The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi

by Marele Day

  The block of flats looked like Department of Housing accommodation. A monolithic redbrick cube with rows of small windows. There was a low redbrick fence around the perimeter and grass inside that was better kept than the grass in the park. Despite the hot dry weather, despite the fires, someone was watering this patch of lawn. The windows had some signs of individual difference, attempts to personalise, to make the impersonal structure more like home. Some of the windows had curtains—lace, faded Marimekko designs from the sixties, a checked blanket in one case. Some windows were open, others closed. Some had vases of flowers—hard to tell from the outside whether they were real or artificial. A couple were obviously bathroom windows with toothbrushes sticking their heads out of thick mugs.

  Guy Francis Valentine’s address was flat 2. I walked into the vestibule. Flats 1, 2, 3, and 4 were on the ground floor. Everything in here was pretty quiet. All the doors looked the same. I went to flat 2. I stood there ready with my hand up to knock but at the last minute found it surprisingly difficult to do. I listened at the door but no sound was coming out of this flat. I gave a light little tap. No answer. I tried a harder knock. Still no answer. Except for the kids outside on their skateboards this could have been a ghost town. No-one came in or out of the flats. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of talkback radio. I went out of the building but stayed inside the fence.

  Number 2 was on the street side of the block. I wondered if my father might be incapacitated, whether he was given this flat because he couldn’t climb stairs. I walked across the grass and looked in his window. Despite the attempts at beautification that I’d observed at some of the other windows, the inside of this flat looked institutional. Neat, tidy, institutional. The floor was cork tiles with a piece of mustard-coloured carpet in front of a TV set. There was a tiled coffee table with a TV program neatly to one side. Even the small plate with a crust of bread and a butter knife resting on it looked neat. A comfy lounge chair, orange and mustard swirls with slightly frayed edges where the hands rested. The only sign of life was a yellow canary in a cage swinging on a miniature trapeze in the corner of the room. It may have been singing but I couldn’t hear it from here. There were curtains at the window, a plain brown material pulled back to let in the light. I tried the window but it was locked.

  What the hell did I think I was doing, breaking into my father’s flat? I crossed over the street and sat on the park bench, looking at the dry crisp grass. There was still the smell of smoke. The brown haze hovered over the block of flats, kept up there by the heat of the building. Everywhere you looked the sky was full of it.

  A minute later I saw the familiar red and blue uniform of Australia Post. The postwoman had on a hat to keep the sun off her, a bag on her back and a stash of letters in her hand. She deposited the letters into the row of letterboxes for the block of flats.

  The skateboarders had gone, the odd car drove by. The canary was a good sign. Guy couldn’t be too far away if he had a pet to look after. Also, given the general neatness of his flat, he didn’t look like the kind of person who would leave his breakfast plate unwashed for very long. At an intersection a few streets away I saw a bus pass by. And finally a sign of life from inside the building. A woman in down-at-heel slippers and lank grey hair held back by a couple of bobby pins came out and looked in the letterbox of number 12. Out of it she pulled a long, window-faced envelope. She shuffled inside again.

  From the direction of the passing bus two men approached. They were both elderly, one small and neat-looking with a good head of grey hair and a slight limp, the other completely bald, which made his small round face on a large body look even smaller. Both of them were carrying shopping bags—not heavy items, just the kind of shopping you do on your way home from somewhere. Or if you live alone and get by on the smell of an oily rag. Two nice old gents, battered about by what Life had dealt them but cheery in spite of it. They were walking along at a leisurely pace, the big one bending his head a bit to hear the story the little one was relating to him. When they got to the low wrought iron gate to the flats they opened it and walked in.

  ‘Coming up for a cuppa?’ said the big one.

  ‘Yeah, in a minute,’ said the little one, ‘I’m just going to check the mail.’

  ‘No point in me doing that, no-one ever writes.’ It wasn’t a whinge, more a light-hearted joke.

  ‘The government writes to you. It’s Thursday, you mug. Pension day.’

  ‘Jeez, how could I forget! Check mine for me will you, Guy.’

  ‘Sure thing, Charlie.’

