Maybe Frank was right. There was something abnormal about taking pictures of a twelve-year old girl trotting around in her underwear. It certainly wasn’t art, and I couldn’t imagine what the purpose of it would be.
‘You know,’ Frank went on, ‘for a while I was on the wrong track. I really though it was the mother who did it. You have to admit she did act out of character. In all my years in homicide, I have never seen someone so rigid at the death of a child, especially her own child. But there, it goes to show you never know.’
While talking he was waving one of the pictures around.
‘Be careful with those,’ I said. ‘I promised him I would take good care of them.’
He looked at me as if I was insane and laughed. ‘You’re going to take good care of his pictures? Well, you don’t have to worry about that. The only place he’s going to see those pictures is at his trial.’
I tilted my head and said, ‘Frank, you know, maybe you’re jumping to conclusions. Why don’t we get a warrant and search his room before you get too excited.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s obviously him.’
‘Yes, and you said the same thing about Mrs Noland the other day.’
‘But this time, I’m sure.’
‘You were sure about it then as well.’
He stood on the spot and moved his jaw a few times before something came out. ‘Don’t do this shit with me, Katrina. Why do you always do this?’
‘Do what?’
‘Act as if I’m some incompetent asshole, and you know everything.’
‘That’s not true.’
He pointed at me. ‘You know, not everyone had the opportunity to train at the FBI. You think you’re some hot shot profiler. You’re not Douglas or Ressler,’ he said, referring to the two FBI agents who invented criminal profiling. ‘You’re not with the Bureau any more. This is Australia. This is Melbourne where big shit never happens. So don’t bring me all your chip-on-your-shoulder attitude and talk to me as if I’m some fifth grader. If you’re in this job, it’s because I fought tooth-and-nail for you after the Wilson investigation. Don’t you ever forget that!’
He raced out of the room and slammed the door before I had time to reply.
That was a damn lie. The only thing he did for me during the Wilson investigation was run away to Sydney when things were getting a little tough.
I sat on a chair, the pictures of Tracy Noland sprayed in front of me, tears coming to my eyes.
And he had the nerve to tell me that together we’d make a perfect couple.
I gathered the pictures, placed them in a manilla folder, swallowed my pride and left the room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Phillip came at seven, just after I finished washing my car downstairs from my apartment. I needed to do something which had nothing to do with investigating Tracy Noland’s death. Thank God it was Saturday. I intended to get all this murder stuff out of my mind and recharge my batteries. I felt like a wind-up doll who’s travelled around the world twice in the luggage department of a Boeing 747.
The sun was turning into a large orange while clouds peaked shyly at the horizon. There was a mild wind coming from the ocean, soothing my nerves. A news broadcast coming from the radio in my car announced a Sunday filled with sunshine and a top of thirty-four.
Phillip’s green Mazda pulled into the driveway just as I finished sponging off the last water marks from the duco of the Lancer. If cars had personality, this one would have given me a hug. It seemed filled with joy, anxious to go for its next ride to show the world what a beautiful make-over it had just undergone.
I threw my yellow sponge into a plastic bucket filled halfway with soapy, murky water, and paced towards Phillip, a broad smile on my face. I was glad to see him. I needed someone to fuss over me tonight, to tell me what a wonderful person I was, to emphasis how I looked sexy in my summer dress, someone to take me for long walks down the beach and buy me an ice-cream from a kiosk along the Esplanade. I needed someone full of life next to me, to take me away from the people I worked with, those who made my life more a burden than a challenge.
Phillip parked his car between mine and a white Cressida.
As soon as he stepped out of the car, I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him passionately. He smelled of Paco Rabanne and hair gel. I closed my eyes so I could feel more of him.
‘Hey, hey,’ he said, ‘I’m glad to see you too.’ He pulled a bottle of white wine from behind his back. ‘I thought you might need something to help you relax.’
I seldom drank, and only began when I started going out with Phillip. He knew his wines better than I did. But after spending time with him, I knew the difference between a Chardonnay and a Riesling. Though I was still a bit rusty on my reds, I began to develop a mental catalogue of good vintage years. Phillip told me once that vintages were like 18th century battles in Europe. The French won most of them, the Germans grabbed the occasional brilliant victory, and the Italians never bothered. According to his encyclopaedic knowledge of fermented grape-juice, good vintages often came in pairs, 1928 and 1929, 1961 and 1962, 1970 and 1971, 1982 and 1983, 1985 and 1986, although there had been some good single years such as 1945, 1959 and 1966.
We made our way upstairs, him with his bottle of wine, and me with my plastic bucket, sponges and car detergent.
‘I wanted you to try some Chenin Blanc,’ he said. ‘It’s not my favourite, and in fact I’d say it has a bouquet close to vomit.’
I laughed.
He went on, ‘But if I’m going to teach you about wines, you have to know the good and the bad. Chenin Blanc is made from grapes which are grown in the Loire Valley and also in South Africa, and are, without doubt, probably the most revolting grapes in the world. But this little baby,’ he raised the bottle above his head so I could clearly see it, ‘is an exception. In favoured corners of the Loire, grapes are somehow turned into some of the best dry and sweet wines in the world. And this 1986 vintage is a perfect example of how one can sometimes turn a bad omen into something sweet and victorious.’
