Now You See Me

by Jean Bedford

  ‘Between us? There do seem to be some irreconcilable differences.’ She reached towards him. ‘Mick, can’t we let it settle a bit? We’re both tired and angry and we’ve both said things tonight we probably don’t actually mean.’

  He took her hand, as delicate as a child’s inside his massive paw, and turned it over as if he wanted to read her palm. ‘Are you saying you didn’t really mean that I was a blundering bully who’d probably ruined your whole career?’ She relaxed slightly at his changed tone. ‘Well, no. I did mean that. But I’m sure you never intended to imply that I was a combination of a jumped-up zealot and a Nazi stormtrooper.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t mean it to be an implication,’ he said. ‘I mustn’t have made myself clear. Oh, hell. You’re right, let’s go to bed. Do I have to sleep in the spare room?’ He pulled her up with him, still holding her hand.

  ‘No. I’ll even kiss you goodnight, if you like.’

  But after they’d made love and she’d cried a while and Mick had comforted her, she lay awake worrying. He was right — there were fundamental differences they’d probably put off addressing for too long. And she didn’t see how she could still work on the Paddy Galen case while she lived with Mick. There’d be too many things they wouldn’t be able to discuss; they’d be listening to anything the other said about it with suspicion and wariness. She wondered how he’d feel about a temporary separation. She wondered if it would end up being all that temporary.

  Rosa came downstairs to the sound of the television. She looked in at the door. ‘How long’ve you been awake?’ she asked. The children were still in their pyjamas, a plate with toast crumbs in front of them, as well as vegemite and peanut butter-smeared knives.

  ‘Ages,’ Jessie said wearily. ‘Jack wanted to wake you up, but I said you needed your sleep.’

  Rosa laughed. ‘Thanks, kid. Don’t you think you’d better get dressed? Your dad’s coming for you at ten.’

  ‘He rang,’ Jack said. ‘He’s not coming till later. After lunch.’

  ‘Oh? Did he say why?’ She thought it might have been the sound of the phone that had woken her.

  ‘Just that he had something else to do first.’ Jack spoke nonchalantly enough, still watching the television, but Rosa wondered what he really felt.

  ‘Did he say where he was calling from?’

  ‘Nah.Her place, I suppose,’ Jessie said. The children had not seen Carly since Tom had been with her, and although Rosa hadn’t said anything, Jessie at least had decided to hate her out of loyalty.

  ‘Did he say what his plans were?’ She was hugging to herself the memory of their last meeting. She was hoping that today something might be confirmed between them. When he’d left he’d warned her not to expect too much, but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘He said we might go on the Manly ferry. What’s such a big deal about that?’ Jessie said.

  ‘It’s famous,’ Rosa said. She wondered if Tom would suggest she go, too. When they’d been students, in the first stages of their relationship, they’d often gone to Manly on the ferry. It was a cheap, romantic way to spend time sitting with their arms around each other and making plans. They’d buy fish and chips at the other end and sit on the beach in a haze of lust, and the trip home would be almost agonising, in an exhilarating way, trying to keep their hands off each other until they got back to Tom’s grotty room. She couldn’t help thinking he’d sent her a hopeful message of some sort.

  ‘Why is it famous?’ Jack was briefly interested enough to take his gaze from the cartoons.

  ‘It just is. It’s Sydney, the essence of Sydney. Everyone goes on the Manly ferry at least once in their lives.’

  ‘Yeah, but why?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ she said, wondering if they would. ‘Anyway, get dressed. Turn that crap off.’ She went into the kitchen and put coffee on to perk while she toasted bread. She stood in the warmth of the sunshine pouring through the window and felt invigorated. Yesterday she’d finally pulled out the weeds by the back fence and she gazed with satisfaction now at the dark earth exposed. She’d plant violets there, she thought. And dozens of freesias, next winter, with rows of ixias behind them. Sexy-smelling bulbs, sweet and peppery, for the long spring evenings. Perhaps a clump of blue and yellow irises in the corner, and those mauve, almost liverish-coloured ones. She lost herself in a dream of burgeoning flowers.

