by Jean Bedford
‘I’ll tell you what you could do tonight,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘Apart from the obvious. Get Mick to tell you everything he can remember about Paddy, all right? Everything. Give him one of his own cross-examinations. Squeeze him dry.’ He leers at her.
‘He doesn’t do cross-examinations,’ Sharon says. ‘He’s a solicitor. And if we were in work time I’d find your language and insinuations offensive, Lieutenant Voulas.’ She gives him a casual kick on the calf as she passes his chair. Noel sees her out and then comes back to sit on Tony’s lap.
‘OK, Shagga,’ she says, inserting her hand into his shirt and pulling at his chest hair. ‘Wanna try and live up to the image?’
‘Noel,’ he says seriously.
‘What?’
‘That nickname. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.’ She sags against him, laughing quietly. ‘As if I could. Like it’s so ambiguous.’
‘No, listen.’ He puts his arm around her and shifts in the chair until he’s comfortable. ‘Of course I’ve tried it on with a few women. Why wouldn’t I? I’m a single bloke, and you have to count on a fair percentage of knock-backs. Stop laughing — I’m telling you something, fuck you.’
‘OK. Sorry. Go on.’
‘But it’s like ... I dunno, pre-mating behaviour, I guess. Yeah, I did a bit of social anthropology at university, too. It doesn’t mean that I always have to be like that, that it’s compulsive. It’s not ... pre-emptive. You know what I’m saying?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘It sounds like a proposal, and it’s so sudden.’
‘All right, have your feminist giggle. I’m saying that the way you act when you’re looking around for someone you want to be with is different from the way you behave when you’ve found that someone, OK?’
She’s serious now, too, her hand fondling his neck. ‘You’re saying I’m it, right?’
He grins at her. ‘That got you going, didn’t it? No, don’t hit me. Yeah, I’m saying that’s how I feel. What about you?’
‘Probably,’ she says. ‘But only probably. I don’t know that journalist and cop is such a good mix. I can foresee all sorts of problems.’
‘You could always stop being a journalist.’
‘What, and be a wife and mother? You could leave the force, too.’
‘I can always get a rise out of you,’ he says. ‘You’re more predictable than you think. Anyway, we’ve introduced the subject, so what say we leave it for now to mull over, and just go and fuck our brains out?’
‘Sounds good.’ She yawns. ‘Jesus, I hate to think of you questioning Paddy in the morning.’
‘I’ll leave the baton behind,’ he says. They walk holding hands to the bathroom and jostle each other at the basin. Despite her anxiety over Paddy, Noel feels an elation she has not experienced for years.
*
Sharon is typing up her notes with two fingers when Tony comes in. She has been given a cubicle that she suspects was once a broom cupboard. It has room for a chair and a narrow desk, with a computer console. She keeps the door open wide to the wall; otherwise it hits her in the back when people enter.
‘Jesus,’ Tony says. ‘You’d be better off in the bullpen.’
‘That’s what I said. I get the feeling I’m not too welcome here.’
‘Don’t worry about it. They probably thought they were doing you a favour, giving you a space to yourself. Come down to the canteen and tell me what you’ve got. I’m not going to try and squeeze in there with you. It’d be harassment whichever way you looked at it.’
In the cafeteria they buy coffee and sit down at a table behind a concrete column. Sharon sips at her drink and screws up her face. She pushes the cup away from her and gets out her notebook. ‘Who goes first? Did you see Paddy Galen this morning?’
‘No, fuck it. I waited till about 9-30 and he didn’t come home. Noel says that’s par for the course. She reckons he sometimes goes straight from work to the gym.’ He shakes his head. ‘Now, did you get anything from Mick, or did he refuse to incriminate himself?’
He pulls a pen from his jacket pocket and flips over a page in his notebook. Sharon puts her own notebook on the table and flicks back through several closely written sheets, smiling as she remembers Mick’s annoyance at her recording his conversation, and telling him he might have to be a witness.
