by Anne Buist
‘Any girlfriends before her?’
‘Isn’t this about Georgia?’
‘I want to know how her take on you tallies against reality.’
Paul shrugged. ‘One girlfriend that was keener than I was. Didn’t go anywhere. I was twenty-five when I got together with Georgia, and I have to say I was a bit of a nerd. But we both wanted kids.’
‘What did you think of her parents?’
‘I thought it was a bit strange she wanted to cut Virginia and Vernon off, but Virginia seemed pretty cold. I guess I thought it was her choice.’
If he was acting, he was doing a good job, but then Georgia was the accused, he the hard-done-by loving father and husband. All he had to do was play innocent.
‘You took Genevieve to see Lee.’
Paul looked surprised. In his look was a flicker of something else. ‘Yes, I did. Lee is my children’s grandmother whatever she did. I don’t know, I just thought Georgia was missing something in her life. She’d cut her mother off for good reason of course. But I thought if I checked her out and found she was, well, human, Georgia might come around.’
‘But she never did.’
‘No. She had very firm ideas. I suppose that was the first time I saw the other side of her. On the subject of Lee, she couldn’t be moved.’
Natalie let him talk more, sensing a fascination with Lee. Because she was his wife’s mother—and a murderer?
Natalie tried to picture him as a monster, recalling a paedophile she had interviewed early in her career. He had genuinely convinced himself that he loved the little girls and that his initiating them into womanhood was as lovely for them as it had been for him. Georgia had always maintained Paul ‘loved’ his girls.
‘Did you love her?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul. ‘Stupidly and blindly it seems, but yes I loved her.’
‘So much so that you still send her cards?’
Paul stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The bunny cards.’
Paul shook his head. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
Natalie bit her lip. She probably shouldn’t reveal any more.
‘Did you have a pet name for her?’
‘Not really. Georgy Girl occasionally. I sang that to her once. Badly.’
‘Did your children ever have a toy rabbit?’
‘Hell, I don’t know. They had tons of stuffed toys. We got rid of them all after Olivia died.’ He took a breath and looked down.
‘What about Jonah?’
‘We should never have had him. When we threw the toys out, I decided that we just weren’t meant to be parents, that I couldn’t handle the pain.’
‘Then Georgia got pregnant again.’
‘Hard to know how, it wasn’t like we were having sex very often,’ he said. ‘When it was a boy I thought, well maybe this will be different. But—’
‘So if you two weren’t having sex much, did you find a substitute? Affairs? Porn?’
‘No,’ said Paul. If he was surprised by the question he didn’t show it. ‘I didn’t have the energy for anything.’
‘What about Miranda?’
There was a long silence. ‘Georgia told me she was on the pill. She…worked hard on me, must have known the time was right.’ He put his head in his hands.
Natalie waited.
‘I started to have suspicions. I don’t know what made me look at her Facebook page. I’m not into Facebook myself. I knew she put photos of the children there and I didn’t want to revisit any of it. It was too hard.’
‘So why did you look?’
Paul’s gaze was steady. ‘I’ve thought a lot about this and it doesn’t make sense. Maybe because I knew about Lee? Lee isn’t a monster, she’s an ordinary person, yet she killed her husband. Maybe I was subconsciously worried, I honestly don’t know. It was one look. Just one. It made me feel cold inside. A window into her soul is the way I’ve come to think of it.’
‘It wasn’t you that alerted the police.’ One of her other Facebook ‘friends’ had.
Paul shifted in his chair. ‘I probably would have eventually, because of Miranda. I was still processing it. Georgia was my wife.’
‘So how do you understand what happened now?’
‘Georgia is evil, pure and simple. Don’t know if it’s the genes or what happened after she was born, but she’s evil.’
Natalie didn’t believe in evil. People were complex products of their genes and experiences. Perhaps too many of Georgia’s influences had been bad ones with nothing to compensate. Personal integrity came from a balance of these influences; you weren’t born with it.
‘Actually Mr Latimer, I’m not sure it’s that simple. All of what you’ve been telling me is very interesting, but I’m really struggling with one thing.’
Paul looked at her blankly.
‘Why you’ve been sending me notes and videos and having someone break into my house,’ said Natalie, now coldly in control. She watched Paul struggle with his emotions. She searched in his face for lies, or the psychopathic self-confidence, but saw neither. There was just a sense of him wanting to please, to be liked, wanting all of this to be over. A normal response from someone in his position or the carefully constructed veneer of the psychopath who was a master at reading what the other person wanted?
