Dangerous to Know

by Anne Buist

‘I have no idea.’

  Natalie frowned.

  ‘I checked her laptop. She’d wiped her internet browser history before she…’

  ‘Why did you check?’

  ‘She wouldn’t talk to me. We had had a very close relationship and the pregnancy changed it. At first I thought it was natural…’

  ‘Did you talk to anyone about it at the time?’ Like you did with me about Alison?

  ‘We were writing up a grant. It was critical, something she was passionate about. But she wasn’t managing and asked for help. So I spent more and more time at work, to let her go home early and rest.’

  Would Reeva have seen that, or would she have read it as lack of interest in her and the baby, and felt even more isolated?

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘No.’ Frank rubbed his eyes. ‘I didn’t really put it all together and admit it to myself until months later. She wasn’t the suicidal type, so it just never occurred to me. Then later…I felt guilty. Ashamed I’d missed it.’

  Natalie nodded. It made sense.

  The handwritten note—maybe Reeva had been worried about herself rather than her baby having a disorder. Damian had checked for amniocentesis results; he’d have missed tests done on herself. Or maybe her psychosis meant she had not been thinking clearly. Natalie had been looking for logical answers: psychosis spun an entirely different light on the situation—nothing had to make sense to anyone but the sufferer.

  ‘Did anything she say suggest who or what she was suspicious of? The paranoia would mean she’d run or hide’—or threaten to leave him—‘but not kill herself and her baby.’ Unless she thought they were both doomed. If the psychotic thoughts had taken over and Reeva believed them to be true, then any action was possible. Andrea Yates had killed her five children because she believed they would go to heaven. The devil had told her so, and she had traded her own soul.

  ‘I don’t know. She wasn’t talking to me and I foolishly gave her space rather than push it. Who’s to say what went on in her head just before…’ His voice broke and she moved to touch his hand in comfort. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at her: there was no doubt in her mind in that moment that he hadn’t killed Reeva.

  But if Reeva had suicided while psychotic, what had happened to Alison?

  40

  A lison didn’t have a family history of mental illness. But she wouldn’t let things go. She increasingly had the need for things to look ‘right’ with less and less idea of what ‘right’ was.

  ‘Are you sure Vesna needs to be on all those medications?’ she asked.

  ‘I am not her treating psychiatrist, Alison.’ I spoke occasionally to my mother’s psychiatrist. I knew his rationale and had no issues with his treatment plan. Vesna was as well as she could be, given the circumstances. It wasn’t Alison’s business.

  She might have let it go if it hadn’t been for Eliza.

  ‘I know,’ Alison said to me that night.

  I really doubted it.

  ‘Eliza told me.’

  ‘Told you what, Alison?’ I didn’t bother asking her why she was seeing Eliza. I knew Eliza would have been able to manipulate Alison with ease. She might not have been as intellectually gifted as my wife, but she was well ahead in native cunning.

  When Alison was ashamed of something she always looked away for a moment and then stared defiantly. She did that now.

  ‘That mental illness runs in your family.’

  I didn’t react. This was all so tiresome.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I rather thought you were a doctor, Alison, and that you could see it for yourself. I have hardly kept my mother hidden.’

  ‘Not just her,’ Alison had screamed. ‘Eliza told me about the paintings.’

  ‘What paintings?’ I asked, though I knew.

  Eliza seems to think that enough time has passed that she is no longer under any obligation, that she is no longer at risk. She is, of course, wrong.

  41

  Natalie couldn’t let go of the fact that Reeva, in suiciding, had killed her baby. She looked at the photo of Reeva she’d downloaded from the internet, certain she would have liked her. There was an impression of thoughtfulness about her, one that Natalie wanted to believe was solid.

  ‘A family history of postpartum psychosis doesn’t mean she had bipolar,’ Natalie whispered to herself. ‘Reeva isn’t you.’ But Natalie had visited her own dark place all too recently, and wanted to believe that somehow her core beliefs—and Reeva’s—would triumph over anything that their disorders might throw at them. Her nightmares now included dead babies and more than once she had woken up drenched in sweat, with images of Alison before her eyes, and a gloomy sense of failure that took a coffee and a jog to lift it.

  Had Reeva been psychotic? Possible; but it was unusual for the first episode to be in pregnancy rather than postpartum, when it could be triggered, in those genetically predisposed, by sleep deprivation and stress and maybe the dramatic hormone changes.

  Rather than waiting for Damian to check, she rang the main labs.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t recall which lab I told my patient to use.’ Enough to have the technicians go search. None had a record of DNA testing for Reeva Moreton or Reeva Osbourne.

  Natalie looked at the note again. Reeva must have believed her child was going to have a genetic disorder, even if was via her rather than Frank. And Huntington’s was right up there. But there was no evidence that Huntington’s, or for that matter any other disorder, ran in the family. The belief itself must have been psychotic and Reeva as a result was too disorganised or too late to test. Or else believed she had something that couldn’t be tested for.

  ‘Did Reeva ever say anything to you about genetic testing?’ she asked Wei over lunch, on a day Frank hadn’t turned up to the office. She was trying to eat even though she wasn’t hungry; her lithium was making her feel nauseous but if she didn’t have food she felt bad until the levels settled mid-afternoon. Another month. Then maybe Declan could be persuaded to let her stop it and go back to one mood stabiliser only.

  ‘Reeva? No.’

  Natalie looked up at him. ‘But she said something similar, right?’

  Wei looked uncomfortable. ‘Why is it you want to know?’

  ‘Frank isn’t coping well,’ said Natalie. ‘He is mystified about how both Reeva and Alison could have died. I guess everyone is. Reeva might have been psychotic.’

  Wei nodded. ‘She was not herself, but she never said anything about genes. Or her pregnancy, for that matter. She was a very private person.’

  There was still something he was holding back. He broke from the scrutiny of her look. After a moment he said quietly, ‘But Alison did.’

  Alison? ‘What, when she was working here?’ Just months earlier.

  ‘Yes. That second office used to be Reeva’s, then it was Alison’s. She was chatty, friendly.’

  ‘But she was worried about something?’

  ‘It was more like very focused. Towards the time she left, more worried. Less open anyway. But I just thought…’

  ‘It was the pregnancy.’ Pregnancy got blamed for a lot, maybe not without some basis. From memory, pregnancy changed just about every hormone. ‘Did she mention genes?’ ‘Yes, but nothing specific.’

  Natalie gave up on her soup and tried some bread. ‘She didn’t use the same filing cabinet as Reeva did she?’

  ‘No, she didn’t have much to file, used my reference papers. But when she left I combined her files in with Reeva’s.’

  Natalie stared at him, saw how Wei had felt embarrassed because he was hiding something. The same look Oliver had at the funeral. The note had been Alison’s, not Reeva’s. And she’d found an obstetrician other than Sam Petersen—her ex-fiancé Oliver—to talk to.

  Back at the research carrels, Natalie waited for Wei to leave before moving into the deserted office and firing up the spare computer. It was, she realised, the same one both Reeva and Alis
on had used, which had otherwise been redundant since the research team was disbanded. It didn’t have a password.

  Frank had said Reeva had deleted her browser search from her laptop. But she only had his word for that; Frank himself could have deleted it, if it had been deleted at all. But had either one thought to do it on the work computer?

  Natalie clicked on the Firefox icon. Across the top were the bookmarked sites. Google with all the searches: most recent six months earlier. And a Yahoo icon that took her directly into Reeva’s account, password already logged in and remembered. If she was paranoid, it hadn’t been about anyone accessing her online data. Someone had opened it six months earlier—Alison presumably. Reeva had also, Natalie saw, copied some of the emails to her other account—a university one.

  None of the other icons gave up Alison’s email so Natalie went to the university website email access. Bingo. The user name came up as amoreton. Trouble was, it needed a password. Natalie thought about what she knew about Alison and typed in Mount Malosevic.

  The site asked her to check she had the correct user name and password. Obviously she didn’t. She went to the university website and staff email and clicked on forgotten password. What was the chance she’d know the verification question? She figured she had a one percent chance.

  What is your mother’s maiden name?

  Natalie shook her head. Really? She typed in Foster, thinking of the Vogue pictures of Lally Foster in seventies swimwear that Alison had been so proud of.

  Who is cute but not yet cuddly?

  Natalie’s fingers hovered over the keys. Typed Harry and was in.

  It felt wrong reading Alison’s emails. Too recent and too much like an intrusion, a violation of privacy. But at least there were none since she had left the lab. If she was still emailing afterwards, it wasn’t from this account. In any case, there were none to Oliver. A few to medical friends, mostly social chitchat.

  Reading Reeva’s wasn’t much easier, and there was a lot of junk to sift through. Checking the deleted emails, it appeared Alison, or whoever had delved here before her, had done that too. Alison would have felt it was her right to look. Natalie didn’t, but she did have an odd sense of connection with Reeva, a curiosity about her, maybe a little of the jealousy Alison would have felt acutely. A benchmark of worthiness? And if so, where the hell did that come from? Using a dead woman to make herself feel better. Was it the depression, the ECT? Or Frank? Or worse, the lurking picket-fence fantasy?

  Reeva’s emails were brief, organised and efficient even though they weren’t her work emails: presumably she used her university account for those. She’d finished work the Christmas before she died, using her email up until the day before her death, most likely accessing it from home. There was no discernible change in style. Just more saying she’d be out of action for at least a month. Surely if she had been psychotic, paranoid especially, there would have been a shift in wording and emphasis?

  Natalie changed tack and moved to the most recent search list. Which would be Alison’s. Genetic testing in pregnancy, organic causes of psychosis, recipes for paella, genetic causes of psychosis, the Bethlehem Hospital.

  So Alison liked paella and was looking where she was going to deliver. Natalie hadn’t heard of the Bethlehem, but she’d never researched private obstetric units either. But the others? This was Alison, not Reeva, doing the search. Natalie sat back and frowned. Okay, so Frank divulged his secret guilt about Reeva’s psychosis to his second wife, which made sense. She’d then researched it? Maybe Reeva’s paranoia hadn’t been about genetics at all. The list of genetic disorders must be Alison’s. And she had no reason to be worried that Reeva’s psychosis was contagious—so it had to be Vesna she was worried about.

  Natalie clicked organic causes of psychosis on Alison’s search list, selected the Wiki link and recognised it immediately. She pulled out the original list from the file.

  IEM was inborn errors of metabolism. SSD an autosomal recessive disorder of chromosome 6 which included mental disturbance, among other difficulties that the MalosevicMoretons clearly did not suffer from. Porphyria was also on this list and MLC turned out to be metachromatic leukodystrophy, another autosomal recessive disorder with an adult form. Again, it looked as if it became too severe too early in adulthood to explain Vesna’s disorder, if that was what Alison had been trying to find.

  She closed the browser and rang Oliver.

  Oliver was in the delivery suite; his secretary took a message. Natalie rode home wondering what he would be able to tell her. By the time she was slowing to go through Lorne, her mind had moved to Damian. Her sense was that he was still wary of her, which was probably just as well. They had eased into a comfortable enough relationship in which he had replaced Tom as being the handy man in her life if she needed one. She didn’t think either she or Damian was really ready for another relationship of the variety that hurt. She felt vaguely uneasy that she hadn’t told him about Liam, but it wasn’t as if that was going to do any good. It was a hiccup, nothing more. And since Liam had shown what an arsehole he really was, it was easier to be certain there wasn’t going to be a repeat.

  Liam’s memory of their last encounter seemed to be different from hers, though. The text that said I’ve missed you xxx had come a few days after their last encounter and she’d thrown the phone across the room. Missed her? He’d said he was done with her.

  Then: We okay? A drink? What did he mean, we? There was no ‘we’.

  She’d been smarting about the last text as she cruised down the main street and saw a young guy, maybe six foot, skinny, leaning against a silver Commodore watching her. Long shoulder-length dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was the spitting image of Frank.

  ‘So she lied?’ asked Damian. It was a chilly but windless night and they had elected to rug up and enjoy the balcony view of waves crashing onto the shoreline below. ‘About him not being Frank’s kid?’

  Natalie reflected on her shattered certainty Eliza was telling the truth. Psychiatrists were, at the end of the day, a gullible lot it seemed. ‘I think she wanted to believe he wasn’t.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t know, like there was more than one contender.’

  ‘Possibly. She’d have to have a strong suspicion now.’ So would Alison and Reeva if they’d ever seen him. And they surely would have.

  ‘So Eliza cut herself off from the Malosevics because they wouldn’t acknowledge her son?’

  ‘Frank probably hurt her. She was young, remember.’ Natalie warmed her hands around the mug of tea. ‘And when they found she was pregnant maybe they threatened her.’

  ‘Why? With what?’

  ‘They wouldn’t want her going after a slice of his birthright, I guess. Maybe not “threatened”. Perhaps they paid her off.’ This would account for her lying and reluctance to say much; she might have signed a deal.

  ‘So,’ said Damian, ‘any chance, do you think, that Eliza or her son now thinks they deserve a chunk of the Malosevic estate?’

  42

  Eliza’s pregnancy was highly inconvenient. Of course I offered to pay for the abortion. I even got her to the East Melbourne clinic but as soon as she saw the protesters with their ‘pro-life’ signs the Catholic guilt kicked in and she refused to get out of the car.

  My patience had worn thin by this stage. We drove back in silence. I am sure she was fully aware of my displeasure. I was only days from end-of-year examinations and I needed to study. Fortunately I was able to hand over tissue duty to Mala, who, despite being a teenager at the time, was a skilled listener thanks to Vesna, who liked an audience for her conspiracy theories. Antonije took charge of the situation and ensured it was dealt with, and I was able to get back to my study.

  But there is no Antonije now and I was aware of a feeling of déjà vu. From my father’s funeral, the whispers that I was the man of the family now. McBride is becoming increasingly irritating. He seems to think he is Columbo, ringing up with ‘just one more question’. And I
can never be sure when I am going to return home and find him there. Yesterday he just wanted to walk around the grounds.

  ‘Can’t you do something about him?’ asked Vesna. ‘What does the lawyer say?’

  We all watched his progress, from the living room, poking into bushes as if expecting to find a murder weapon. There isn’t anything to find; he is wasting his time. But I wondered what morsel I could drop him about Natalie. Maybe I will try to get closer to her sooner than I had anticipated. People do strange things when they are grieving; she would understand.

  43

  O liver rang the next morning. His guarded ‘What did you want?’ suggested he wasn’t planning a long conversation.

  ‘You said you hadn’t seen Alison for years.’

  ‘I hadn’t.’ Now defensive.

  ‘But she rang you, right?’

  There was silence. A sigh. ‘Yes, but I’d rather no one knew. There’s no point.’

  Because she was dead and he didn’t want to be called to a coroner’s inquest—or worse, a murder trial.

  ‘Tell me why she rang, Oliver. You owe it to her.’

  ‘That’s what she said too,’ Oliver remarked dryly.

  Natalie waited. Working as a psychotherapist in private practice had given her a lot of opportunity to perfect the technique. Obstetricians were more hands-on and rushed.

  ‘She rang twice,’ he said finally.

  ‘When?’

  ‘The first time? Shit, I don’t know. She’d just found out she was pregnant. She wanted some information about amniocentesis. The risks.’

  ‘And hospitals to deliver in?’

  ‘No. It depends on your obstetrician what hospital you go to.’

  ‘Where is the Bethlehem?’

  ‘The Bethlehem hospital? Caulfield I think. But it’s palliative care isn’t it?’ Caulfield wasn’t far from Alison’s family though, if she’d wanted to be close to them rather than Mount Malosevic. Maybe it had broadened its activities.