‘Well, it’s interesting. It certainly doesn’t put Paddy out of the picture. There were a few of them in that group who’d had abusive families. Paddy, Tess Crashaw — she’s Judith Harbin’s girlfriend. You know, the prosecutor? Tom Larson, I’ve met him, too, he’s an acka. They were all at university together, and they called themselves the AOKs — Abused Only Kids; sometimes the Survivors. They used to get pissed, or stoned, and do sort of spontaneous psychodramas together, with the others as onlookers. Paddy’s idea, apparently — he used to read all that sixties alternative psychology stuff. It only lasted a year or so — everybody else got sick of it.
‘Paddy was doing combined Honours in Sociology and Philosophy. Mick reckons that would have been enough to turn anyone crazy. He was weird then, too. Never had any money, no family. He lived in other people’s hallways or their laundries — really, I’m not exaggerating. Or he’d skulk around the University Union until all the security guards had been through and he’d bed down on a couch there, use the student showers. He got some tutoring work in third year — pretty unusual for an undergraduate, but they all thought he was brilliant. Then he had enough money to rent a room in shared accommodation. Mick says there was some love affair that went badly wrong — he doesn’t know the details. But he thinks the police might have been involved somehow.’ She looks at him. ‘We could check that, couldn’t we?’
Tony groans. ‘Great, more shitwork. You can do it. How come Mick doesn’t know what happened? Or is he just not telling?’
She frowns. ‘I don’t know. I wondered that, myself. He says by then he’d realised he was going to fail if he didn’t start working, so he buried himself in his books for the whole year, hardly saw anyone.’ She taps her pen against her teeth.
‘So, what are you leading up to? That there was some sort of group dynamic going on here, and Paddy was the one who cracked?’
‘I hadn’t thought it through that far,’ she says, impressed. ‘But it could be something like that. I suppose a conspiracy’s a bit far-fetched?’
‘Just a bit. What form did his famous nervous breakdown take, exactly?’
‘Again, Mick’s not entirely sure.’ Or he’s not being entirely truthful, she thinks. ‘Apparently he started saying strange stuff in class, pushing off-the-wall theories, slagging off at the lecturers, hallucinating. One day he collapsed somehow, or he tried to attack someone, and the university doctor packed him off to a shrink. Next thing Mick heard he was in a psychiatric hospital. He went out to visit him a couple of times, but he was practically catatonic — massive shock treatment and God knows what drugs. After that he didn’t see him for years. Then about ten years ago he got a phone call from him, arranging a picnic, a reunion for all of them who’d been friends at university. They have them every year, now. I’ve been to one of them.’
‘It’s not much to go on,’ Tony says. ‘I don’t think we’ve got anywhere near enough for a search warrant. And if he’s got any sense he’ll say no to us having a casual look around. That’ll give him time to get rid of anything, if he needs to.’
‘Have you got someone looking out for him?’
‘Watching the flats, yeah. As soon as he comes home I’ll go round there.’ He absently drinks the rest of his cold coffee. Sharon shudders, and pushes her own cup even further away.
‘Well, what do you think?’ she asks. ‘Do you reckon he’s really in the picture?’
‘Fucked if I know. Mostly I think Noel’s got us running around in some sort of abstract theoretical circle. Then ... the trouble is, the Jamisons just don’t smell right to me.’
‘Are we keeping them in?’
‘Can’t, unless we charge
them. I’ve just had a blazing row with them upstairs about it. They’ve given us until the end of the week to come up with some quote,convincingly concrete, unquote, alternative. Then we arrest the Jamisons, one and all.’ He scrapes his chair back from the table. ‘I’ve got a desk piled with paperwork,’ he says. ‘Will you get on to Paddy’s records and talk to the others in the group?’
‘OK, when I’ve finished keying in my report.’ She goes to the fridge near the counter and buys a small carton of apple and blackcurrant juice. She needs to get the taste of the coffee out of her mouth.
Now I see why Justine was necessary.Now I see why I was so apparently careless.I should trust myself more.My other self,the one who waits and watches and plans,had it all worked out.Now that I see how close they are getting to me,to finding me,I understand.It’s time to move on from here,my job is nearly over.Justine will be the last of my Sydney children.Perhaps I sensed that when I rolled up her sock and crammed it into my pocket and brought it home.I’ve never needed to keep physical mementoes before.
