Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘But you’re supposed to be off work today,’ she wailed. ‘You promised we would do that coast walk. I put off a fantastically good-looking and totally sex-crazed Computer Studies student for you!’

  I wasn’t too happy about this frank remark, but I stayed cool, recognising that she liked to bait me sometimes with comments such as this. Driven by family circumstances, Jacinta had spent nearly two years on the streets a couple of years back and sometimes I felt she was older and more world-weary even than me. I wondered why my company was suddenly so desirable.

  ‘Sorry, Jass,’ I told her. ‘But I had a very early call-out this morning. And I’ve got another scene to attend near Canberra. You know in my work things can suddenly change. I promise we’ll do that walk as soon as I’m free.’

  ‘But you said that last time. God, no wonder Mum pissed you off!’

  It wasn’t fair of her and she knew it. I realised it was best to say nothing and in the silence I lifted my overnight bag off the bed and put it near the doorway.

  ‘You’re never free,’ she grumbled, shuffling away. But her voice was softer as she called back to me. ‘Is there enough coffee for me too?’

  ‘Of course there is,’ I said, watching as she lumbered towards the kitchen, the yellow doona collecting objects on the floor under its weight, sweeping them along with it like a glacier on the move, and my heart surged with love for her, ungracious creature though she was right this minute. I’d thought her lost forever to the needle and the decomposing life of a street junkie, but now, three years straight and clean, and studying reasonably well for the HSC at tech, Jacinta had her life back and I had my daughter back. I knew my ex-wife blamed me for Jacinta’s addiction problems, and not without grounds. My own life until I got sober in AA years ago hadn’t been edifying and Genevieve had real grounds for resentments against me. I hadn’t been much of a husband or father in the first seven years we were together. But no matter how hard I’d tried to make amends in the final decade of the marriage, nothing was ever good enough. Then the kids both wanted to live with me and that had caused a lot of mayhem. But the worst of it was over now, I hoped. I knew how much the kids had been hurt by our painful marriage and its end, so many years ago I’d made it my first priority to learn how to be a father to Jacinta, now eighteen, and Greg, now nearly twenty-one, overseas at the moment on a ‘Gap’ year as a teacher’s aide at an English school and loving it.

  ‘Here’s a coffee,’ I said, pouring a cup. ‘And I’ll even make breakfast for you.’

  She shuffled over to me and kissed the side of my head. ‘Sorry about being such a grouch, Dad. I didn’t mean what I said. Anyone would have to leave Mum. Even a saint.’

  I knew I wasn’t one of those.

  ‘But you did promise me, you know.’

  ‘I know I did. And I’m sorry I have to call it off. What will you do tonight?’ I asked. ‘Because I’ll be staying over in Canberra, maybe for a day or two.’

  She flashed me a look, made as if to say something, thought better of it and picked up the steaming coffee in front of her.

  ‘Do you want to stay here or spend the night at Charlie’s?’ I asked. My brother lives close by at Little Bay. He and the kids are great mates—largely I think because Charlie always takes their side against any adult.

  Jacinta took a gulp from her cup, a novelty one with large fat feet under it. Her sleepy face looked astonishingly young and I wanted to hug her. ‘Go and put some warm clothes on,’ I said instead, ‘and that way you won’t have to sit on the heater and burn the doona.’

  ‘Yeah yeah yeah,’ she said, wandering back to her room with her steaming cup. ‘I’ll stay with Charlie,’ she called back. ‘This place is spooky at night.’

  ‘Do you want a lift with me?’ I offered.

  ‘No way. I’ll get there myself later on.’ I looked around the kitchen and the living room adjacent to it. She was right about one thing. This place was spooky at night. I’d bought the freestanding house with a good deposit and a large loan after the divorce and final property settlement. Malabar, a still unglamorous southern coastal suburb of Sydney, reminds me a little of the villages of the south coast. The great Victorian sandstone ‘Malabar Hilton’, one of Australia’s earliest gaols, broods on the western side of the ridge. I’d recently started a garden, painted the bedrooms, the living area and the kitchen in a bright buttery colour Jacinta picked, but the house was aligned east–west and this made it dark, especially in winter. I wanted to put in a skylight, but couldn’t forget the time a killer had crashed through my roof and nearly done for me by way of just such a fibreglass breach in a roof.