  The toaster popped with a loud twang and she buttered toast and spread thick marmalade. She wondered why Tom had put off his visit. Perhaps he’d already left Carly’s, as he’d said he would; perhaps he was looking for a flat or back in the motel. Perhaps he was hoping to move straight back home. She shook her head slightly. No, he’d said definitely that he wanted some time to get himself straightened out, first. It was the ‘first’ she clung to.

  The phone rang, startling her. She heard the kids scrambling for it, squabbling, then Jessie called out. ‘Mum, it’s Dad again. He wants to speak to you.’

  She was smiling when she said hello.

  ‘Rosa, can you take this on the bedroom extension?’

  She frowned. ‘Yes, all right. Why?’

  ‘Just do it. Make sure you put this phone down and the kids don’t listen in.’ His voice was tight, almost hostile.

  ‘OK.’ She said to Jessie, ‘Your dad wants to talk to me privately. Will you hang up when I get to the bedroom?’

  Jessie nodded and cradled the handset, importantly waiting.

  ‘They’re not on the line, are they?’ Tom said when she picked up again.

  ‘No, I heard the click. Do you want me to go and check?’ She was being sarcastic, but he answered her seriously.

  ‘Yes. Perhaps you’d better.’

  She went out into the passage and saw the children jostling each other up the stairs on the way to their rooms. ‘All right,’ she said to Tom, back in the bedroom. ‘They’re not anywhere near it. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Rosa, I can’t make it today. You’ll have to tell them I’m sick or something.’

  ‘Why not?’ Her voice was as cold as she suddenly felt. ‘What’s going on, Tom? You promised them the Manly ferry.’ She felt her own sense of promise shrivelling as she spoke.

  ‘Mick rang me this morning. Paddy’s been arrested. For murder. I’m going to try to see him today, Mick thinks he can arrange it.’

  ‘Paddy? What? You can’t be serious. Who’s he supposed to have murdered?’ She sank onto the bed.‘Paddy?’

  ‘A whole lot of people. Kids. Children.’ He briefly outlined the case against Paddy for the killing of Justine Riley, and the possibility of others in the past. ‘The evidence looks unassailable.’ His voice was sour on the last word. ‘Mick thinks he did it, too, but he’s determined to get him the best defence he can. Rosa, I have to go and see him, see if I can do anything to help.’

  ‘Of course.’ She spoke automatically, still trying to take it in. ‘What do you think you can do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mick says insanity’s the best bet, and it’s probably true. We all might need to be witnesses — as to his history. But just now I want to see him, to talk to him. Jesus, he’s one of the first people I made friends with at university. If he did it, we’re all responsible to some extent, Rosa. All of us.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, finally absorbing what he was saying. ‘Don’t try to transpose your intellectual scapegoat theories onto this. I certainly don’t feel responsible for Paddy going mad and murdering children. And if you do, you’re as crazy as he is.’

  ‘Just make it OK with the kids, will you,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ll try to come over tomorrow, if that’s all right. I’ll ring you again later.’

  ‘Where are you, Tom? Are you still at Carly’s?’

  ‘No. I’m back at the motel, wherever that is. Limbo or purgatory; I’m not quite sure.’

  ‘All right,’ her voice softened. ‘I’ll speak to you later. And Tom ...’

  ‘What?’ He waited, then said ‘What?’ again.

&nbs
p; ‘I was going to say, give Paddy my love,’ she said. ‘But I’ve thought better of it. Don’t. If he’s been killing children, I don’t want to know him. I don’t want ever to have known him.’

  ‘The weaker sex,’ Tom said with a dry laugh. ‘Lady Macbeth and all that. Not to mention innocent until proven guilty.’

  ‘Lady Macbeth was a murderer, too, Tom. I wouldn’t have wanted to know her, either. You might have to do a bit of work on the marriage of theory and practice here. It’s a bit beyond abstract ethics, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s about friendship and loyalty as much as anything. Don’t you give a shit about the pressures that might have driven him to it? About the fact that if we’d bothered to see a bit more of him, any of us, instead of being absorbed in our own middle-class, upwardly mobile little universes, he mightn’t have gone over this particular edge? Don’t you even feel the slightest bit responsible, Rosa?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel sick that I’ve ever been relaxed in his company. I feel sick at the thought that he’s babysat our kids, taken them out for the day. How would you feel if it was Jessie or Jack, Tom? Would friendship and loyalty loom quite so large then?’