And someone finally saw me,though he doesn’t know what he saw.But it’s a thrill,all right,as I guessed it would be.I wish I’d known he was there,lurking.I imagine staring over towards him,perhaps offering him the slightest salute in acknowledgment.The image gives me almost sexual pleasure.
Now I have to act fast.Everything is in place,in my other life as well.I see now how inevitable this all is.There will be no unfinished,business,nothing to regret.Only a few weeks ago I could not have torn myself away from here,from the unconsummated possibilities.Now I’m liberated from my recent past,my needs have been met.
You used to tell me I would never be free of the past,but you were wrong in that,too.
When Noel gets home from work she finds Paddy jittering on her landing, waiting for her. He looks a wreck, dishevelled and staring and she feels herself shrivel with remorse.
‘Can I talk to you, Noel?’ he says. ‘There’s cops in my flat. Your squeeze, for one.’
‘Come in, of course,’ she says. ‘What are they doing? Why aren’t you there with them?’
She puts on a pot of coffee and opens the living-room windows to the balmy evening. Paddy fidgets around until she tells him to sit down. He perches on the edge of the couch and puts his fists in his armpits, hugging himself.
‘They think I did it,’ he says. ‘Your cop friend thinks I murdered Justine Riley.’
She sits down opposite him and rests her hand on his knee. ‘Paddy, it’s my fault. They don’t really. It’s just — they were all patients at the Children’s Hospital, and then you said you’d worked at both buildings. I passed it on. I had to.’
He doesn’t appear to be listening. ‘I couldn’t bear it, seeing those pimply-faced young cops pawing through my things. I had to get out. Your boyfriend said I could come down here to your flat, but I couldn’t leave the building. There’s others outside watching.’ He glares wildly at her. ‘There’s private stuff there, Noel, everyone’s got private stuff they don’t want other people to see.’
She’s deeply uncomfortable. ‘Paddy, why did you let them? Did they have a search warrant?’
‘No. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’ He rocks himself backwards and forwards. ‘They said they wanted to have a look around and I didn’t think I could stop them. That’s after they asked me the same questions over and over for fucking hours. Now they’re invading my dreams, my pathetic fucking fantasies.’
‘What do you mean?’ She pulls back her hand.
‘There’s books there, and ... magazines. Things like that. I don’t want anyone to look at them, to know I read them. There’s stuff I’ve been writing, too, over the years. It’s not for anyone else to read, it’s private. They’ll tell everyone. Everyone’ll despise me.’
‘Paddy, the cops aren’t going to be interested in your secret life. They’ve seen everything, already, most of them. If there’s nothing to implicate you in the murders — the murder — they’ll have forgotten it all in five minutes.’ She knows she’s lying — she’s heard Tony and Sharon laughing about the things that turn up in searches — but she persuades herself it’s for his own good.
‘Look, isn’t it better to get it over with? Then you can put it all behind you, you won’t have to worry like this. It is for your own good,’ she says.
‘I don’t know who to trust,’ he says. ‘I haven’t trusted my own perceptions for years. I can’t trust you, you’re in thick with them.’ He leans his head back and closes his eyes. ‘I’m so fucking tired. Awake all night and I didn’t get any sleep today. Perhaps when they’re finished I can get some sleep.’ Noel hears the coffee boiling over in the kitchen and she gets up. As she turns off the hotplate, Tony comes striding through the front door without knocking.
‘Is he here?’
She nods and grabs his arm, pulling him towards the kitchen with her. ‘Leave him a minute, he’s fucked. Let him sleep. Listen, Tony, are you entirely pleased with yourself about this? Did you tell him he had the right not to let you search his place without a warrant?’ She’s trembling with anger, at herself as much as with him.
‘Yes, of course we did. He just gave us this goofy smile and muttered something about the Gestapo.’ But he does look faintly ashamed.
‘He’s not completely capable of looking after his own interests,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that obvious to you?’