  ‘I want to leave soon,’ I warned her, checking my wardrobe and drawers, making sure I had everything I needed, and taking my heavy coat. Then I went down the hall to Jacinta’s door. She was sitting on the floor sorting through a pile of clothes and trying to untangle a pair of purple tights.

  ‘Where were you called out this morning?’ she asked. ‘It was pitch black.’

  ‘To take samples from the bedroom of someone who died a little while ago,’ I said.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t really talk much about it right now.’

  My daughter was unimpressed with my discretion. Her glorious thick hair—which she’d worn partly shaved and punk once—was tangled over her face, but her eyes were bright and searching. ‘God, you men take yourselves seriously,’ she said, giving me a glance that reminded me of her mother.

  ‘When it’s a serious matter, yes,’ I countered. ‘You know I’d tell you if it wasn’t.’

  Like most of my colleagues, I’d signed a secrecy agreement when I joined the Federal Police and breaching this could cause all sorts of trouble. It was better to err on the safe side and my policy was always to keep quiet about any active investigation.

  Jacinta rooted around in the pile of clothes for an oversized cream jumper with a bright red and green Scandinavian snowflake pattern. I was going to say something about using the built-ins rather than the floor for her clothes, but again I felt it politic not to say anything provocative. Living with an adolescent requires a lot of discretion and patience and although I’ve developed some of the first, I still have a lot of work to do on the last. Until I’d got sober, I’d had neither.

  ‘It’ll be public knowledge pretty soon,’ I comforted her. ‘Promise I’ll fill you in then.’ Maybe she wouldn’t want to know, I thought, knowing what I suspected Vic Agnew was couriering to me.

  ‘I thought it was old Digby you were talking to,’ she said. ‘He’s such a tragic saddo.’ She looked up from her sorting. ‘Love his horses, though,’ she added. ‘And Livvy’s cool.’

  I almost told her then about my promotion. But that would mean mentioning Livvy’s illness. I decided Jacinta had enough to deal with just now.

  My daughter had fallen in love with horses during her rehabilitation in Queensland some years back and Digby and Livvy had issued her with an open invitation to ride any time she wanted, especially when the two of them were snowed under with work—which seemed to be most of the time. The horses would otherwise have been neglected. I gave her a kiss goodbye and picked up my gear.

  ‘Bye, Jass,’ I called, stepping outside but I heard her shuffling up behind me, half-dressed, still dragging the doona.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘you know my money? I want some of it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need a car.’

  ‘What money?’ I asked.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘That money.’

  Long periods of time could go past and I wouldn’t think of that money. When I’d found Jass unconscious from an overdose on the floor in someone else’s flat some years ago, she’d had over $230 000 stashed in her overnight bag, taken from the dealer she was fleeing at the time. I’d spent most of it purchasing this house b
ut there was fifty or so still sitting in a cash management fund.

  ‘It’s mine, after all,’ she said

  ‘There are at least two people who’d dispute that,’ I said. ‘Me for one.’

  ‘It’s mine,’ she said as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘I’m the one who took all the risks knocking it off from that bastard. You just took it from me. Out of my bag. That’s police corruption bigtime!’

  ‘I’m not the police anymore, I’m a scientist,’ I reminded her. ‘And if I hadn’t taken it into custody, and you with it,’ I said, ‘the next dead body in that flat would have been you.’

  Her face clouded and I could tell she was back there in memory, in the bad days of sleeping on people’s floors, on the run from a vengeful dealer, trying to lose a habit.

  ‘And there are worse outcomes than what you’re calling my corruption, Jass.’

  I watched her digest this. Sometimes I can read my daughter like a book, other times, she is as obscure and mysterious to me as the most exotic stranger.

  ‘You said there were two people,’ she asked, curious as my earlier remark sank in. ‘Who’s the other one?’

  ‘Marty Cash,’ I said. ‘Pigrooter.’ Pigrooter, the unlovely, thoroughly apt nickname for a huge ex-New South Wales police officer, standover man and information trader, now a brain-damaged vegetable.

  ‘Pigrooter?’ Jacinta said. ‘You told me he was totally stuffed. Please, Dad. Come on. You know it’s really mine!’ I turned towards the car.

  ‘Jass,’ I started, ‘let’s talk about it when I get back.’ I saw the frustration on her face. ‘And,’ I continued, ‘I think you need to do an NA meeting.’ I knew she hadn’t been doing any meetings lately, the only things that replace using in the early years of recovery.

  If there’s any remark designed to make a cranky recovering addict even crankier, it’s that one and immediately I regretted it. Jass stamped a foot. ‘How long since you’ve done one?’ she yelled. ‘Dad, come on! I want to talk about it now!’

  ‘You’re not being reasonable,’ I said. I’d long ago learned not to be taken hostage by a snaky recovering addict, no matter how hard she tried to bully me.

  ‘You don’t trust me, do you,’ she said. ‘You think the minute I get my hands on some dough, I’m going to turn into a raging junkie again. Buy a pile of gear and quadruple my money.’

  ‘Are you?’ I asked her.

  ‘No way!’ she shouted.

  ‘Your behaviour right this minute isn’t exactly mature,’ I countered.

  I could see her struggle to bring her wild and wilful streak under control. ‘You don’t trust me,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not what we’re discussing,’ I reminded her. ‘Now you’re widening the terms of the argument. First it was about money, now it’s about trust.’

  ‘You’re impossible to talk to!’ she yelled. ‘Why do you have to turn every discussion into an exercise in goddamn logic?’

  She stamped down the hall, doona swishing behind her. Despite myself, I couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Anyway,’ she threatened from her doorway, ‘how do you know I’ll be here when you get back? I don’t have to stay at Charlie’s you know. There are other places.’

  I hesitated, wanting to go after her, but that might only make a bad situation worse. And I wasn’t going to be manipulated by her threat tactics. It was true I didn’t entirely trust her. I knew from my own experience how shaky a person can be with only a couple of years of recovery behind them. But it was her business and I had to keep my hands right off it. ‘I’ll ring you from Canberra,’ I called after her. ‘We’ll talk.’

  There was no answer, just the sound of her bedroom door slamming shut.

  The high-pitched alarming of the noisy miners accompanied me as I got into the car. I hadn’t handled that very well, I realised. It felt bad leaving my daughter like this, in the middle of an unresolved argument. That money was still a problem and I wished it would just go away and stop haunting me. It was tainted money. Every note of it meant the suffering, possibly death, of another human being.

  Although it would mean the end of my career if this transaction ever came to light—and I didn’t see how it could—I had no qualms about taking a drug dealer’s loot if it simply fell into my hands, as it had when I’d opened Jacinta’s carry bag. The only people who knew about it were the kids, Charlie, and my old work partner, Bob Edwards, and he was rock solid. What was I supposed to do with it? I’d asked myself many times. Hand it in to the police?

  I started the car, and was about to pull out of the driveway when the yellow shape lumbered up to my window.

  ‘Go back inside,’ I told her. But she took no notice and as I wound the window down, she leaned in and kissed me.

  ‘I know I’m unreasonable sometimes,’ she said. ‘Especially in the mornings. But I do want a car. I need one. Come on, Dad.’

  ‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Inside with you. You’ll catch your death.’

  Four

  For a while as I drove, I thought about the money that Jacinta had brought with her on her flight from the streets and, as I did, the image of Pigrooter—Marty Cash—rose unbidden in my mind. Cash reckoned he too had a claim on that dough. And I’d been immensely relieved some years ago to hear that the unfortunate thug had been severely injured after coming off second best to a huge feral tusker while hunting near the Queensland border. Last I heard he was in a coma in a hospital somewhere. I put Marty Cash and the argument with my daughter right out of my mind, a capacity that used to drive my ex-wife Genevieve crazy. It’s essential in my work to be able to focus on the case I’m working on.

  I settled down to enjoy the drive on this clear winter day. There were still tiny touches of the earlier mist hanging in shaded hollows, reminding me of the mountains where I’d grown up, and of my father who still lived up there. He and Digby had several traits in common, I thought, including a dour nature. The awful events of September 11 seemed to have had a profound, almost personal effect on our Chief Scientist. But I recalled that Livvy had been battling depression around that time, too, and maybe everything had been too much for him.

