him a coffee and abandon him as quickly as I could. I extended my hand to match his, trying hard to smile, about to make some comment about the pressure of work when a loud burst of laughter made us pause in the doorway where we were standing. A noisy group had turned the corner and immediately I recognised one of them—Adam Shiner—flanked by two laughing women.
‘Come on, Earl,’ I said, nodding to the group, closing my office door behind me so that Earl Richardson couldn’t go in any further. ‘Tea or coffee?’
Then I noticed the expressions of the three people in the group.
‘Earl?’ I looked back, wondering at his silence.
Earl Richardson was turning like a robot and staring, open-mouthed, at them. The hand that he’d suddenly withdrawn from my greeting was flailing around near his throat. His colour was terrible, a dark purple red. He clawed the front of his expensive shirt, his eyes shocked and staring. I grabbed for him as he began to keel over but he would have hit the floor, except that Adam Shiner had darted forward and grabbed him first.
‘Undo his collar!’
‘Airways clear?’
‘Anyone here good with CPR?’
‘It’s a coronary.’
‘Roll him onto his side.’
I had the ambulance on its way in minutes. I didn’t hang round but I heard them arriving and dealing with the collapsed man.
As they stretchered him, I couldn’t help thinking: so much for the health-giving powers of religious faith.
The shock of Earl Richardson’s heart attack had permeated the building. It didn’t take long for everyone to hear about it and the predictable appalling jokes were circulating within a few hours. Even though I didn’t like the guy, his collapse at my office door had connected me to him and, later, I phoned Woden Hospital. He was out of intensive care, I was told, in a stable condition and although medical staff were surprised at the speed of his recovery, they wanted him to stay until the test results came back.
It was a sobering thought that Earl Richardson was my age and that the stress he’d been through with his marital problems was similar to my own just a few years back. I became aware of my heart and its measured beats. Measured was the right word; an allocation was given each of us. Nine o’clock on a Monday morning was the time most heart attacks occurred, I thought, and I’d been working non-stop for too long. Men died because of this. More importantly, I had to build a life for myself that wasn’t just work. Until Iona, my emotional life over the last few years had been a barren landscape. And what had I done when I’d been offered the wonderful chance that Iona brought to me? I’d failed to grow into a mature relationship with her. I hadn’t been able to change. I was a scientist and I knew that species that couldn’t adapt to changed circumstances simply don’t make it in the evolutionary stakes. No wonder Iona had walked out. Who wanted to live with a man who still believed somewhere that his first duty was to the dead rather than the living?
I stood up and walked to the window, watching the movements in the autumn-flowering grevillea bushes as the honeyeaters probed their blossoms before winter stopped the nectar flow. The dark gunmetal sky with its threatening clouds that never rained was suddenly pierced by a ray of sunlight, making the whole world outside my window fill with a menacing brilliance. Do something, Jack, I told myself.
I called my boss in Sydney, outlining my situation and pointing out that I had far too much accrued leave and needed to take some. He agreed and said he’d approve my application as long as I could organise someone else who’d be willing to take over my position for a month. I thanked him and rang off, opened my bottom drawer and took out a leave form. I rang Florence and made her an offer, which she was happy to accept, then I filled out the form, starting with next Monday’s date and taking a whole calendar month. Then—and this was about the only good thing I could say right this minute about being acting chief—I signed my approval of leave at the local area level with a flourish.
Pen down, I found myself wondering why Richardson’s heart had attacked at the moment it had, with the three Sydney detectives coming into view. I wondered if there was unknown business between Earl Richardson and Adam Shiner. Maybe Earl had known that Shiner w
as shafting his missus and this had resulted in a sudden surge of angry blood. I found I was looking again into the serenely sideways gaze of 17/2000. I know you, my memory insisted. I’ve seen you recently.
My mobile rang. It was Bob. ‘Docker’s been arrested,’ he said. ‘He’ll be charged today sometime. You can relax. Your daughter’s fine, I’ve just spoken to her.’
I went down to Sofia Verstoek’s office, feeling lighter, knowing that Shaz’s murderer had been caught and I hadn’t had to do a damn thing about it.
When I got to Sofia’s office and knocked on her door, there was no answer so I walked further to the dedicated palynology lab and looked through the glass window of the door. I heard her call my name and turned. She’d come out the other end of the lab, shaking her hair free from its protective cover.
‘Jack,’ she repeated. ‘I was just about to come looking for you. The pollen assemblage isn’t finished yet, but I found traces of that rare orchid pollen from the gully. I’ll have it all printed up and ready for you by tomorrow.’
‘Great work,’ I said. ‘I want to go there and have a look for myself. I want to see how they did it.’
‘They?’ She looked puzzled.
‘We believe now there were two offenders involved,’ I said. ‘As soon as we get hold of the second man, we’ll be taking samples to see if he shows up.’
We stood there together, a little awkwardly. ‘I’d like to have another look there myself,’ she said. ‘Could I come with you? I’d like to do a wider search up higher.’ She flashed a smile at me, the first real one I’d ever seen from her. ‘See if I can find that orchid.’
‘Let’s go first thing tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll pick you up at first light.’
Thirty-three
With Sofia in the passenger seat, issuing directions, I drove past Mrs Richardson’s place, now all quiet. No doubt she was keeping a vigil. I wondered what her attitude might be towards her grandson. I didn’t know what she believed, whether or not she would defend him through thick or thin. By the time I’d driven to the end of the ridge and started the steep descent through the thick scrub of a state forest and found the entrance to the fire trail, I was no longer thinking of Jason or his grandmother. Once I’d prised open the old steel gates to the trail and closed them again behind me, I was right back on the job.
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