‘Look, you mentioned something about notes last time you saw me at the pub and it’s really the reason I said I’d come.’ Paul looked uncomfortable. ‘Can I go back to the start? My lawyer found out you were seeing Georgia and he was worried you were a bit of an anti-man crusader. I wanted to know all I could about you.’
That solved the timing issue. His conversation with the lawyer could have been before the first letter.
‘Meaning you checked me out.’
‘Yes. You have to understand…’ He was struggling for the right words. ‘It’s my daughter I have to think about.’ He looked at Natalie. ‘She can’t ever see Georgia. She really is a monster.’
He was convincing. Very.
‘So what was finding out about me going to achieve?’
Paul shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s your profession that got her out on bail.’ There was a hint of anger in his tone. ‘When you rang me the first time…I wanted to check you out before I agreed to see you. I hired someone. He gave me a list of cases you’d been to court with and it seemed to me that you believed in what you were doing. I thought maybe I could talk to you—convince you that she’s guilty. That you needed to protect my daughter.’
‘I’m Georgia’s psychiatrist, not her jury,’ said Natalie. She paused. ‘The notes and the surveillance video were also just to help convince me?’
Paul looked puzzled. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘What about the dead rabbit?’
Now Paul gaped. ‘What rabbit?’ There was silence as Paul shook his head. Then he moaned, shaking his head. ‘You asked me if I sent cards to Georgia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I didn’t. Which means she rea
lly is totally fucked.’
Natalie stared at Paul, taking in the implication of what he was saying. Could Georgia be behind it all?
‘Bunny cards. Like this one.’ She showed him her photocopy.
Paul looked exhausted. There was no reaction.
‘What did you think about having sex with someone who mutilates her genitals?’ asked Natalie abruptly.
If she hadn’t been looking she wouldn’t have seen it, but for one microsecond she saw a different Paul, instantly replaced by the one who now frowned in bafflement.
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘She takes a knife to her labia, mostly. Ever have oral sex with her?’
He shuddered. ‘She must have started that after we separated.’
‘We might have to wait for court to decide that.’ The GP report had only one relevant line, easily missed. Years earlier the scars had been noted when Georgia had a postnatal check after Genevieve. They had been fresh then and were explained away. The later obstetric records had mostly not noted it, except for one record of the suturing of her episiotomy, which had mentioned ‘unusual’ scar tissue.
Liam came into her office as soon as Paul had left. ‘He was very plausible.’
‘I agree,’ said Natalie. ‘Very. But he lied. I caught him out on the genital mutilation. He wasn’t ready for it and denied it before he could think it through. And he did it well.’
‘That might have been for any number of reasons. Not comfortable talking about his sex life. Maybe they did it in the dark.’
‘I think it’s a male on the security camera tape, but not him. Paul’s got broader shoulders.’ Her intruder was more Travis’s shape.
‘So he hired someone? Or one of his paedophile mates?’
‘Or,’ said Natalie, ‘it really isn’t him.’
She replayed the interview in her mind after Liam left to play happy families again, but her mind kept taking her back to Travis. She rang Damian’s mobile.
‘Damian?’
‘Nothing new, I’m afraid.’
Natalie took a breath. ‘Did you find a rug in Rick’s car?’
‘Rug?’
‘It was cold. Chloe would have been wrapped up while she was alive. Which probably means her body still is. But maybe the rug or whatever was left in the car and Allison and Rick removed it.’
There was a long pause. ‘Is this to do with those files you asked for?’
‘In a round-about way.’ It wasn’t a complete lie.
There was another long silence. ‘Okay,’ Damian said.
‘Damian?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you find out if there are any toys missing?’ The toys that Tiphanie had told her were Chloe’s favourites.
‘I’ll let you know.’
There were new shadows in the laneway, dark places that seemed more ominous than before. Natalie parked her bike and, cricket bat in hand, searched a fifty metre radius. Nothing. Shutting the door, she pulled the chain across and rattled it to test just how strong it felt. Fair. It would hold up long enough for her to hear someone forcing the door.
She threw her bag on the sofa and walked around the kitchen and living area. The alarm hadn’t gone off but she couldn’t reassure herself he hadn’t found a way in. Had anything been moved? Was there a trace of anyone other than her? His fingerprint on half-closed curtains—she had left them like that hadn’t she? —or the drawer that wasn’t quite closed? She steadied her breathing and picked up her laptop. Time to take her mind off her stalker.
She began with a Google search of Japanese cartoon characters. It took her a couple of spelling variations to find the series Ai Yori Aoshi, first out when Jessie would have been eight. As described, Aoi Sakuruba was sweet and loyal, with short black hair just like Jessie’s—minus the dye job. It was Kaoru, the love interest, who grabbed Natalie’s attention; because his parents never married, his life was difficult—particularly in taking over his father’s empire. Her fantasies about her stepbrother Jay saving her as a young teenager?