  He went to the row of boxes and came away with two letters similar to the one the woman had received. He walked up to the front door and gave one of the letters to Charlie, then both of them went inside and closed the door.

  From the minute they’d entered the front gate everything had proceeded in slow motion. He was smaller, thinner than I imagined but it was him. Neither of the men had as much as glanced at the woman sitting on the bench. There was no flying towards each other as it happens in the movies, the atmosphere didn’t thicken with emotion. I just sat there.

  There was some movement behind the window. Then it opened a fraction. It must have been quite hot in there but when you live on the ground floor you close the windows when you go out. Jf he caught sight of the woman on the bench now, he didn’t come back for a second look.

  I stood up. All I had to do was cross the road and knock on the door. He was home now, there was nothing stopping me. Except myself. As I stood alone in the now deserted street, all the years of my life dissolved away and were reduced to these few seconds. He was not the young cadet of the year, the face that I remembered from childhood. Neither was he the dero lying in the street, the one I would rescue and take home and give a good bath. He’d rescued himself. It was time for me to do the same. He was just an ordinary person, an old man living in a flat, looking after himself and his budgerigar. Watching TV with his TV guide neatly on the table. He had a life and I was no part of it.

  I stood there, on the point of leaving. I took a few steps. If he were to look out the window now, right now, maybe I would nod hello to him. Just nod in a neighbourly fashion then walk on. Perhaps he would pop his head out the window, looking down the street after me, wondering. Wondering, but never quite sure.

  But he didn’t do any of that. Nothing happened. For all I knew he had already gone upstairs to have his cup of tea with Charlie. I continued on down the street, got in the van and drove away.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I had a stiff drink at the pub, then went upstairs. There was a message for me to ring Rosa’s house. I rang.

  ‘Yes, hello?’ It wasn’t Rosa who answered.

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked.

  ‘Who is this?’ the voice repeated back to me.

  ‘It’s Claudia Valentine, I’m looking for Rosa Grimaldi.’

  ‘Ah, Claudia,’ the voice sounded relieved. ‘It’s Anna Larossa here.’

  ‘Where’s Rosa?’

  ‘She’s at the hospital, Concord Hospital. She’s been there for two days.’

  ‘What’s happened to her?’ I said, alarmed.

  ‘Not to her, to her husband. There’s been an accident. He’s been shot.’

  ‘Been shot?’

  ‘At the restaurant. There was a fight with that boy, Fabio. It’s very bad.’

  ‘What was the fight about?’

  ‘We don’t know. Arturo is unconscious. The woman who works in the restaurant, Dora, she heard the fighting.’

  ‘And Fabio?’

  ‘Disappeared.’ Disappeared.

  ‘Rosa won’t come home, she won’t leave Arturo’s side. Perhaps it’s just as well. It’s terrible here. John is hosing down the house in case the fire jumps the river again. There’s white smoke, like mist. You can’t see more than five metres in front of you. People look like ghosts.·

  They may not let her through the roadblock even if she did try to come home. I was just grabbing the car keys when the p
hone rang. I hesitated, undecided as to whether to pick it up or let the machine deal with it. I waited for the recorded message then heard the caller identify herself as Sofia Theodourou.

  I wrenched up the phone. ‘Claudia Valentine. Hello.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said, ‘we’ve got an unidentified, a girl about fifteen. With a tattoo on her arm.’ My blood ran cold. ‘Do you know how we can get in touch with the parents?’ Sofia asked. Oh God.

  I told Sofia about Arturo. ‘I don’t know if the mother would be in a fit state to come down to the morgue.’ I offered to do the 10. I knew it had to be someone who knew the deceased but I felt as if I knew Madalena. I knew her family, I knew her friends, I knew her from the photos. And I would certainly recognise the tattoo if I saw it.

  ‘Sofia, I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll give you a contact number for the mother and do an unofficial ID at the same time. I’m sure under the circumstances this would be all right with the family.’