  ‘It was apparently only badly abused kids,’ he said slowly. ‘Mick says it sounds as if he thought he was on some errand of mercy. That he thought he was releasing them from their misery. Our children would have never been in danger from him.’

  She was silenced momentarily. After a long pause she said, ‘I don’t pretend to understand that stuff. Perhaps you’re right, I don’t know. I can only react as a mother and a woman. I can only see him as a predator, a threat to the safety of the race.’

  Tom’s voice was gentler when he replied. ‘You’re probably the normal voice of reason, Rosie my love,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’

  She sat with the phone on her lap after he’d rung off, ‘Rosie my love’ echoing in her mind. She heard the children stampeding on the stairs again and sighed. She got up and went down to them, wondering if she was up to taking them on the ferry by herself.

  *

  Mick and Tom settled themselves with their beers in a dim corner of the pub, away from the over-loud and not very good band.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Mick said. ‘I thought I might be able to sneak you in with me.’

  ‘It’s all right. You told Paddy I was there, though? That I wanted to see him?’

  ‘Yeah. Not that I think he took it in. He’s away with the fairies by now.’ Mick took a long mouthful of his beer. ‘I could hardly get any sense out of him. I reckon they’ll get a “not responsible, by reason of”, no worries.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Tom said. ‘He’ll be locked up in a psychiatric wing for life or something?’

  ‘Better than the alternative,’ Mick said. ‘The other day he seemed to think he might have had an alibi, but he’d forgotten all about it today.’

  ‘An alibi for what? This last killing?’

  ‘Yeah. It doesn’t do much good, given the stuff they’ve got on the disks. Plus the sock. Plus the sheet they found in the caravan matches sheets in his flat. But at first he reckoned he was with some woman the night Justine Riley went missing. It was hard to make much sense of it. He kept laughing and saying, “If you could call her a woman”. When I asked him about it this afternoon he went vacant on me.’

  ‘He didn’t say who she was?’

  ‘No. I doubt if she exists, except in his mind. He kept saying, “Goddess of the hunt”. Then he changed it to “Goddess of the cunt” and went into paroxysms of giggling. Probably a figment of the fevered imagination.’

  Tom stared at him. ‘He didn’t mention the name Diana, did he? She’s the goddess of the hunt.’

  ‘He might’ve. Jesus, he just might have. I could have lost that, all mixed up with the other gibberish. Why? Does that mean something to you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It might.’ Tom put down his glass, only half drunk. ‘Mick, I’d better go. I have to ring Rosa, and I need to think about this. Are you seeing him tomorrow?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, why?’

  ‘Ask him if her nameis Diana. Ask him where she lives.’ He shrugged on his jacket. ‘I’m at the motel in Glebe. Give me a ring if you talk to him, will you? I might have something else to add by tomorrow.’

  ‘Cryptic fucking philosophers. If I could get you in to see him and tape your conversation, and then get a team of decoders on it, I might make some sense out of all this.’

  ‘You’re a good mate, Mick. I hope you’re around if I ever need a friend.’

  ‘I’m around,’ Mick said seriously. ‘If you ever do.’

  Judith came out of the elevator on the ground floor to meet Mick. He looked with appreciation at her elegant black suit and high heels, her stripy hair pulled back smoothly off her face, emphasising her fine strong features. She’d been a pudgy, shy girl in baggy clothes when he’d first known her.

  She smiled at him and gave him a brief hug, but her bewilderment was evident at his sudden request to see her. She waited while he pinned on the security pass the constable on duty gave him.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve ever seen you in the lion’s den, Mick,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you afraid some of our ruthless pursuit of the pound of flesh might rub off on you?’

  He laughed as they got into the lift together. ‘Nope. My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.’ When they reached her level he followed her into her office. He looked around at the cramped space, at the reception cubicle outside her door where the assistant she shared with two other prosecutors sat.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t give you much in the way of perks,’ he said, gesturing at the generic furniture and the bland, durable colours. ‘Enforcing the moral will of the people and all that.’

