Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1

by Angela Slatter

  I’d spent the better part of the afternoon getting precisely nowhere – company records showed that the Oxford Street shop was the extent of her commercial interests and title-deed searches revealed no other properties under Serena’s name. While I was at it, I’d taken a moment to double-check for deeds to the Ascot house, in the faint hope that Ziggi’s minions might have missed something, but of course they hadn’t. Then I’d wasted the rest of the day phoning round all the upmarket hotels and asking if Serena Kallos had ever checked in; when I’d exhausted that list I moved on to the mid-range hotels before finally hitting the roach motels. But none of this yielded anything, and I was beginning to think that unless she owned another place under an alias, she’d either been staying with a friend when she died, or hiding out somewhere else.

  David’s invitation to dinner had been the shining light at the end of my crappy day. He had an apartment in the Woolstore, a complex with the kind of architectural strangeness you generally get when someone tries to make a storage space fit for human habitation. Some areas were too large, others too small and almost all of them could be described as ‘challenging’ in shape. Stairs ran at crazy angles, strikingly ugly carpets mingled with strikingly beautiful polished wood and mediocre polished concrete. On the ground floor, banks of mailboxes requiring small keys lined one wall of the lobby, which I chose to think of as the beginning of the maze: I would not have been at all surprised if I’d bumped into a minotaur checking his mail.

  But enough about me.

  ‘What did you do today?’ I asked.

  ‘I spent two hours discussing brown with a client,’ he answered, his expression pained.

  ‘Brown? He’s fond of brown?’

  ‘Overly so, I’d say.’ He took a bite of naan. ‘He wanted his website entirely in shades of brown, of which, it turns out, there are many.’

  ‘Fifty Shades of Brown?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And how’d it go?’

  ‘I stopped listening after the first thirty minutes and sang songs in my head.’

  ‘You are wise.’

  I looked around and couldn’t help but compare the warmth of David’s apartment with the cold refinement of Serena Kallos’ place. Though it lurked behind one of many identical glossy cream doors, it had much more character than I’d expected, given the rest of the building. The kitchen was all black granite worktops and gleaming stainless steel appliances; the lounge was resplendent with heavy wooden bookcases, a dark green leather sofa and matching chairs and a Turkish rug about the size of two Mini Coopers parked end to end. At the far end of the room, one whole wall was taken up by the big-screen TV and matching sound system and an enormous desk with a state-of-the-art PC and two monitors. On a charger in the corner of the desk I spotted an iPad, sleeping peacefully. David’s tour of the place took in a spare room that was pretty basic, but ready for overnight guests, a fairly large bathroom and a mezzanine platform with a king-size bed and an en-suite bathroom. The place was anything but beige; it was comfortable and cozy, yet stylish in its own way.

  I was about to shovel in a mouthful of butter chicken when my jacket, hanging over the back of a chair, emitted a shriek. I gave David an apologetic look and checked the number, thinking it might be Lizzie, who’d taken to calling me before she went to bed – Mel said it helped her get to sleep.

  But alas, it was Rhonda’s number, and past experience had shown there was no ignoring Detective Inspector McIntyre when she wanted attention. She’d just keep ringing until I answered.

  She didn’t bother with any of the usual social niceties like ‘Hello’ or ‘Sorry for ruining your evening’.

  ‘Fassbinder, we’ve got another one of those chicken-women.’ She didn’t bother to keep her voice down; she was unhappy and she didn’t care who knew it. I held the phone away from my ear and could still hear her perfectly, and so, I suspected, could David. ‘Have you got any-fucking-thing for me?’

  ‘Tomorrow I’m trying the kindies near her home,’ I offered.

  ‘What am I paying you for?’ she barked.

  ‘Well, strictly speaking, you’re not paying me on this one, Tepes is.’ I made the distinction even though I knew it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. ‘But even I need to eat and sleep and bathe occasionally. Not to mention that kindergartens and day care centres close overnight.’ I wasn’t doing a particularly good job of keeping the annoyance out of my voice. ‘You got any-fucking-thing for me? Something from a birth certificate, perhaps?’