  I got in the car and drove. I was speeding, I don’t know why, it was fruitless. If I’d wanted to speed I should have done it before. If I had devoted the hours to looking for Madalena that I’d devoted to looking for my father I might have found her by now. Guilt weighed heavily on me and I hoped for a reprieve. I hoped it wasn’t Madalena, that Fabio hadn’t got to her. Then I felt sick at heart and ashamed of myself—who did I hope it was, if not Madalena? There was a girl lying dead in the morgue. She was someone’s daughter.

  There were television cameras outside the Coroner’s Court when I arrived. The foyer, though, was virtually empty. Whoever the cameras were expecting hadn’t yet arrived. Or hadn’t yet emerged from the court. Camera operators lounged against cars emblazoned with TV channel logos. They didn’t bat an eyelid when I walked by.

  I walked straight through to Forensic Medicine and asked for Dr Theodourou. She was expecting me and came as soon as they paged her. She looked tired. ‘The fires,’ she said. ‘They’re all around our area. The police have told us to prepare for evacuation. My husband is packing things up, in case we have to leave.’

  I thought of all the roses, of Kirby’s carefully controlled patch of garden. The fire running rampant, unrelentingly destroying what we build around us to make us immune to the forces of nature.

  ‘Has it come to that?’ I asked as she led me down the long, familiar corridor.

  ‘If they don’t get some relief, we’ll be the next to go.’ She took me into a room with a TV screen.

  ‘I have no problems looking at the body directly,’ I informed her.

  ‘As it’s unofficial, it’s probably better that you see the video rather than the actual body,’ said Sofia. ‘Some relatives prefer to do it that way anyhow. They feel more comfortable. It’s the way most of us experience dead bodies—on a TV screen.’

  I lay the photos I had of Madalena out in front of me. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Hit and run. Last night. In Kings Cross.’

  It could have been Fabio. Shot Arturo then went looking for Madalena. And found her.

  ‘No details on the vehicle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s start it.’

  Sofia set the machine going. I felt my stomach cave in. It was the hair. Same colour, same wavy texture as Rosa’s. The camera travelled around the face covered in blood. It was hard to distinguish the facial features and I didn’t want to have to look any closer than I already was.

  ‘Can we go to the tattoo, please?’ I said.

  Sofia fastforwarded the video and picked it up again as the camera swept down the right side of the body. She held on the tattoo. It was a phoenix surrounded by flames. I started breathing again. Nothing remotely like the keyhole tattoo that Kerry and Madalena had.

  ‘Is that the only one?’ I asked. ‘Nothing on the other arm?’

  The camera swept down the other side. There was no other tattoo.

  ‘It’s not her.’

  Sofia looked even more weary than she had before. She put her hand up to her forehead as if to rub the weariness away. It would make things simpler for her if I was able to give a positive ID. They could start to package the body up, put it away and go home.

  Was this how it had been in 1985, in the floods? Hindley out there in the rain, wanting to get back to the cosiness of the police station. It might not have been Guy Francis Valentine but it was some other old dero. What difference did it make? We were all going to die some day. In the meantime a quick identification would make his paperwork easier.

  ‘It’s not the same tattoo,’ I insisted.

  Sofia rewound till we were back to the face. She had more experience than me of distinguishing facial features beneath the distortions of blood and injury. She held the frame on a frontal view and compared it with the photos I had laid out in front of me.

  Then she handed the photos back to me. ‘There’s no point getting Mrs Grimaldi down here. Shit.’ She rubbed her forehead again, grimacing. ‘I’ve got to take some aspirin. I’ve had a headache for days. All this smoke.’ She flipped the video out of the player. ‘I’m sorry, do you mind seeing yourself out?’

  I walked back up the corridor and through to the Coroner’s section. I wasn’t feeling in peak condition myself. There was a canteen of sorts, a room with a few functional tables and chairs. I was sure they wouldn’t have anything alcoholic but even a cup of bad coffee would do at the moment. On the wall was a sign which said: ‘Catholic Women’s League is responsible for this canteen and is staffed by voluntary workers’. There was something wrong with the grammar but I couldn’t be bothered working out what it was.

