by Anne Buist
‘Did she say why she was asking you? Or what she wanted to be tested for?’
‘No, just asked broadly what could be tested.’
‘And the answer?’
Oliver rattled off a list of what was most common; haemophilia, thalassemia, Ducenne’s, sickle cell, polycystic kidney disease, Huntington’s and Tay-Sachs. Only one overlap with the list Alison had hand written. The one with psychosis among symptoms.
‘The second time she rang…’ his voice caught. ‘Was the day before she died.’
Natalie stared out over the ocean. ‘Was she agitated?’
‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘In fact she sounded fine. Tired maybe, and perhaps, I don’t know, puzzled?’
‘So why did she ring?’
‘She said she couldn’t talk about it with her family or obstetrician, that it had to remain private.’
‘What had to?’
‘She actually never told me, just wanted me to know her baby was going to be fine.’
‘Are you sure? That’s all she said?’
‘Yes. I thought it a bit strange and then she died and… Well, I wondered.’
‘Wondered what?’
‘You’re the psychiatrist. Don’t people sound resigned and at peace when they decide to kill themselves? After I heard…I wondered if she meant that her baby was going to be fine in heaven. I wondered also if she’d had the amnio and the test results came back.’
‘Alison’s baby was normal on autopsy, right?’ she asked Damian over bacon and eggs—his. The smell made her queasy. Maybe she’d do the full health thing and become vegetarian. Lithium was unquestionably a lifesaver, but she wished the drug companies had worked on minimising the side effects.
Damian nodded with his mouth full. Egg yolk ran down his chin and she pointed to her own to give him the message to wipe it.
‘Did they keep genetic material when they released the body for burial?’ She couldn’t bring herself to call him Harry.
‘I think so. Why?’
‘Have him tested for Huntington’s. Come to think of it, get them to run a full genetic screen.’ They wouldn’t have done this as a matter of routine—not if he’d been normal in appearance. Genetic testing might have looked for causes of miscarriage, but Harry hadn’t died because of anything related directly to him. Miscarriages. What was it about that that was niggling at her?
‘If he’s positive,’ she added, ‘I think we’ve found the cause for a second suicide.’
Damian’s expression was hard to read, but it went something like I’d rather be putting Frank away for murder. Even if it meant the case was closed, it wouldn’t be as illustrious a start to his career in homicide as he might have liked.
___________________
Georgia’s lawyer rang to let Natalie know her objection had been knocked back.
‘Is there anything in the files to be worried about?’ asked Barrett. She sounded annoyed.
Yes. But too late now. ‘Mostly shorthand no one will make much sense of.’ Snippets of insights, questions relating to comments Georgia had made; a look into the head of someone accused of three murders. ‘I didn’t want them on public record mainly to honour the work that Georgia and I are doing.’ To show her someone cared enough to do at least this for her. No one else had; her life was a litany of betrayals. When she finally accepted Paul’s betrayal, however reasonable his actions had been by normal standards, she would have nothing. Natalie knew there were plenty of people wishing Georgia had just killed herself and saved the state the expense of a trial. But it didn’t sit well with Natalie. Georgia hadn’t chosen her childhood; she now had a chance to choose to live differently. Even if it was in jail.
‘So this means I have to send in the records?’
‘Yes. Tania Perkins is the bitch from hell, and for some reason she has a real bee in her bonnet about this case. You’re instructed to send everything.’
Tania, or her boss? Natalie wondered.
‘And,’ Barrett added before she hung up, ‘if you leave anything out, don’t get caught.’
‘I think we have an answer for what happened to Frank’s wives,’ Natalie told Declan. ‘And if we don’t the case will be closed anyway. All I’ve been doing is trying to find a motive. There isn’t any evidence.’
‘So your answer?’
‘Not entirely satisfactory.’ Natalie couldn’t sit still. She stood up and wandered to the bookcase, trying to slow herself down so that Declan wouldn’t interpret her restlessness as early signs of mania. She wasn’t irritable or particularly energetic, nor was she feeling good. She’d dropped her lithium because of the nausea. She wondered when she could broach the subject of trying just the quetiapine again.