  ‘Nothing yet – apparently I’m not as important as either of us thought,’ she snapped, then she calmed down a bit and added, ‘Except the autopsy report came in.’

  I waited. Her voice sounded a bit odd.

  ‘Apart from the effects of falling from a great height, her heart was crushed.’

  I let that sink in, then asked, ‘It’s not something that could have happened on impact? Wouldn’t the internal organs be the consistency of a daiquiri after that sort of plunge?’

  ‘Under normal circumstances I’d agree with you, but these sirens are tougher than old boots. There are finger marks around the cardiac muscle, very clear to see. Someone reached into her chest – left no trace going in – and squeezed.’ She coughed and I heard a lifetime of cigarettes rattling around in her lungs.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Nothing a bullet won’t fix,’ she snorted. ‘Get back to me as soon as you find anything. If any more of these corpses turn up I don’t know how I’m going to keep it quiet.’

  ‘The new one – you need me to come to the scene?’

  ‘Nope. She’s in the Botanical Gardens, caught in a tree like she fell out of a plane. We’re cleaning it up and getting her removed.’

  ‘That must be fun to keep out of the public eye.’

  ‘You’d be amazed how much land you can rope off under the threat of a gas leak.’

  ‘Ingenious. Take some snaps; I’ll meet you at the morgue in a couple of hours.’ I thought for a moment, then asked, ‘Any ID?’

  ‘Yep, this one’s got a handbag. See you later.’ Then there was just dead air.

  I went back to the couch. Half of my dinner had disappeared, and anything resembling naan bread had apparently never existed. David’s plate was empty of any trace of food and he wore the look of a guilty dog.

  My appetite was gone but I still glared.

  ‘It was unguarded,’ he said by way of explanation.

  ‘Okay, this is a boundary issue and we need to talk about it . . .’

  *

  I didn’t like the morgue. It smelled wrong: the kind of super-duper clean that never quite covered up the fact that there were dead things everywhere. It felt wrong: grief and death had embedded themselves in the walls, in tile and concrete that should have been impervious, and it sounded wrong too: the clip of my footsteps so final that I was always vaguely astonished to find I was still alive when I left. Finally, there were the whispers; a gentle, distressed susurrus of the surprised and protesting dead. I was never able to make out what they were saying, mind; I couldn’t quite distinguish the words. I just knew the tone, the cadences of despair, which heightened my awareness and made it extra upsetting that I couldn’t always help, no matter how much I wanted to.

  It was quite a trek to get out to Coopers Plains. Ziggi had taken the night off and the cab fare was hefty – David had offered to drive, but I didn’t want the two parts of my life colliding quite so soon. The overly perky night receptionist was new and gave me directions I didn’t need to the elevators after she’d handed over a visitor’s badge; I was grumpy and definitely did not want to be there, but I managed to bite down on a sarky comment. Virtue, thy name is Verity. I took one to the basement and stepped into the long corridor. A breeze pushed at my back, though there was no source, then came a flapping noise and I felt as though feathers brushed against my skin, like wings were being wrapped around me. I tried to rub the sensation away from my arms, much like a junkie trying
to remove imaginary spiders, and resisted the urge to run. Fear made me sweat, and for a moment I was glad I’d not had a chance to eat my dinner, as the little I already had in my stomach started roiling.

  A door opened a little way down the hallway and McIntyre’s dishevelled head popped out. ‘Took your time. Finished farting about?’

  I shuddered and went over to her. ‘You ever sense anything down here?’

  She looked startled, began to answer, then closed her mouth and retreated into the autopsy suite, leaving me to follow. The room was brightly illuminated and the technician looked like a stain against all the lightness. Ellen was small and thin and shaven-headed, and all visible skin except her face was swarming with tattoos. Myriad designs crawled across the backs of her hands and along her forearms to slip beneath the edge of the sleeve, then reappeared like tendrils from the collar of her scrubs. They wound their way up her throat and the nape of her neck to blossom all over her shaved head: a colourful collage of mouths and faces, tears and roses, pearls and breasts, beasts and bells. Her hairline had exquisitely detailed inking, which made it appear as if her face was peering out from a hole in an eggshell. It was both lizard-like and Bosch-esque, simultaneously beautiful and disturbing. She looked exhausted.