  A woman in her sixties was buttering bread, presumably in preparation for lunch. Sandwich fillings—chicken, ham, tomato, shredded lettuce—sat in small trays behind glass. To one end of the counter was a basket of fruit—apples, oranges, bananas. There was also an array of chocolate bars and sweets.

  ‘Black coffee,’ I said.

  She stopped buttering bread and got the coffee ready.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, handing her the right change. I went and sat down at a table. It was quiet outside in the foyer, I wondered if the TV cameras were still in the street.

  I felt depressed. The body wasn’t Madalena, I should have been breathing sighs of relief. But it was someone. Unidentified. Somewhere someone was waiting for a girl who would never come home.

  I could hear voices outside. The hair was the same as Madalena’s, there was a tattoo, even if it wasn’t the same tattoo. Perhaps from the back Fabio … The voices got louder, coming this way. I looked up and saw men in suits.

  One of them was Russell Hindley.

  When he saw me he looked daggers, face clenched. Like he wanted to take out that .38 Special and shoot me on the spot. But he didn’t try anything. He walked on by, constrained by the circumstances. He couldn’t flex his muscle in the Coroner’s Court the way he could in a quiet backstreet.

  Then other suits came in, lawyers judging by the expensive dark fabric. They ordered coffee and hung around, idly chatting, kings in their castles, talking freely in front of the servants as if we didn’t have ears. ‘Someone planted a bomb in that court, they could wipe out what’s left of the old gangs.’

  ‘Or at least wipe out their lawyers.’ This raised a chuckle. ‘I notice Harrington’s kept himself scarce.’

  ‘Probably picking his tomatoes.’

  ‘Is that what he ended up doing, growing tomatoes? Finally put all that bullshit to good use, did he?’

  ‘I notice his little mate, Hindley, is here though.’ If my ears weren’t pricked already they certainly were now.

  ‘He wasn’t involved in any of that, was he?’

  ‘He was at Kings Cross, same as Harrington. You think it doesn’t rub off?’

  A woman’s voice cut across the low rumble of men’s conversation, a voice I knew. I looked towards the door and saw Carol come in, talking to a male colleague. What was this, the annual Policemen’s Ball? Carol stopped
short when she saw me but at least she didn’t walk out again. She looked, wondering what I was doing here, and not all that pleased to see me. She excused herself from her colleague and came over.

  ‘Claudia?’

  ‘Carol?’

  We both wanted to know what the other one was doing here. I went first. ‘I’ve been visiting Forensic,’ I said. ‘It’s never pleasant in there, as you know. On my way out I decided to sit down and have a cup of coffee. It was quiet when I arrived, then suddenly it’s the most popular place on earth.’

  ‘Big event, there’s media outside.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw them. What is it?’

  ‘Inquest into the disappearance of Edward Leonards.’ I recalled the name. Vaguely. Carol jogged my memory. ‘Allegedly involved in the Sweetie’s scam.’

  Sweetie’s Icecream Parlours. ‘Ah.’

  ‘But that would have been years ago. Why are they having an inquest now?’

  ‘Someone upstairs is pushing for it, new broom sweeping clean.’

  ‘And fortunately, most of the people who could get swept under the carpet are no longer around,’ I remarked. Carol declined to comment. ‘Are you involved in this matter?’ I asked Carol.

  ‘I’ve been gathering information, yes.’

  ‘The trip to Melbourne?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Hindley, what’s he doing here?’

  ‘I suppose as an ex-officer of the Drug Enforcement Agency he might have an interest in the matter,’ Carol admitted begrudgingly. I had a feeling that Hindley’s interest went back further than that. ‘I’d love to stay and chat with you, Claudia, but the court is resuming in a few minutes and I need to speak to my colleague.’

  ‘It’s an open inquest—open to members of the public?’

  Carol could see where this was leading but there was nothing she could do to stop me. ‘Yes,’ she sighed.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘See you in court.’

  Before entering the court, members of the public and others had to undergo a security check. Staffing the checkpoint were two sheriffs, dressed in blue with the sheriff insignia on the sleeve. I placed my bag on the table provided and walked through the frame. I felt as if I was about to board a plane.