The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim

  Goosh’s secretary, a pretty twenty-year-old something, with hair the colour of winter wheat and striking blue irises, did a sensual thing with her lips, letting out a high-pitched noise I couldn’t make out, and with her hand directed me through to his office. Bad mistake employing personal assistants who are too good looking, I thought. People always wondered why this woman had been hired by Goosh in the first place. She looked more like someone you’d find on the cover of Dolly -and yes, she did look that young and girlish- than the personal assistant to the Deputy Commissioner of Police. As my feet sank into the deep red, carpet of the Commissioner’s office, I wondered if his wife had ever met his come-and-fuck-me assistant.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he commanded before I had time to say greetings. Hallelujah, it was going to be one of those days, I could feel it. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’ His face was flushed, as it always was whenever he got into a confrontation with me.

  I knitted my brows and remained on my feet, arms crossed over my chest, a ping-pong ball in my throat. I knew he didn’t call me up to his office to have me decorated with a bravery award.

  He began matter-of-factly, ‘I believe you’ve begun work on the Noland murder.’

  ‘That’s what we agreed on.’

  ‘Don’t have a problem with what we agreed on. It’s the after development which is complicating matters. You told Frank Moore you were going to investigate this case after you told me you wanted someone to replace you. And after I already arranged for an alternative investigator, you decide, all by yourself, that you’ll keep on investigating. What are you trying to do? Make me look like an idiot?’

  That wouldn’t be too difficult.

  I shifted from one foot to the other and did a juggling act inside my head. ‘I analysed the situation and deduced that since I’d begun working on this case, I might as well finish it. I thought that’s what you’d wanted all along. Plus Mrs Noland begged me to find her daughter’s killer when I saw her at the mortuary. I promised her I would do my best. I can’t let her down.’

  He gave me a look school teachers reserve for students who come late to class, especially those who came up with the most pathetic excuses, stories they made up thirty seconds before walking into the classroom.

  ‘On the subject of Mrs Noland,’ he retorted, ‘she’s placed a harassment complaint against the department and against you.’

  ‘Really?’ I was genuinely surprised.

  ‘She says you’ve been at her place, throwing all these accusations at her, calling her a murderer. Now, that’s a really intelligent thing to say since Frank has reason to believe she might well be the one who committed the crime.’

  I felt my brain drilling through the back of my skull. If there ever was an example of mindless exaggeration, that had to be it. Problem was I didn’t know who was stretching the truth by half a city block. Mrs Noland or Goosh? And why was Frank reporting to Goosh every five minutes? I was in charge of this investigation, not him.

  ‘Sir, let me assure you that I did not intimidate Mrs Noland in any way.’ I forced myself to remain in control of my so-called temper. I’ve been known to blow off steam in front of people I should have respected.

  ‘Look, you can stand here and tell me all you want. Fact is she’s out of reach.’ He pointed to the chair opposite him. ‘And take a seat while I’m talking to you. You’re giving me a head-spin.’ His complexion had turned a deeper red and became even more obvious in contrast with his crop-styled salt-and-pepper hair. I knew he was trying hard to push me beyond my threshold point so that he would have something else to complain about.

  I took the seat because I began to feel awkward standing up and not because he told me to do so. ‘What do you mean out of reach?’ I asked, elaborating on his last question.

  ‘What do I mean out of reach?’ he said, imitating my tone of voice. ‘What I mean is that she got herself a solicitor, and we can’t ask her any more fuckin’ questions with him around telling her you don’t have to answer that every thirty seconds! That’s what I mean. What I mean is that Frank Moore felt she was a number one suspect, and now we can’t even touch her.’

  ‘Get a court order.’

  ‘With what? You haven’t given us anything yet.’

  I wanted to jump over his desk and dig my nails into his whitish, fleshy throat. How this man ever got this high in rank was beyond any common sense. Why was it that only assholes made it to the top?

  ‘I’ve only been on this case for a day and a bit. Will you give me a break?’ My voice began to lose its confidence. I felt my hands shaking and made them into fists.