  On one of the steel tables lay a dark-haired woman, her pale skin blotched with bruises and smeared with blood. No Y incision marked her chest yet, so I guessed she’d not long been delivered. On a separate table were her wings; their stumps still oozed. I recognised her as one of the sirens I’d seen at the Kangaroo Point nest; she was the one who’d hissed at me and tried to keep me away from Eurycleia. Who – or what – had she pissed off?

  I leaned in, examining her exposed flesh, and pointed to a trickle of crimson that’d dried on her neck. It led up into her hair. ‘What’s that?’

  Ellen held the black locks back and I took a closer look, McIntyre at my side. A raw red mark sat high behind her left ear, mostly hidden by the luxuriant tresses. It was in the shape of a small square cross, and it hadn’t been branded onto her skin, it had been carved.

  I straightened, nearly knocking McIntyre over, and asked quickly, ‘Is Serena Kallos still here?’

  The tech shrugged and turned towards the bank of steel drawers, which earned her a glare from Rhonda, who snapped, ‘She means “yes”. You’ll have to forgive Ellen; she sometimes has trouble using her words.’

  She gave me an it’s-so-hard-to-get-good-help eye-roll while we waited for Serena Kallos to appear from her cold bed.

  I tried not to look at the rough stitching holding her torso together. Ellen had to search carefully, shifting individual hairs like a grooming monkey, but at last she found an identical mark high on the back of Serena’s skull, dried to a dull rust colour.

  ‘What’s it mean?’ asked the tech, and it was my turn to shrug.

  ‘If we knew that, Ellen, we wouldn’t be here.’ McIntyre wearily rubbed her face with both hands, as if she could smooth out the wrinkles.

  ‘More importantly, why didn’t you find it?’ I asked, and Ellen looked embarrassed.

  ‘This one only just came in tonight—’ she began, then stopped and admitted, ‘It was pretty obvious what killed her – both of them. I didn’t think I needed to look for anything else. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Believe it or not, Ellen, we’re not only interested in the immediate cause of death,’ McIntyre said cuttingly, and I suspected words would be had later.

  ‘Name?’ I asked.

  ‘Teles Dimitriou, reputed to be twenty-six. Until very recently, resident in an exclusive block of units over at Sydney Street, New Farm. A lawyer.’

  I gestured to the wings. Even though I was certain I knew the answer I asked, ‘You remove those?’

  Ellen shook her head, earrings jangling in her left ear. When she turned around I saw the wings inked onto the back of her head, reaching up either side from the base of the skull to the crown. I glanced at her feet, but the shoes weren’t custom-made, just ordinary Reeboks. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m neater than that. These have been wrenched off.’

  I touched a finger to Serena Kallos’ lovely dead face and traced a raised scratch, thinking of what might have happened if I’d been too late to save Lizzie. I imagined how Mel would look if she’d had to come here, identify her child – if there’d even been a body after the Winemaker had had her way – or worse still, no body, no closure, Lizzie missing like Serena’s daughter was now. I thought about Calliope Kallos, out there somewhere in the dark of the night, while her mother lay dead in a freezer.

  ‘You done?’ McIntyre interrupted. ‘I know you won’t want to hang around for the next act.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and she started herding me towards the door.

  ‘Ideas?’ she asked as we stepped into the corridor.

  ‘Do you trust her?’

  ‘Ellen? As much as I trust anyone.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘But I think she’s harmless. Maybe not too bright some days. And I don’t think she’s strong enough or mean enough to rip the wings off a fly, let alone—’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant . . . Honestly, at this point I don’t know what I mean.’ I sighed. ‘You’ll probably find this one’s heart in the same shape as the first victim’s.’

  ‘Tell me something my questionably competent friend in there can’t.’

  ‘Peru once had the world’s highest golf course.’

  She made a noise that might have been a laugh as we stopped at the elevator and she hit the call button more violently than was necessary. ‘Plan?’