His wine-to-life philosophy impressed me. Phillip had a great body, and although he was not intellectually gifted, he did have a zest for life which scored high in comparison to mine. He seemed motivated by the pleasures and joys of life, while I was content to go through it with my sleeves up and my hands deep in shit.
While I put some Diaboli on the boil and began slicing onions and tomatoes, Phillip uncorked the white wine and poured us a glass each.
‘You can put some music on if you want,’ I said from the kitchen.
Thirty seconds later, he said, ‘Wow! Have you got enough CDs here or what?’
‘Around seven hundred.’
‘Shit, I’d love to have a collection like that.’
Collecting CDs was one of my obsessions. Frank collected cigarettes, Philipp wine, and Michael Playstation games. I just loved music in all its forms other than heavy metal. My collection consisted of classical, jazz, blues, eighties music and some contemporary stuff by eighties artists. I admit openly that I was an eighties music freak, and it was just a dream finding all these albums, which I loved so much when I was younger, going out for a song in music shops bargain bins.
He went about his task, but my interest was somewhere else. As much as I promised myself I wouldn’t think about work, Malcom kept coming back to mind. I knew that at this very minute, a search warrant was being written up, and Goosh had been given the good news.
The apartment was filled with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, a masterpiece written during the summer of 1788 in which a low, agitated accompaniment on the strings sets the mood for the Molto allegro, where initially the violins lead, urging the music on to the lyrical second theme, which is shared between woodwind and strings.
Just as I was tossing sliced onions in a large frying pan greased with a film of olive oil, and Phillip was telling me about the new telephone card system his company had developed, the phone rang.
I tucked the receiver between my ear and my shoulder, a wooden chopping board still in one hand and a knife in the other.
‘Yeah?’
‘Katrina, it’s Jason.’
My mind did a juggling act, and for a few seconds I couldn’t place the name.
‘Who?’
‘Jason Harvey. We had lunch together.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said, trying to sound joyfully surprised, but at the back of my mind I wondered how the hell he got my home number. I place the chopping board on the kitchen bench, but kept the knife in my hand. ‘How are you, Mr Harvey?’
‘I’m fine. Look, you didn’t come to my show this afternoon. So I thought maybe you’d like to bring your boy with you tomorrow.’
I changed from one foot to the other. ‘Well, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen Michael all day. He must be at a friend’s place. I’ll ask him.’
‘I saw your car today.’
‘A big your pardon?’
‘You were parked in front of Malcom’s home.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Did you arrest him?’
‘All I did was talk to him.’
‘When are you going to arrest him?’
‘Well, we did find the photos you mentioned, so we’re getting a warrant to search his premises.’
‘Well, I’m glad. I knew that boy was up to no good.’
Phillip gave me a glance as if to say, ‘who the hell is that?’
‘Look, Mr Harvey, I’m kind of busy at the moment. Why don’t we catch up some other time?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. Give me your number, and I’ll have a talk to Michael.’
He gave me his number, which I scribbled on a notepad next to the phone and tossed it aside immediately.
‘Don’t forget to call,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll be expecting you.’
After he hung up, I felt a bitter taste in my mouth.
If Frank had given him my home number, I was going to slice him up just like an onion. I didn’t mind Jason Harvey, but my private life was just that, private, and I liked to be the one to pull the strings when it came to my after-hours activities.
‘Who was that?’ Phillip asked while passing me my glass of Chenin Blanc. I explained and he added. ‘So, if he was doing a show at the local RSL in the afternoon, how did he see your car parked at Malcom’s?’
I puzzled over this for a few seconds. ‘Maybe he was leaving for the RSL when he saw the car. He never told me what time he would be performing. I don’t know. I just hate people giving away my phone number without my authorisation.’
‘You sure you didn’t give it to him?’
‘No.’
And maybe I did.
But with all that had been happening in the past few days, I would have been quite unwilling to pass a memory test.
Phillip lifted his glass and said,’ So, what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘The wine.’
I took a sip and said, ‘Hmm...’
‘Looks a bit amber for a Chenin Blanc.’
He was right. The green bottle never indicated the colour of its contents.
He went on, ’Mmm... this is not as bone dry as I would have expected.’
It did have a tang of sweetness, but was somehow well-balanced. And on an empty stomach, it went straight to my head, giving me some relief from all that was happening in my life. But still, no amount of white wine could completely cure one’s anxieties, at least not in the long run without causing irreversible damage to skin, liver, brain and other vital organs. I never drank wine as a remedy to life’s challenges, and I wasn’t about to. This was an exception. Phillip brought the wine, and it was Saturday night after all.
I closed my eyes, letting the alcohol simmer in my brain, but all that came to mind was the face of Tracy Noland at the mortuary. Her death had effected me more than I realised, but then, I had expected it on that hot December morning when we found her on the banks of Albert Park Lake.
Flashes of other children’s cases I had worked on in the past few years, most of them not as an investigator but as a consultant, came to mind. I never coped well with child abuse and never would. Maybe it was my own childhood which made it difficult for me to come face to face with the horrors of what men could do to their own children. After all, it was easier to live in a world of denial than having to face the harsh reality that evil was not something to be found in hell after we died, but something that lived on this planet, in the streets, amongst us, in the form of another human being.
There seemed to be no factor which could point out why a person would sexually abuse a child, although a large number of offenders had been abused themselves as children, or so they claimed. I began to wonder if this wasn’t a front so that the judge and the jury would become more lenient when it came to sentencing. After all, who would be heartless enough to punish someone who had been sexually abused or battered as a child, no matter what type of monster they turned out to be in the future? The average person found great comfort in the knowledge that evil could be cured from men, that it only took a bit of counselling, some form of prison term or a couple of months at a mental health facility. Me, I wasn’t that cynical. They put these men and women in prison for life, but release them after ten years, sometimes less, and nine times out of ten, they re-offend. I’ve always held a strong disbelief in the death penalty, but after having seen what people did to children, it had been damn easy to change my mind. I would challenge anyone who called me cruel to go to visit a mortuary or a crime scene and come out unaffected. Unfortunately most people who are against the death penalty tend to be sitting comfortably in front of their television, thinking themselves some type of Messiah, while investigators are the ones dealing with the horror of homicide every day. Those same people turn a blind eye when a child killer is re-released into the streets, naively believing that somehow a man whose actions have been dictated by savage lust from an early age would suddenly change overnight to a saint because some Christian has given him blessing and a bible, from which he memorised as many verses as possible for lack of anything else to do for ten years, confined between the walls of a three by four prison cell.
I opened my eyes, partly blinded by the fluorescent light on the kitchen ceiling.
Phillip must have read the look on my face because he said, ‘You’re not still thinking about the investigation?’ He shifted from the lounge room Indian rug, circled the kitchen bench and planted himself in front of me. ‘Try to relax. Don’t bring your work home. Look at me, once I leave work, I leave it all behind. I don’t try to analyse every problem once I’m out of the joint. No one is paying you for doing mental overtime. No one gives a damn if you worry twenty-four hours a day about your job. You can’t go on living and enjoying life if you keep on dragging all this stuff with you.’
I took another sip of wine. ‘Well, your line of work is not exactly mind-teasing.’
He looked at me stunned. ‘And what’s that suppose to mean?’
‘That if I think of work after hours, it’s because I’m dealing with people in the real world who have horrific things happening to them. It’s not like I can just separate myself from reality. This is not a television show where one can just switch off whenever it gets too unpleasant to watch.’
‘And how do I do it?’ There he was again, comparing apples with oranges.
I glared him straight in the eye. ‘Setting up telephone booths is not as melodramatic. You can just hang up at the end of the day.’
‘Ah, ah,’ he answered sarcastically. ‘You know, Katrina, your attitude can be irritating. You think you’re the only woman on the planet who has to worry about other people. How do you think the rest of the world lives?’
I swallowed the contents of my wine glass in one gulp. ‘You know, Phillip, I don’t ask you to change for me. So stop asking me to be someone other than who I am.’
‘I’m not asking you for anything.’
> ‘Yes, you are.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Whatever.’ I slammed my empty glass on the bench top. ‘I thought we were going to have an pleasant evening together, not a gender war.’
He moved forward. ‘We are going to have a pleasant evening. This is just foreplay. It builds up tension.’
He came close and kissed me at the back of the neck, while Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor had returned to the mood of the first movement with its rising arpeggio of the opening theme in Allegro assai.
I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of his hands massage my stomach and Mozart’s melody fill my mind, pretending to be enjoying the moment.
Phillip spent the night at my place. We were in bed when Michael came home at 12.42 a.m. the following morning. I hadn’t closed an eye, wondering where the hell he’d been. A couple of times, I thought of calling his friend Chris in case he happened to be there. Finally, just before going to bed, I did make the call, but Chris wasn’t home, his mother told me, and yes, she did see the both of them earlier in the day. She thought they went to the Jam Factory to see a movie - apparently, a new James Bond movie came out, and they’d been hanging out to see it. I’d never met Chris’s mother, but had spoken to her on the phone several times.
Phillip and I made love, but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t disassociate sexual intercourse with what had happened to Tracy Noland, even though at this stage there was no indication that she’d been sexually molested.
My mind kept shifting back to Malcom, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised he must have been the killer. But I didn’t want to turn into Frank and pass sentence before due time. Monday morning, Frank and I would head straight to Malcom’s home and serve the search warrant. I was still uncertain as to what we would find there, but nothing would surprise me. And as much as I didn’t want Malcom to be the killer, since he seemed to be such an obvious target, I hated to leave the premises empty-handed. I just hoped to God we would find something that would push us in the right direction. The sooner this case was over, the better I would sleep at night.
The Kristina Melina Omnibus: First Kill, Second Cut, Third Victim Page 33