  ‘I’ll give you a break, all right. You’ve got two weeks to solve this damn thing, or I’ll have you replaced before you get time to harass someone else.’ To himself: ‘God dammit! Do I have to go through this every time?’

  It was all uphill from there.

  I stood from my chair and glared into his eyes. ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Goosh, I don’t know where I’d be without you.’

  He stared at me, a confused expression on his face, trying to figure out whether I’d just given him a compliment or insulted him. His lips were about to form a syllable, but I never gave him a chance.

  ‘Have a good day, sir.’

  I spun on my heels and headed straight for the door.

  I was halfway down the hallway when I heard the sound of my name coming from his office, followed by the squeaky voice of his secretary.

  I ignored both and hurried to the elevator.

  When I got back home, I felt bewildered that Mrs Noland had put in a complaint against me. Why would a mother of a murdered child refuse to cooperate with the investigator-in-charge? If it was my child, I would have spoken to anyone who asked just to find the bastard who did it. She didn’t seem to mind me talking to her early on when I was at her place, until the last minute that was, when she slammed the door in my face. Sometimes it felt as if this whole damn world was running backwards.

  I slipped off my shoes and went straight to the lounge room where I played Look to the East, an album by the Los Angeles Jazz Quartet, an acoustic-based group of a younger generation that specialises in a mixture of older standards by jazz greats and their own original material written by each member of the group. The space drowned in an atmosphere of jazz I would normally associate with Sundays and cappuccinos.

  I poured myself a Dr Pepper with ice in a large glass in the kitchen, walked back to the lounge room, and threw myself on the floral sofa, trying to shake off my anger.

  And it worked

  I loved this place. I moved into the apartment complex when I came back from the USA eight years ago, after graduating from the FBI’s National Academy. The real estate agent advertised it as New York living, with its graffiti on the walls and its nine parking spaces for eighteen apartments. But the inside of my apartment was filled with imaginative furniture and items. I spent a great deal of time making sure it was done to my taste. Decorating an apartment was not a cheap thing to do, but I wanted to feel comfortable in a world where comfort was becoming more and more a luxury rather than a right.

  In the main bedroom, a pine-bed-platform was built at cupboard floor level. The mezzanine had been lowered to give enough height for standing. Away from the wall, a flight of stairs created a screen for the bathroom entrance and extra storage space. Additional storage space nested beside the bed. Next to the bathroom was my study with a magnificent panoramic view of Chapel Street through a corner bay window.

  Michael’s room was next to mine and was kept shut most of the time. He was rarely home during the week. Often he stayed over at his Chris’s, his buddy from school, and now that he was on holidays, he spent most of his time there.

  I loved Michael so much, but I don’t think he realised. Maybe I didn’t show it enough. The previous year we had a fall-out because we never saw enough of each other. And although I promised to make an effort to devote more time to our relationship, so far my promise had only been half kept
.

  I could hear a tram outside, a car blasting its horn, and construction workers renovating apartments across the street, which had burnt down two months ago in the middle of the night. I never heard the five fire engines and other emergency vehicles because of my habit of sleeping with ear plugs. The only thing which woke me up was the telephone or the alarm clock, which were both at close proximity.

  I drank half my Dr Pepper in one-go. I loved the stuff more than black coffee, especially on hot summer days.

  I stretched my legs across the two-seater and wondered how much more I could take. Things were meant to be easier in your thirties, but I was only a year away from my forties, and I’d never felt so alienated in my entire life. I thanked God that at least I had a man in my life who took me as I was and didn’t ask me to change. Although I didn’t see much of Phillip, no thanks to my unorthodox choice of career, I was always looking forward to the weekends when he, Michael and I spent some time together. But even though it was almost twelve noon on a Friday, the weekend felt like miles away. Phillip was at work, Michael at his friend’s, and I felt like the most dejected person on this end of Chapel Street.