Pulling out the USB she decided not to spend too much time thinking about the ethics. Jessie had given it to her and all but asked her to look before changing her mind. Declan wouldn’t be happy, but looking at Jessie’s files wasn’t a reportable offence. What she did with them might be.
Beverley had copied a dozen folders over. Natalie moved them onto her computer. She did a search for video files. Family Album had several. She clicked onto one. Knowing what she was looking at, Natalie could make out the younger Jessie. She was skinny with short, dark messy hair. There was a look of innocence captured in one or two of the clips—in one she was holding her baby sister; in the other, opening Christmas presents. An older man, presumably her father, and a woman with too much makeup were watching. Jay must have been filming. She checked the other clips. No Jay, no Kyle.
The School Assignments folder didn’t look promising as a title, but she opened it anyway. Two videos.
The first was of a teenager with light-coloured hair. He was a willowy adolescent with a few pimples and a winning, slightly self-conscious smile, telling the camera about who were the hot chicks at school. No glasses, but it could have been Jay. If so he had filled out a lot since then. Jay’s features but more Kyle’s frame. He named a few teachers and made it clear his testosterone was dominating his thoughts about them. Nothing explicit. He cupped his groin at one point but it was within the range of normal adolescent behaviour. It was only at the very end that Natalie’s stomach churned. He winked at the camera and said: ‘Of course I get to do anything I like to my very own chick.’
Was he referring to Jessie? Had her father confiscated the computer because of what he feared was on it rather than because it incriminated him?
The next clip was twenty minutes long. Camera steady, fixed, she figured, on a tripod. The two actors moved out of frame and there was no alteration in the angle or focal length. She forced herself to watch every minute of it, then went to the bathroom and threw up.
Afterwards she washed her medication down with a full glass of bourbon and slept, and managed to struggle through the next day somehow. That night, neither her stomach nor her head were thinking bourbon was a good option. Natalie knew she couldn’t keep the feelings buried. She had to think about the video, and eventually talk about it. Maybe with Declan, but it was Liam she wanted to ring. Perhaps because he had seen these things before. Maybe just because she needed a hug.
But before she could show Liam the video, she had to talk to Jessie. She found herself back in the Tiphanie–Amber dilemma. What she had seen needed to be in the hands of the police—whether or not Jessie was currently being abused, and whether or not she agreed. But the current or ongoing risks weren’t clear. Ethically Natalie needed to maintain confidentiality, unless Jessie gave permission or there was a current risk of harm to others.
A wave of nausea gripped her stomach and she looked at the bourbon. No. She needed a clear head. Whatever shit she had been through in her past was nothing like what Jessie had been subjected to. She would be eternally grateful to Eoin not only for sharing his soul but ensuring that when they lost their virginity together it had b
een a normal human experience. Awkward and funny and finally a triumphant soaring into the adult world. Even Eoin’s death, followed by the year in rehab and all the tensions with her mother, hadn’t changed that. The adversity had made her stronger. And she needed that strength now, for Jessie.
Tiphanie and Georgia popped into her head again. Why? Natalie closed her eyes and pictured the girl in the video. Jessie. Sweet, giggling Jessie, who initially had been cooperative. A pre-teen, no more than twelve, breasts little more than tiny buds, with sexual feelings that were starting to awaken. Sometimes girls of that age thought they knew it all, hid their vulnerability. Jessie’s innocence had been on full display. She was still essentially a child who had needed her father to tell her she was beautiful when she went on her first date, who needed to swoon over a safe, pretty boy at a distance, who needed time to be emotionally ready for the physical eventuality.
The physical acts themselves were nothing two adults wouldn’t do in a consensual relationship. Penetrative vaginal sex, anal and oral sex. But the sinews in the perpetrators arm were taut as he forced Jessie’s head over his cock and the fear in her eyes raw. Her terror when he entered her from behind, contrasted with his apparent immense satisfaction and disregard for the young girl, was stark.
Natalie started dry retching. Then she did something she hadn’t done since her eighteenth birthday. She cried.
She didn’t check herself. There was no one to know. Then she watched the video again. But when she finally went to bed, she still hadn’t been able to put to rest a niggling sense that there was something she had missed.
Chapter 31
‘I know you think I shouldn’t be looking for truth,’ said Natalie. ‘But right now I’m pretty sure that at least two people and maybe more are lying to me.’
‘You do work in forensic,’ Declan pointed out. ‘Doesn’t everyone say they’re innocent?’