Lethal Factor
Page 16
In the ‘personal malice’ column I noted the fact that both Digby and Tony Bonning were forensic analysts, both male, both employed by government agencies, both known to each other, both had occasionally worked on the same projects, though separately. Why did the killer use aftershave in the second attack rather than the toxic chocolate heart? Why change MO especially when the first attack has been so spectacularly successful? Was it possible there were two coincidental psychopaths who both happened to choose the use of anthrax spores as their means of killing? That just didn’t seem possible. I reminded myself that anything was possible at this stage of the investigation and that my job was to rule out the impossible only when I had the physical evidence to do so.
I stared at the empty second column. ‘Weaponised BA spores the choice of US terrorist mail’ I wrote. And yet there were no traces of additives or carriers in what I had examined. The questions just kept piling up and, so far, I didn’t have even one answer. My phone rang and I grabbed it. It was Jacinta.
‘Charlie’s just told me what Mum’s saying about you. And me. I can’t believe it. Is she nuts or what?’
I took a deep breath. ‘It came as a shock to me, too,’ I said.
‘I just rang Mum and tried to talk to her. She won’t listen,’ said Jacinta. ‘She says I’m in denial. I told her of course I’m denying something that never damn well happened!’ She growled in anger. ‘I could kill her, I’m so pissed off with her!’
‘Have the police managed to track you down yet?’ I asked her, thinking of the two cops.
‘No. Should I contact them?’
‘Maybe wait till they get to you.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘As soon as I can.’
‘I think Mum needs help. I mean serious help. Charlie-style help.’
‘I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell her that, Jass,’ I said. ‘How your mother runs her life is not my business.’
‘But her bloody business gets in the way of mine,’ said Jacinta. Now I could hear the sadness in her voice. ‘You can divorce her, Dad, but I can’t ever stop having the mother that I’ve got.’
‘It’s a difficult situation,’ I said.
‘You’re such a help!’ she said, angry again. ‘Of course it’s a difficult situation! I’ve had a talk to Charlie and I know exactly what I’m going to say to the police.’
We said goodbye and I put the phone down, feeling a lot better than I had since the two detectives had come and dropped their bomb on me.
I opened my notebook, saw the drawing I’d made of the cross cut into Sister Gertrude’s leg and went on-line.
I started a search for symbols and crosses. I visited several websites and found more crosses than I’d imagined possible—the arrow cross, the Celtic cross, the cross of the Order, the robbers cross, the Pope’s cross, the Ku Klux Klan cross, the Evangelists cross, crosses of every sort, many of them commandeered by white supremists and survivalists and other assorted paranoids. The closest I could come to what I thought of as ‘the Gertrude cross’, was the Jerusalem cross—one large crossbar with four smaller crosses drawn close inside each right angle. But nowhere did I find the one I was looking for, with its four angle joints sitting in the same place as the Jerusalem cross’s four miniatures.
Later in the afternoon, Jane knocked and came in, again, flushed and drying her hair. ‘It’s all waiting for you out the back,’ she said. ‘The garbage from Seven Oaks. Someone must have had a prawnfest and put the shells in the bin. Do I still stink?’
I sniffed. All I could detect was shampoo and cologne. ‘Sweet as pie,’ I told her.
Then, once again kitted out in spacesuit and filter mask, I sorted through the wheelie bins delivered to our large dock area. There were empty wine bottles, milk cartons, jars, and several small containers that had housed vitamin pills. But despite the most fastidious examination of the contents of the recycle bins, I found nothing that remotely resembled a bottle of aftershave. I also went through the layers of newspapers and cardboard and although I found plenty of old envelopes there was no padded postal bag of the sort that might have been used to post a fragile article. I felt frustrated. What the hell had Livvy done with the damned thing? Is it difficult to chuck out a brand new aftershave even if you don’t like it? Maybe she received it in town. Maybe she gave it to someone else. This was an alarming thought, and I wondered if we should put out an alert. I thought of the logistics of this, and how it would fuel panic, have people going crazy about every bottle of aftershave in the nation. At this stage, we didn’t even know what sort of aftershave it was.
I used the small hand-held vacuums to take samples inside the bins and took swabs from all over the insides and from random contents. I collected up the sealed samples and sent them through the hatch to Florence for testing.