  I extended my hand and reached for the tortoise-shell telephone on a side table next the sofa. I punched in Phillip’s work number, which by now I did automatically without remembering what number I was dialling. The Los Angeles Jazz Quarter was playing track six on the album when I paused it with the remote control.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d call,’ he said almost in a whisper. His voice felt so close to me, I could almost feel his warm breath on my neck, smell his Paco Rabanne whisking out of a shirt I could only visualise. ‘What’s up.’

  ‘You busy?’

  ‘It’s cool. We can talk.’ Then: ‘You sound worried.’

  ‘I’m just having a hard time.’ I explained what went on that morning at Goosh’s office.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me. ‘The guy’s a jerk, anyway.’

  ‘Doesn’t make him more bearable.’

  ‘Hey, look, everyone has to put up with at least one asshole in their lives. It’s not the end of the world, baby, cheer up.’

  It felt strange listening to him calling me baby. I was used to Katrina, Dr Melina and some derogatory terms, but not baby. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. It made me feel loved and secure, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking he was referring to some kind of Barbie doll.

  We made small talk about his project. I remained polite, but it was hard for me to get interested in telecommunications. I did some investigative work for his firm last year, and it was kind of boring, but it paid the mortgage between homicides. I wished at times Phillip had a more interesting job, something in my line of expertise, but I knew I was being unfair. I would have hated it if he wanted me to be any different, and that made me realise I shouldn’t expect anything from him. That’s how my first marriage ended soon after I gave birth to Michael. We expected so much of each other, promised we would change, become better, but in the end, one can only be oneself. It took me a long time to realise that alone we’re born, and alone we’ll be for the rest of our lives, and the more we expect from each other, the more we grow apart. I just wanted to enjoy someone else’s company now and then, someone who made me feel like a woman and not some god-damn thumb-pushed computer chip on a circuit board. Nearly forty, and I’ve never felt so much the need to be loved and make love.

  We agreed to go to Camberwell Market on Sunday, just to let off steam and enjoy some parts of our lives.

  At around 11.30 a.m., I walked up Chapel Street to the Prahran Post Office. I checked my postal box for mail, but there was only a white, sealed envelop with a window addressed to the box holder, asking me if I wanted to become a winner this year. I dropped it straight into the plastic bin provided. Sometimes I wondered what was the point of having a postal box when half the time it was filled with junk mail.

  While eating a Vegie Whooper from Hungry Jack’s at the corner of High and Chapel Streets, and washing it down with a Coke and ice, I decided to resume my interviews in Vincent Court. I was uncertain on how to approach Malcom, the seventeen-year old kid whom Jason Harvey, Mrs Noland and the kids in the neighbourhood mentioned. Maybe I would need to talk to Frank first and come up with a clever way of conducting the interrogation. I didn’t want to frighten the young man, just in case he was the murderer. The last thing I needed was someone defensive and unwilling to cooperate. It was bad enough Mrs Noland kicked me in the back. Maybe Frank did see things clearly. As current statistics stood, in eleven out of twelve child cases, a direct family member was the culprit. And the way Mrs Noland had barricaded herself with defence solicitors and wild accusations, I was now uncertain she had nothing to do with her daughter’s death.

  As I walked back down Chapel Street, I reasoned it would be better if I interviewed Malcom in his own environment, preferably at home like the rest of the neighbours. In fact, all I had to do was pretend this was just a routine chat rather than an interview, just like the ones I conducted with the other neighbours.

  By 6.00 p.m., I had seen fifteen of Tracy Noland’s neighbours, all of them with the same opinion. In general, they agreed Tracy Noland was an unpleasant child, who went out of her way to be disliked. I decided to give it a rest and continue the interrogations the following morning. I wanted to spend some quality time with Michael when I got home. I only had five more houses to go, other than Malcom’s, which I would cover just before lunch the following day. I had promised Jason Harvey a visit and intended to keep my word. It would also give me the opportunity to pick his brain a little deeper.