  Then had come the fear generated by the so-called ‘anthrax letters’ in the USA; smoking dust from Ground Zero had seeped from half a world away into our analytic field. And the stealthy attacks by mail had created a hypervigilance in the public. Since then we’d had dozens of scares—letters and packages containing various white powders sent to us by investigators. Like most government organisations, we were always busy, understaffed and overworked. Together with HAZCHEM, the hazardous materials section of the Fire Brigades, our workloads had trebled for a while. Even though we could pretty well tell just by looking at the various powders involved that they were hoaxes, they all had to be taken seriously and tested, so that we could officially report our findings. As each case turned out to be a false alarm, wasting our resources and manpower, young Vic Agnew had even begun to take bets as he signed for the sealed containers sent to us by HAZCHEM. He offered odds about what each sample might turn out to be; talcum powder, various cleaning agents, and in one case that had closed down a railway line while it was investigated, icing sugar.

  But since Tony Bonning’s death, our world had suddenly become a darker place, and I doubted there’d be any more bets now. Already, people were refusing to open packages, returning mail unopened, and the level of fear in the world had gone up another notch.

  I brought my attention back to where I was driving. It would be hard to keep the lid on what I feared I’d found at Tony Bonning’s place this morning, once I’d confirmed it. And when my findings became public, the press would go even crazier than it had been over the last couple of weeks. And so would the public. Already, we’d seen what fear and paranoia could do.

  My usual lab work at Forensic Services is very different from my earlier days with t
he NSW police. Now, I work on the other side of the crime scenes I used to search, dealing with the packages sent to me by the crime-scene officers as an objective scientist. I had committed to acting as far as is possible without prejudice or bias, without the distortion of ideology or theories, or gut feelings regarding a suspect’s guilt or innocence, moving only from ‘what is’ to ‘what is’.

  Scientific analysis covers a wide variety of items and techniques. We carry out a lot of tests, identifying substances by means of standard data. Controls aren’t necessary in this game, because we’re dealing with primary data, and not with experimentation.

  In a Sydney hospital, postal worker Natalie Haynes was fighting for her life. Her infection had given us a clue as to how Tony Bonning had been contaminated. Investigating police found this to be confirmed by Bonning’s own remarks to his colleagues about the surprise gift he’d received in the mail. But it could be weeks or months before the postal investigators could track back to the source of the lethal postal article. If at all. In the meantime, it meant an anxious wait on behalf of postal staff, despite antibiotic treatments, to see if they had been contaminated.

  The mist had vanished in the chilly sunlight of a perfect winter day and I thought I’d stop for some coffee and the newspaper somewhere. As I reached for my wallet, I disturbed a postcard I’d received some weeks ago. It showed the ruins of a medieval stone building, the convent on the tiny island of Iona, off the wild west coast of Scotland. Red opium poppies grew between the stone flagging where nearly a thousand years ago Augustinian nuns had walked. I didn’t have to turn it over because I knew the words on the back of it by heart. ‘Jack,’ she’d written in her looping hand, ‘these are the ruins of the thirteenth-century nunnery, where I sat today with a book and watched the jackdaws eyeing my cheese sandwich. They are smarter and cheekier than magpies. Yesterday I heard the corncrake. May I take you out for dinner when I get back? I’d love to see you again.’

  She hadn’t signed it. She didn’t need to; her name was the same as the island she was visiting. She’d remembered my interest in birds and I glanced out the window. I’d never heard or seen a corncrake. Now, over a dry paddock to my right, a pale hawk hung in the air, only his head moving, searching for prey in the silvery winter pastures. ‘I’d love to see you again,’ she’d written. Did I want to see her again? When I’d met Iona Seymour during an investigation some years ago my attraction to her had been very strong. I remembered passionate lovemaking in her high-ceilinged Victorian bedroom as afternoon turned to evening and I wondered even now if I could ever truly trust her. Three years had passed since I’d seen her and routine has a way of grinding everything down in its dailiness. Although I still thought of her from time to time, I felt that any stronger feelings had long ago evaporated.