  ‘Anything on the birth certificate?’ I asked hopefully.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not Wonder Woman. Some time tomorrow, maybe.’

  ‘Bugger. Then tomorrow I’ll shake a few day care centres and see what falls out. Surely someone would’ve reported it if a baby’d been left somewhere for days? Maybe someone knows the father and I can have a chat with him, see if he’s got Calliope.’

  ‘Ask him if he killed the mother while you’re at it. Interested parties need to know.’ She was going to say something else, but the coughing began again: an ugly noise, worse than it had sounded over the phone. Her face reddened and her eyes watered and she leaned against the wall, one hand at her throat, clutching at her crucifix as if it might help. I held her for support, ignoring her expression as it flashed between gratitude and impatience, but she wasn’t really in a position to refuse assistance.

  When she finally recovered and the shuddering had lessened, I let her go. I’d known Rhonda a while and she was a very private person: enquiries as to her wellness or otherwise wouldn’t be met with cuddles. But still. As she straightened, I said, ‘Rhonda, are you going to hit me if I ask if you’re okay?’

  ‘Probably.’ Her voice was worn, and the exhalation behind it stank wetly. Her breath smelled like the morgue. ‘Just a touch of pleurisy. Far less exciting than consumption.’

  ‘Okay, then, I’ll respect your privacy if you promise not to drop dead.’

  ‘Deal.’ She started back to the autopsy suite.

  ‘McIntyre?’ I called, and she looked over her shoulder. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  She laughed. ‘Yeah, fuck off.’

  What a kidder. She disappeared, but I felt as if I hadn’t said or offered enough and I turned and followed. The door to the exam room wasn’t properly closed and before I barged in I peered through the gap. I could see McIntyre and Ellen standing close as close can be. The tech, looking sad, had her hands cupped around McIntyre’s face and I could see traces of tears on the older woman’s cheeks. Rhonda clearly wasn’t well, but she wasn’t on her own.

  I felt a little better, but also a lot lonelier. I wanted nothing more than to be back at David’s, sitting next to him on his green sofa and breathing in his scent and his warmth, knowing he’d smell like stolen butter chicken and naan. I wanted to touch his face, feel the skin, the stubble, run my hands through his thick blond hair, and see the goofy grin on his face when I
said it was time we slept together. Death makes us all want to do something lifeward; sometimes Death got it right.

  I turned on my heel and retreated, braced in case the sensation of wings assaulted me again, but this time there was just the cool hum of the dull metal elevator taking me back up – that and the surprise I couldn’t quite deny on discovering that I was once more escaping alive.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I don’t care who you are, Ms Fassbinder,’ the woman said, smiling through gritted teeth and glaring at me over the top of her Dame Edna glasses. ‘You’re not a police officer and I can’t give you any personal information about our clients or their children.’

  At the first two crèches I had learned what I probably should have already known: you don’t get to ask questions about kids, certainly not strangers’ kids, unless you have a badge or a degree in social work. Mrs Tinkler, proprietress of Dinky Darlings Day Care, was hammering that message home, and enjoying it way too much. I had the distinct impression she lived only to make other people’s lives less enjoyable. The others had at least been courteous in their refusals, but politeness didn’t appear to be one of the settings on Mrs Tinkler’s dial.

  Mrs T. sat at the front counter like an oversized toad, swathed in a pink and white winter-weight caftan. Her hair colour came out of a bottle that hadn’t delivered on the promises it had made. Her muddy eyes glittered meanly. The notice boards behind her were covered with artwork from the Retro Glitter and Macaroni School, and sunflowers with faces and speech balloons spouted improving slogans about smiles, kindness and hygiene; at least two of those messages were ones Mrs T. had not taken to heart. To the left was a safety-glass door leading through to an activities room, and beyond that I spotted a playground where hordes of small children were running about like brightly coloured bumper cars. To the right was an office, and a little further along was another open door, perhaps leading to the sanctum sanctorum, also known as the staff break room. I thought I saw a shadowy movement there, but Mrs T. dragged my attention back by clearing her throat.