  The evening was uneventful, so Michael and I borrowed ‘Witness’ from the video shop. I’d seen it before, a story about a cop played by Harrison Ford who gets caught in the middle of police corruption and finds himself responsible for the life of a young Amish boy and his mother. I told Michael it was good because I had seen it at the cinema when it came out in 1984, but he found it too slow for his taste. I had to admit it wasn’t as good as I’d remembered. Michael said we should have taken out ‘Alien 3’ because he hadn’t seen it yet. I told him he was too young to watch that kind of mindless violence.

  We shared a litre of Sara Lee chocolate ice-cream before hitting the sack.

  CHAPTER SIX

  There was one woman who seemed to be of the same opinion as Jason Harvey. Her name was Linda Coleman, and she lived down the other side of Vincent Court, close to where the street began at the T-intersection. She was the last person I had yet to visit, other than Malcom.

  Linda Coleman received me at around 11.30 a.m., giving me just on half an hour before I would join Jason Harvey for lunch. As soon as I walked inside her brick veneer home, she made me sit in the lounge room while she raced to the kitchen to make a ‘cuppatea’, despite my insistence that I’d already swallowed two cups of coffee at her next door neighbour’s.

  While she was busy with her tea-making, she yelled from the kitchen, without me asking, that she was currently working as a nurse at St Patrick’s hospital. It wasn’t easy doing shift work at her age, she pointed out.

  I wrestled with a green cushion pushing into my lower back on the brown, leather couch. Finally, after punching it into shapes a few times, I tossed it on a chair next to a fish tank. My eyes wandered around the lounge, observing its gas-log fire, French doors and ornate beams in the ceiling. The contents reminded me of a garage sale assembled into one room. I’d never seen so much junk under one roof. Empty cereal packets, various plastic dolls, including three versions of Ken and Barbie, plants, hundreds of magazines piled up like Towers of Pisa, a brown box of chocolate with gold lettering half open, enough miniature plastic animals to fill the Melbourne Zoo, posters of Neighbours’ characters pulled-out from TV Week and other soap magazines, unopened six and twelve packs of toilet rolls (in the lounge room!), and three television sets, including one being used to house an assorted candle collection. Sunlight filtered its
elf across the dirty window pane, highlighting particles of dust so large and numerous, I wondered if they would trigger an asthma attack.

  ‘I did notice young Tracy was waiting after school not far from Malcom’s home,’ Linda Coleman volunteered as she walked back in the room with two cups of tea on a yellow plastic tray. ‘It was as if she actually had arranged to meet with him. Malcom seemed fond of her, which I found rather worrisome when you take their age into consideration.’

  She placed the tray on a coffee table, amongst various copies of Women’s Weekly, Who magazine, TV Week, and That’s Life.

  Linda Coleman was a generous woman with a round face and arms bigger than my thighs. Her dark-brown hair was short and spiked with gel, making her look like a fashion victim from the mid-eighties. When she handed me my cup of tea, I noticed a tattoo of a rose bush on her left arm, half-concealed by a lime-coloured fleecy top with sleeves pulled up to her elbows. There was something very masculine about Ms Coleman, and the overall effect was kind of overwhelming. She certainly had presence, enough to make me shrink in my seat with my red floral dress, little black shoes and auburn hair sculptured into a ponytail - it was Saturday so I wore my casual gear. The word ‘bloke’ came to mind as I sipped from my cup.

  ‘Do you have any idea who could have killed Tracy Noland?’ I asked, having suddenly decided I didn’t want to spend more time than necessary alone with that woman. It wasn’t that I had something against large woman, but I feared this one might have the sudden impulse of making a pass at me, a thrill which I cared not to experience. I was a man’s woman, no doubt in my mind. No two-way street in my bedroom habits, not that I was aware of to date.

  She turned around and locked her grey eyes into mine. ‘I think Malcom did it,’ she said as if cued. ‘Of course, it’s only my word, but since you’re asking, don’t waste your time anywhere else. Men like him scare the shit out of me.’