‘Most likely? Reeva had a psychosis. Family history of postpartum psychosis. However, this started in pregnancy.’ ‘That’s unusual.’
There was something in his tone she couldn’t grasp; when she looked intently at him she realised he knew something she didn’t. She thought of Mala’s comments about her and Frank both dabbling in analysis.
‘Frank wasn’t ever in therapy with you was he?’ she blurted out suddenly.
Declan took a moment to place his pen carefully on the desk before he looked at her. ‘You know I can’t answer that question.’
But if he did know something…
‘In any event,’ Declan continued, ‘it is my role to help you make sense of the knowledge that you do have. Though I need to remind you that you are not Frank’s therapist.’
‘But even in unofficial peer support,’ said Natalie, ‘I have an obligation to ensure he is…safe don’t I? Including to himself.’ She paused, realising something that hadn’t before crossed her mind. The death of two wives? It would hardly be surprising if an innocent Frank became depressed, despairing and worse, particularly as he was blaming himself for missing Reeva’s psychosis.
She ran her hand through her hair. Dismissed the idea of him suiciding, at least on her current assessment of him, and went back to the timing of Reeva’s psychosis. ‘Reeva having antenatal psychosis. One of the less than satisfactory aspects, I agree, but if it’s postpartum sleep deprivation that sets most vulnerable people off, then we know she already had that in her third trimester.’ Because of the psychosis, Reeva could have threatened to leave Frank, which would give him a motive to murder her. But Frank as a murderer required an even further stretch of imagination.
‘What about the second wife?’
‘I think she found out about a genetic disorder. Maybe Reeva did too, and it triggered her psychosis.’
‘A disorder on Frank’s side, you are assuming?’
‘Yes. I think Alison had just found out her near-term baby was positive for this unknown condition, and she couldn’t face…’
Being less than perfect.
True, Alison did want the perfect everything around her. But the desire for perfection at a deeper, more primitive, psychopathic, level was more likely true of Frank. A psychopathy (if it existed) that was driven by grandiosity and by what he saw as his birthright. Alison’s perfectionism was driven by anxiety about doing the right thing: the attempt to control her world and feel safe. In fact, Natalie could have seen Alison a year down the track as the president of a Huntington’s support group—the ‘perfect’ example of how to manage a life catastrophe. Had she lived.
‘But something about that doesn’t sit well?’
Natalie selected a book from his shelf and walked back towards him. ‘Two suicides? I guess shit happens. Maybe they both saw that any future child either had would be affected, one woman through a psychotic thought process, the other through a neurotic one.’ And there was the fact that they were both living at Mount Malosevic. Natalie remembered the undercurrent; she thought of it as the ghost of Antonije Malosevic.
Declan interlinked his fingers. ‘They were doctors. They would have known the odds. No more than a fifty-fifty chance it was dominant; only twenty-five if recessive and they were also carriers.’
But they would both have thought themselves unlikely carriers: the obstetric records suggested little in the way of significant family history, Reeva’s grandmother’s postpartum psychosis aside. She put the book down on Declan’s desk. It was titled Shame and Jealousy.
‘If I’m wrong about the suicides I have another theory,’ said Natalie. ‘Tell me about jealousy.’
‘Jealousy?’ Declan’s fingers caressed the book cover. She detected a slight shake. Nerves? Early Parkinsons? Did he know something he wasn’t able to share with her?
‘There is of course delusional jealousy.’ He opened a chapter and handed it to her. ‘Includes erotomania, where the person believes the other is in love with them and can become enraged by anyone who gets in the way.’
‘Enough to kill?’ Natalie was familiar with this chapter. Delusional jealousy was in the end easy, because it was madness, a product of not being in touch with reality. It only required elucidation of the delusion, along with other symptoms to clinch the diagnostic criteria. From a legal point of view, there was no point in trying to understand it.