  ‘Butour hearts are pure, too,’ she said. ‘Purer, since we don’t have plush penthouse suites and ten-minute billable periods. We do it all in the abstract search for justice.’

  He sat in the client’s chair. ‘Do you ever wish you were young again, Jude?’ he said. ‘But knowing some of what you know now?’

  ‘If I’d known then what I know now I would have been a suicide statistic,’ she said. ‘What do you want, Mick? I assume it’s something about Paddy. I don’t think I can help you, if it is. I feel terrible about it — almost responsible, in a strange way, as if having known him for so long makes me a part of it. But I’m keeping right away from the case preparation, especially as I wouldn’t put it past you to suggest me as a defence witness.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s about Paddy,’ he said. ‘But it’s also a bit nearer home for you, I’m afraid. There’s some weird stuff going down, Judith.’

  ‘Like what?’ She fiddled with her old-fashioned desk set, rearranging pens. ‘Mick, I think you have to be very careful what you tell me. If I feel I have to pass it on to whoever’s prosecuting, I will.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘You’re more likely to want to take some of your accrued leave.’ He turned to look out of her high narrow window to the view of the top floors of the office block across the street.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was impatient. ‘Mick, it’s lovely to see you, really. But I’ve postponed several meetings to fit you in. You’ll have to start speaking English.’

  ‘Paddy’s virtually off the air,’ he said. ‘It might not even come to trial at this rate. But he’d been gabbling about an alibi, and something Tom told me to ask him seemed to focus him for a split second. He says he was with a woman the night Justine Riley disappeared — well Ithink it was a woman; a sort of semi-professional hooker of one sex or another, anyway. Her name’s Diana.’ He paused and watched for her reaction.

  ‘So? Have you traced her?’ She was still impatient, clearly ignorant of where this was leading.

  He let out his breath heavily, unaware until then that he’d been holding it in. ‘He sort of remembered where her flat w
as. It was the wrong block, but the guy we hired had the wit to check the adjacent buildings as well. We found the right one, next door. Jude, the flat’s in Tess’s name.’

  She gave him a look of pure shock that turned slowly to something like a reluctant understanding, and he saw the implications shudder down the whole length of her body.

  ‘What?’ she said, her hands clenching spasmodically on the desk. I don’t understand.’ Then she seemed to drag herself together, briefly, finding her crisp lawyer’s voice. ‘How do you know that’s the relevant flat?’

  ‘Paddy gave us bits of description of its interior decoration. When the investigator showed us the list of tenants, Tess’s name leapt out at me. The caretaker let us in — after a bit of cash changed hands, of course. It all matched the fragments we were able to get out of Paddy. Down to the colour of the towels in the bathroom. Jude, we’ll have to question her, and we have to assume the cops’ll get that far themselves, pretty soon. If they haven’t already. The public defender’s shitting himself because we instituted what was virtually an illegal entry — though we’ve applied for a court order now. Mind you, the PD’s Gareth. He’d shit himself if he got a parking ticket.’

  She didn’t smile. ‘Of course you’ll have to talk to her; don’t be silly. I’m sure there’s an explanation, and she’ll be only too happy to provide it. Perhaps she lent it to friends and didn’t know what it was being used for ...’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He leant towards her. ‘Jude, let’s cut the bullshit. I can see you’ve caught the possible ramifications of this. We share a history. We know about the AOKs. And we also both know how these things work. We’ve got two people, now, who’ve been friends for twenty-five years, both with abusive family backgrounds. Paddy’s virtually admitted he’s a killer with some sort of avenging angel mission, and Tess’s apparently associated with the place where he claims an alibi. You can see why I’m just the slightest bit perturbed.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She was thinking about Tess going to the sentencings of convicted child murderers and rapists. She was remembering saying to Rosa that for all she knew, Tess might have an apartment somewhere, a secret life she knew nothing about. She was about to say that Tess hardly ever saw Paddy, then realised she’d thought the same about her contact with Carly, too.