When I finally got back to the office, I turned my attention to the Delmonte Deli extortion case. I needed to check the records, refresh my memory concerning who had done the analyses and toxicology reports. In 1990, after one fatality and several near-misses, Gerald John Bertoli had been charged and convicted of extortion and murder as well as various sins against Her Majesty’s postal service and was now serving a fifteen-year gaol sentence. A lethal amount of strychnine had been found in some confectionery bought by the hapless victim. Delmonte Deli had paid a million to the extortioner and this money had never been recovered. I wasn’t surprised when I saw that the first toxicologist had been Dr Tony Bonning. These results had been called into question and a second series of tests carried out. Dr Digby Worthington had been called in as the second independent analyst.
Then, for the first time, I noticed the name of the police officer in charge of the investigation. I immediately made a phone call to one of the State’s most notorious gaols and chatted to the Superintendent at Goulburn who knew me, and organised an interview with Bertoli the Delmonte Deli extortioner.
No sooner had I put the phone down that it rang again. Bob. ‘I’ve found Sister Gertrude’s aunt,’ he said. ‘Do you want to talk to her?’
I took down the details of the dead woman’s aunt, an address in Summer Hill.
Miss Ksenia Jelacic, I said to myself as I glanced at the name and address I’d taken down.
‘Bob,’ I said, thinking that this was exactly the sort of question I would once have taken to Marty Cash. ‘Can you track down this Toby Speed?’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.
Twelve
I was up and away and heading north well before the sun came up. Thoughts of Genevieve plagued me, although Jacinta’s emphatic remarks had gone a long way to ease my concerns. I remembered Genevieve’s father and mother, a distant, somewhat superior couple who had never approved of me. Families. I thought of my father, sick and ailing in his cement-floored shed in the Blue Mountains, heated only by an old kerosene gurgler. I rarely visited and neither of the kids had much time for him. It hurt them that other people’s grandfathers were kindly men who remembered birthdays and took an interest in what their grandchildren might be doing. Not my old bastard.
I’d been surprised some years ago to find that Charlie had been visiting and attempting to build up some sort of bridge to the surly old bugger. I’d almost felt angry with Charlie when I discovered this, feeling in some irrational way that he had gone behind my back. My rational mind knew this was nonsense and most of the time I enjoyed a good friendship with my younger, brilliant brother, finding his shrewd assessment of situations and penetrating observations about various characters very helpful to my investigations over the years. I thought of the generational suffering of our family; no more, I promised myself. The buck stops here. I would keep Jacinta safe.
Jacinta and Charlie were still having breakfast when I arrived and after the initial flurry of greetings and questions, I sat down with them at Charlie’s big pine table and its view of th
e garden, quiet now in its winter hues. Charlie poured me a coffee and I went into the kitchen to make some toast.
‘Your ex-wife is finally showing her true colours,’ Charlie called out to me. ‘I was wondering how she’d punish you once you got away.’
I came back with my toast and sat down.
‘I remember Mum always being angry with you,’ said Jacinta. ‘Then when you came home, I used to pray that she would just shut up. But she couldn’t.’
I knew from years of listening to the children of alcoholics, that it often wasn’t the addicted parent who was the biggest problem; it was the neurotic reactions of the partner that caused more family suffering. But there was no ducking my part in it.
‘She had good reason to be angry with me,’ I said. ‘It’s no picnic living with an alcoholic.’
‘Look, Dad,’ said Jacinta. ‘There were plenty of things she could have done. She wouldn’t look at her part in it. She wouldn’t do anything except dump on you. You became like her drug. She couldn’t leave you alone. She got addicted to trying to control you.’
I knew what Jacinta was saying was true. But so were a lot of things. Examining my ex-wife’s behaviour wasn’t going to be helpful now.
‘There’s nothing more I can do,’ I said. ‘I was as honest as I could be with the detectives who interviewed me.’
‘And I was sad about Livvy,’ said Jacinta. ‘I know she was fussy and everything, but she was always kind to me. I wish Mum could be different.’
I saw that she had tears in her eyes and I patted her arm.
Jacinta wiped her eyes. ‘It’s just all these bad things happening. Someone killing people with anthrax out there. Then Mum making everything worse in our family.’
Charlie passed her his big clean hankie and Jacinta blew her nose and pocketed the hankie. He leaned over and turned up the news on the radio. ‘Police say that despite a massive response from the public, they have no new leads as to the identity of the anthrax killer.’
‘They’ve got no leads at all,’ I said.
Jacinta turned to Charlie. ‘What sort of person sends poisoned gifts through the post, Charlie?’ she asked.
Charlie turned the radio down, sat back in his chair and finished the last of his coffee. ‘I can’t say anything too clever at this stage,’ he said. ‘It could be someone who hates scientists, or someone who just hates people. There’s no shortage of those.’
Jacinta laughed. ