Dangerous to Know

by Anne Buist

  ‘How are your mother and sister coping?’

  ‘As well as can be expected.’

  ‘Does your sister work?’

  ‘She runs the Malosevic Trust.’

  He saw her look and continued. ‘My grandfather wanted to support young artists, and left a trust for scholarships to be awarded from the interest. It also funds the upkeep of the house and grounds and the functions that are held there.’

  ‘So you kind of live in a museum?’

  ‘In a way, I suppose. Mala has always had a passion for it.’

  ‘You don’t paint?’

  ‘Me? No, a talent that passed me by.’

  ‘Mala isn’t married?’

  ‘No. She…there have been relationships but I think it’s hard to find anyone to fill Antonije’s shoes.’

  ‘So it’s not your father who was the big influence.’

  ‘No, she never knew him; Antonije raised her.’

  ‘Not your mother?’

  ‘Vesna, yes, of course she did too.’

  Natalie helped herself to some charcoal-grilled lamb from the platter that had arrived. ‘Are you close to her?’

  ‘We have always been a close family. Probably because we’ve had to be. We’ve had our fair share of tragedy.’

  ‘So play the game with me.’ She smiled, aiming for beguiling. ‘Five words for your relationship with your mother as a child?’

  ‘As a child? Loving. Responsible. Tiring. Caring. Can I pass with just four?’ His smile was all boy-scout, thinking he was better at this than her.

  ‘Responsible. You said that with your father too.’

  ‘Yes I did, didn’t I? But for totally different reasons.’

  She let the pause hang.

  ‘With my father it was about learning to be responsible, with my mother I felt I was responsible.’

  ‘Which was tiring?’

  ‘At times. She wasn’t well when I was growing up.’

  ‘She seems even now…fragile?’

  ‘She isn’t as fragile as she appears, but yes. Doesn’t always manage life well.’

  ‘This must be difficult for her. Did she like Alison?’

  ‘Yes, but she was worried; she doesn’t trust readily. And it seems she was right.’

  Right to not trust Alison? Or that fate was capricious? Natalie had the sense Frank was managing the conversation, had been prepared for it, which suggested he worried about Vesna. Or what Vesna might say.

  They ate in silence for a moment then he said, ‘I’ve thought of a fifth word, a phrase really, it popped into my head. Alice down the rabbit hole. It was a little like that. My mother can be rather unexpected.’

  ‘She told me to beware of Eliza.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Frank didn’t miss a beat. He took a bite of his bread, chewed and swallowed. Playing for time? ‘I’m afraid my mother never liked poor Eliza.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  ‘Many years ago, yes.’ Taramasalata dropped onto the table and Frank took a moment to wipe it carefully with his napkin. It was, Natalie mused, the first time his attention had strayed from her since they had sat down to eat. He was capable of being very intense, to the point of being almost too close, too interested. But she—and others, she was certain—let him get away with it. Perhaps it was the angelic face. Hard to imagine anything but good intentions lay behind it.

  ‘She lives in Lorne,’ Frank added, his eyes returning to meet hers.

  ‘So why would your mother think I had something to be concerned about?’

  The smile never wavered. ‘As I said, my mother never liked her, didn’t think she had enough class. It didn’t end all that well.’

  Natalie wanted to ask what he meant by that but she had the feeling he would just hedge around it. In any event, better to hear it from Eliza.

  After dinner they walked out to the carpark and Frank took her hand. For a moment Natalie thought he was going to kiss her and wondered what she would do. Then she thought Frank used this intense look with everyone, or everyone he wanted something from. In the end his lips brushed over the skin of her hand as he bowed his head and thanked her for her company. She was left wondering what a real kiss would have been like.

  ‘Do you have a list of all the GP training rotations?’ This was the third person Natalie had been put through to. ‘I need to chase up the doctors that came to do psychiatry in Geelong. We’re having a reunion.’

  Lame, but the administrator didn’t care one way or another.

  ‘Online. Look under Training, then under speciality.’ The phone went dead.

  It only took a few minutes to navigate. Alison Cunningham. Her final term before qualifying as a general practitioner; six months in Geelong. The start date was seven months before Reeva died.

  Damian was waiting for her the next night; he’d let himself in with the key she kept hidden.

  ‘If you’re planning on staying you’ll have the crowd. We’re on tomorrow tonight at the Lorne pub.’

  ‘If that means we’re sharing I guess I’ll manage.’

  She looked at him sharply. He looked tired. Long hours on this case and getting nowhere. And he was juggling another case as well, so the travel alone would be exhausting. No looks of recrimination; the guilt was all hers. She decided not to tell him about Liam. Even though Damian and she didn’t have anything official going—and although he’d work hard on hiding it—it would hurt him. And she hadn’t exactly invited Liam around, nor did she expect to hear from him again. Except in court.

  Over fish they cooked on the barbeque, both rugged up against the cold, he brought her up to date. She sensed she was getting a sanitised version. Because he didn’t trust her, or because he was a stickler for protocol, she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘I found the old girlfriend,’ she finally told him.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Frank was evasive so I don’t think it was information he was keen to share, but his mother helped things along.’ She explained the odd visit. ‘Paranoid personality, by the way.’ ‘Dangerous?’

  Natalie watched a pair of kookaburras perched on the balcony eyeing off the heat rising from the barbeque. ‘I don’t think so. Not easy to live with, probably vicious if she thinks you’re after her…’

  Damian raised an eyebrow. ‘How vicious?’

  ‘Verbal. I think.’ But she couldn’t be totally sure. In her own house with Vesna the atmosphere hadn’t been as malevolent—but it hadn’t been comfortable either. At Mount Malosevic, where both of Frank’s wives had died, the presence of Antonije seeped through the crevices.

  ‘Are we talking about the girlfriend?’ Damian paused with tongs in mid-air. A kookaburra edged closer. She imagined that in winter, without the tourists to feed them, times were lean.

  ‘No, Vesna. My guess is that her mother, a concentration camp survivor, was beset with anxiety and well-founded paranoia. So she modelled the fear of the world for Vesna, but she also was unable to deal with Vesna’s emotions, escalating rather than containing. When she died Vesna must have been only six or so, thus confirming how unsafe the world is.’

  ‘And dads can’t make up for it?’

  ‘Not hers. Too into himself would be my guess. Neglectful, or maybe very critical. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was more between them, too. Sexual maybe. She used to paint with him; she was probably never good enough.’

  Damian paused, taking in the information. Cops probably found the sick stuff even harder than psychiatrists. ‘So the girlfriend?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Eliza Carson.’

  Damian’s pause this time was long enough for the kookaburra pair to execute their assault. They swooped from opposite directions, taking a flathead tail each, straight from the grill, and Natalie had to duck.

  ‘Lucky I wasn’t hungry.’ Food had lost its appeal over the last day or so and she feared she might be getting depressed again. She’d finally stopped the antidepressants but the risk she still needed them gnawed at her. As much as she hated taking pills
, the fear of the black abyss at the edge of her consciousness was greater. It wouldn’t take much to trigger her bipolar. She wasn’t exactly experiencing the stress-free life style Declan had prescribed, and the lithium she was still taking was better protection against the highs than the lows.

  Damian took the remaining fish off the barbeque and they adjourned inside.

  ‘Her name came up in Alison’s diary.’ He had clearly thought before telling her this gem. ‘Eliza was the last person Alison called before she went to meet Frank at the pub.’ He put the fish on plates and she added the bowl of salad greens she’d dumped out of their plastic bag into a bowl on the table. She hadn’t thought to buy any dressing. ‘…Where he was with you.’

  The tone of the voice said everything his words hadn’t. This was what was behind the tension then. Not Liam.

  ‘We’d been meeting there once a week,’ Natalie replied. ‘And I didn’t see her.’

  They ate in silence until he finally gave her a piece of information she had asked for.

  ‘Frank wasn’t lying about the woman his father killed. She was pregnant.’

  Natalie nodded, unsurprised. Frank wouldn’t lie about something he could so easily be caught out on.

  ‘But there is an interesting twist,’ said Damian. ‘Her baby survived.’

  Natalie stared.

  ‘She was still alive when they got her to hospital and they did an emergency caesarian. A boy.’

  32

  I knew we’d get to my mother. Psychiatrists have been blaming mothers for most of the last century. Of course we have moved onto the concept of epigenetics now; the interplay of genes and environment, and can include a good deal more than just mothers in the list of potential abuses. Natalie is curiously old fashioned in her tendency to overvalue psychodynamics as causal of our life problems. She should have asked about family history; but then I suppose that’s harder to drop into conversation.

  Mothers are meant to give unconditional love. Vesna gave love as best she could; just always with strings attached.

  ‘Would you mind getting Mummy…’ The refrain from my childhood. But I never minded. Her smile was reward enough. ‘My little man’, she’d say, and ‘our little secret’. But nothing I ever got her was enough to take away the ever-present anxiety that followed her wherever she went.

  I daresay Natalie’s preoccupation with psychodynamics is a consequence of her accident. Too much time to contemplate one’s own mortality at such a young age. At ten, after my father’s death, I was too young to think along these lines, and my sleepwalking was a temporary solution from the unconscious.

  Genes are clearly the driving force in our lives. Identical twin studies show glaring similarities between subjects, even those raised apart. Genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome have massive impacts. Environment has an effect, no doubt. But subtle differences in rearing between siblings can hardly account for the disparities that often exist between them.

  In any case, there are far too many permutations and combinations to imagine. Mala never met Wendell, who raised me for ten years, yet we are in many ways similar. Smart, ambitious, family-focused. The common factors are genetic.

  Natalie’s genetics are interesting; perhaps we will be able to discuss it some time. I wonder if she knows who her biological father is. Not the man who raised her, it seems. Perhaps that’s why she asked me about my father first. Her own unresolved issues.

  33

  After the band had left the next day, Natalie sat drinking coffee, looking out at the mist rolling in over the sea and thinking about Frank and his family. Smoothed out in front of her was the piece of paper on which she had jotted down his home phone number the night Alison died.

  It took until the end of the second coffee before she rang. It was a young girl, Senka presumably, who answered.

  ‘Is Mala there?’ Natalie asked.

  Senka didn’t bother replying; the phone clattered in Natalie’s ear and then there was silence until a minute later a voice came on.

  ‘Mala Malosevic.’

  Interesting. Not Mala Moreton. Still, a famous name might be more than enough reason to change. And she had never known her father.

  ‘This is Natalie King.’

  ‘How uncanny!’ There was a light musical laughter. ‘Please tell me you’re free for brunch.’

  Natalie’s phone slid through her fingers. She caught it just before it hit the floor. ‘That is…a bit freaky.’

  ‘You were thinking the same? Vesna would say our fates have aligned. Is Apollo Bay too far? There is a café that does a good breakfast.’

  Mala offered to pick her up but Natalie elected to ride. The Great Ocean Road was a dream for motorcycles and fast cars, particularly out of season. The Ducati made easy work of the terrain. The absence of traffic meant Natalie could take racetrack lines, braking hard into corners and then accelerating hard out and along the straight sections. No V8 in sight.

  She was there first, getting seated on the upstairs veranda behind plastic curtains zipped at the edges but still not able to completely stop the wind from whipping under them. She left her leathers on, and a heater above her meant any exposed body was adequately warm.

  Below she saw a silver sports car, top down, park opposite. The roof glided into place as Mala stepped out in a full-length fur coat, scarf and hat. Straight out of Dr Zhivago. Impossibly exotic, but today felt cold enough. Certainly in a convertible.

  Mala took off the fur and shook out her hair. Her cheek was cold against Natalie’s as she brushed a kiss on both sides, continental style.

  ‘Sometimes I think winter here is never going to end,’ Mala said breathlessly, nodding to the waitress who was offering them coffee from a dripolator jug.

  ‘You look well prepared.’

  ‘This?’ Mala handed the coat to the waitress, who looked as if she was unsure what to do with it. Under the coat her clothes were plain but expensive: a green silk shirt and well cut dark trousers. ‘Courtesy of my time at Oxford. English weather is so dismal.’

  ‘What were you doing at Oxford?’

  ‘A post-doc in art history,’ said Mala. ‘Though I never finished it.’

  Natalie smiled, encouraging.

  ‘I came back for my grandfather’s funeral,’ she said. ‘Then stayed for the wedding.’

  ‘Frank left it late, didn’t he?’

  Mala smiled. But something in her eyes said I know where you are going with this. ‘He was busy with his career.’ She turned to the menu and called the waitress over to order.

  ‘You didn’t go back? To Oxford?’

  ‘No. After Antonije died there was the estate to organise, then the wedding and then…I felt Frank needed me around.’

  ‘Reeva dying must have been a shock.’

  ‘It was,’ said Mala. ‘They say, don’t they, that things go in threes? Perhaps now our bad luck has ended.’

  Threes? Antonije, Reeva and Alison? Or Eliza, Reeva, Alison? Reeva, Alison…and her?

  ‘Your mother visited me,’ said Natalie. ‘I thought I’d ring because I wondered…I had the sense that you were all a bit cut off up on the hill.’

  ‘Cut off?’ Mala laughed. ‘Oh, I never feel like that. Frank thinks I must miss Oxford and London but the truth is I found them rather boring.’

  London and Oxford boring? Natalie couldn’t imagine it; she hadn’t travelled further than New Zealand, but maybe that was the problem.

  ‘I don’t like old,’ Mala explained. ‘And England is stuck in another century. Now, New York—things happen here.’

  ‘Very different to the north Lorne hinterland.’ Though a little too much was happening there.

  ‘True,’ said Mala. ‘But there’s time.’

  ‘You’re waiting for…?’

  Mala’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows lifted. ‘You’re not trying to get me out of the picture are you?’

  Natalie inwardly cursed herself. ‘I’m sorry. Of course not. I meant, I wondered what kept you here.
Myself, I’m finding country living a little…dull.’

  Mala seemed amused. Or pleased to have the upper hand. ‘I was waiting for Frank to be the happy father. But it wasn’t meant to be.’

  ‘Was he happy with Alison?’

  Mala looked up from the long fingernails she was checking. ‘You knew Alison. What do you think?’ Her words were polite but Natalie detected a challenge.

  ‘I think why and how people choose their partners is a bit of a mystery.’

  Mala laughed. ‘You are so right! I knew I was going to like you.’

  ‘You didn’t like Alison.’ Natalie was careful to inflect her tone down; this wasn’t a question.

  ‘Alison was neurotic.’ Mala giggled, then seemed to remember Alison was dead. She straightened her face. ‘She had listeria hysteria, ever heard of it?’

  Listeria was a bacteria: she’d never heard of it causing hysteria.

  ‘Poor Alison. Gordana used to serve up every meal with a touch of some forbidden food, you know, the ones that can damage the foetus. Gordana thought it was nonsense and no amount of Alison laying down the listeria science would convince her otherwise.’

  Poor Alison indeed. Mala might not feel isolated at Mount Malosevic but Alison surely had. ‘What do you think happened to Alison and Reeva?’

  Mala took a long sip of coffee. ‘Do you mean did my brother kill them?’ She held Natalie’s gaze without wavering. ‘No, he didn’t. Personally, I think they both suicided.’ She put her cup down. ‘Do you like Frank?’

  Vesna had asked her the same thing. Did she? ‘Yes,’ said Natalie. ‘And I feel rather sorry for him at the moment.’

  ‘You don’t look like the pitying kind.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The sort that swoops on a man in need to mother him.’

  Natalie thought of the strangely motherly feelings Frank had evoked. ‘I don’t think any of my exes would have said so, no.’ Tom would have said crazy, actually. Liam? Liam would have said wild, energetic and unpredictable. And in the end, dangerous.