‘Enough to be dangerous.’ Declan leaned forward. ‘You’ll have seen these in the prison system, with diagnoses of schizophrenia primarily. Many, thankfully, thwarted by the concomitant cognitive decline before they actually cause harm.’
That wasn’t likely in the scenario she was considering.
‘What about in a narcissist or a paranoid personality? Possible killers when they are, or feel, rejected?’ And who were responsible for their actions, as opposed to those in the grip of psychotic thought processes.
Declan leaned back in his chair, hands clasped. ‘Rage is common in men. You’ll recall the case of James Ramage?’
The last man in the state to use the provocation defence to fight a murder charge. The public outrage after he received only seven years for killing his wife resulted in the defence being abolished. A similar defensive homicide law was due for the scrap pile, too.
‘He was almost certainly a fragile narcissist. Whether his wife taunted him or not is irrelevant, though she would have been unwise to do so. The rage of her leaving turned him murderous.’ Declan paused looking at her intently.
Natalie had a distinct feeling he was hoping there was a particular lesson she was learning, but her mind had already moved in another direction. ‘What about the paranoid personality?’
‘It is about the fantasy of ownership, complete and to the exclusion of all others. And underlying it? It is a defence against guilt and shame. In the paranoid, a defence against being forgotten and insignificant.’
Better to be hated and hateful than considered insignificant. Eliza. She had not been considered good enough for the Malosevics. Then the shame of being a single mother, back then when it was socially unacceptable. Possibly. But what about the power of the jealous and paranoid mother to influence her son?
44
Eliza was out of our lives for many years. She went to an artist commune in somewhere like Byron Bay. I didn’t think I would ever see her again. There was no need.
Then her mother died and left her a house, just off the main street of Lorne. Perfect, she told me, for an art gallery. She at least had the courtesy to ring. However it was bad taste to invite us to the opening. Mala went, perhaps out of curiosity; maybe she actually liked Eliza. I never asked.
‘Colourful,’ was her comment about Eliza’s art.
The timing was inconvenient. I had just brought a new bride to Mount Malosevic. I didn’t want Eliza stirring up trouble so I went to see her, naturally, to ensure we still had an understanding. She had aged well enough, though her hippie leanings had taken root and her hair was a natural mouse colour, long and uncut. She wore a hideous loose dress that did nothing for her figure, but as far as I could gather it was still slim enough.
‘You look just the same,’ she commented, which was true.
I didn’t say anything.
‘So the reason for your visit?’
‘I wondered how you were doing.’
She laughed. A harsh sound from someone whose sweetness had long ago soured. ‘No you didn’t, Frank. You wondered if I was going to cause trouble.’
‘Are you?’
‘Me? Why should I do that?’ Her look was all smirk and very unattractive. ‘But perhaps you should decide how you’re going to handle it if you bump into Jasper.’
She pulled a photo of a young man, out of her hand bag. I refused to take it.
‘Why would I need to handle anything, Eliza?’
45
Georgia’s trial had started. There was a picture of her on page five of the newspaper, with small insets of her three dead children. Liam was reported to have given a powerful opening that had left one juror in tears, although, the article went on, Georgia Latimer appeared unmoved.
The media had made up their mind. As with Lindy Chamberlain. Had Georgia even heard what the prosecutor said? More likely she had regressed into an inner fantasy world.
Two days later, the case made it to page three. This time the inset was of Paul and his surviving daughter Miranda. It looked as if it had been taken from an overhanging tree in a neighbour’s house. Paul was feeding the eighteen-month-old with what looked like spaghetti bolognese. There was as much of the meal over the two of them as probably had ever made it into Miranda, and the smile they were sharing was heartbreaking in its innocence.
Paul Latimer broke down on the witness stand as he spoke of his love for Georgia and how his life had come tumbling around his ears when he read her Facebook page. He had been alerted to its alarming contents by a friend.
Liam was playing the Paul card hard. Natalie had met Paul, knew he would come across well on the stand. Jacqueline Barrett had an uphill battle if she intended to discredit him. But Natalie couldn’t blame Liam. It was his job, and he was good at it.
Yet Paul hadn’t understood the first thing about Georgia, and had been naively unaware as she murdered their first three children. Or else he had manipulated and controlled her, and had been too self-absorbed to see the consequences: maybe hadn’t even cared. Or perhaps, as Jacqueline wanted everyone to believe, they were both just victims of bad genes and worse luck. Looking at Miranda, Natalie wondered uneasily what the future would hold for a little girl who had survived such a notorious mother.
‘The baby was fine. No genetic abnormalities on the samples they’d kept.’ Damian sounded matter of fact. ‘And no tests I could find for Alison, blood or amnio, under her married or maiden name.’
What? She’d been so sure. ‘They tested the foetus for Huntington’s?’
‘Yes. Negative.’
‘Damn.’
‘And the child, or rather the man who survived Wendell Moreton’s accident? Now a researcher in the UK. It means we’re closing down the investigation, Nat. It’ll still be technically open until the coroner’s findings, but no more man-hours.’
She felt uneasy. Because of the case, or because he wouldn’t be staying with her anymore?
‘I’ll be there tonight,’ he said, thoughts perhaps in the same place.
___________________
The band had a gig at Apollo Bay on Friday night, at Lorne on the Saturday. After that there were no more bookings apart from the regulars in Collingwood. If she wanted those she was going to have to negotiate with the band, and with Cassie. Part of Natalie thought these gigs might be the last time they played together. Once the thought would have eaten at her, unbalanced her sense of who she was. But she felt detached, even numb. The texts from Liam hadn’t helped. She wasn’t looking forward to appearing at Georgia’s trial.
There was a chance that Frank would turn up at the gig. He had been hanging around her office a lot more, practising the Labrador look. She’d cancelled their weekly meeting on the pretence of being sick; in truth she was sick of trying to make sense of her intuition, which currently was not sitting comfortably with the facts. Frank had looked concerned, but it was the sort of concern that came just b
efore a guy tried to get into your pants. Frank wasn’t exactly predictable on this front, but she thought there was a good chance he’d be there to see her looking hot in a blonde wig.
She was wrong; there was no sign of him at either gig. But there was someone else more interesting. Eliza’s son, Jasper. He was sitting at a table with another man she didn’t recognise. Seeing him there made her realise Jasper had been there before in the audience—with Frank. What was their relationship like? The resemblance was certainly there; the eyelashes mainly. Taller than Frank, skinny in that young-man way that suggested he had yet to fill out. Maybe Eliza went for men with girly eyes, and Jasper’s dad had that in common with Frank. Surely he knew who his father was. If he didn’t then he’d be in the same position as everyone else; doubting his mother’s insistence that Frank was not his father. She thought of her own fights with her mother on the topic, how angry she had been in her teens.
‘Your father dumped us. End of story.’ That was all she was told. She had memories of him, fragments of him playing with her. She didn’t think he had dumped them, and knew that it was probably wishful thinking on her part. Her instinct told her that her father was dead now, and she was at peace with that. But what about Jasper, still in his early twenties? Was he content with whatever story his mother had told, or was he an angry young man?
She forgot all about him in the second bracket. Halfway through the first song she caught sight of Liam at the back of the room and her mind froze. She lost the line of the song and the music was halfway into the next before, with Shaun’s help, she picked it up again. Liam was talking to Damian, though his eyes were on her. When their eyes met, he raised his Guinness to her, smile sardonic, eyes betraying nothing. Damian was watching him. What the hell was Liam saying? She felt sick at the possibilities, sick that Liam had walked unannounced and unexpected back into her life. And sick that she had to work hard to stop herself shaking. Desire? Maybe, but with it a mix of anger and fear. She steeled herself, singing on autopilot. She would not let him intimidate her. Not him, not any man.