‘Fucking hell, Noel. You’re the one who brought him up as primo suspect number one. Get him a lawyer. Tell him we took advantage of him if you’ve gone soft on it now.’
‘What do you mean?’ She takes a step back and sits on one of the wooden kitchen chairs. ‘Does he need a lawyer?’
‘He will,’ he says grimly. ‘We found a kid’s sock that looks very like a match to the one Justine was still wearing — it’s about all shewas wearing. White with a lace border and a little pink bow. It was shoved down behind his bed — looked as if he kept it close so he could take it out and play with it sometimes.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ She feels sick. ‘Is that all?’
‘What the fuck do you mean, is that all? What more do you want? But, in fact, it isn’t all we found. There’s two boxes of condoms that fit the requirements for the lubricant traces we’ve got, and there’s a pile of magazines you wouldn’t want to know about, believe me.’
He’s standing in the doorway, keeping an eye on the living-room door, hissing at her in a whisper that seems louder than shouting.
Noel looks past him and sees that he’s left the front door open. She senses there is someone else there, waiting to be called in. She gives Tony some points for coming in himself, first.
‘You’re going to arrest him,’ she says, her voice flat.
‘What do you think? There’s boys down in the basement, or boiler-room or whatever it is, now, looking for anything else he might have stashed away. He’s the caretaker here, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fucking women, I’ll never understand them. This proves your fucking theory, all right? What are you so pissed off about?’
‘I don’t want it to be Paddy,’ she says. ‘What about the other murders? Is there anything that connects him to them?’
‘Nothing we’ve found yet. We can get him on this one, that’s what matters.’
‘So Farrell stays in for Belinda. And Rona Clancy lives the rest of her life in a straitjacket for Terry. We certainly can’t bring Shantelle’s father back from the dead, I suppose.’
He shrugs and moves slightly towards her. ‘That’s the way it goes. There’s not a shred of evidence that they didn’t do it, and heaps that says they did. Anyway, does it matter? Do you really care about what happens to them?’
‘I can’t handle that right now,’ she says. ‘Arguing with you about who deserves to be punished and whether justice is served outside the law and all that crap. Why don’t you just get it over with?’
He gives her a long steady glare. ‘Is this one of the problems you predicted between us?’
>
‘Tony, for Christ’s sake. Can’t we discuss this later?’
‘No worries.’ He raises his voice suddenly, making her startle, ‘OK Geoff, come on in.’
PART 3
SUMMER-AUTUMN
As soon as Tony and the others had left, with Paddy in handcuffs, lurching, half-awake and feebly protesting, Noel rang Sharon’s number. Mick answered the phone and she could hear television voices in the background.
‘She’s not home yet,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Shall I get her to call you?’
‘Yes, please. But Mick, I wanted to talk to you, too.’
‘Oh, yeah? Fine, here I am.’ He sounded surprised.
She told him what had just happened, that Paddy had been charged with the murder of Justine Riley.
‘You what?’ He interrupted her, almost shouting. ‘On what basis, can I ask?’
‘They found something belonging to her in his flat.’ She went on quickly, ‘They didn’t have a warrant, if you’re wondering, but they did ask him if they could look around.’
‘I’ll bet. Was Sharon there when they arrested him?’
‘No. Look, Mick, it was just a routine questioning. They weren’t really expecting to find anything.’ She paused and she couldn’t prevent the break in her voice when she continued, ‘But they did.’
There was a silence at the other end of the phone. Then Mick said in a cold, polite voice. ‘Well, thanks for letting me know. I’ll get straight down there.’
‘I don’t think he’s got much money,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he could afford any of the top defence barristers.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll organise something. I hope you and Sharon are happy with what you’ve done.’
‘We didn’t put the fucking sock there,’ she said, angry, but he’d hung up.
She placed the phone back on its rest, slowly. It was past eight o’clock and she hadn’t had anything to eat since a sandwich at lunchtime. She opened and closed the fridge door several times, and finally settled for some dried up cheese and a couple of biscuits. She poured herself a glass of wine, wishing she kept spirits in the flat. She never drank them, but right then the idea of whisky seemed very appealing.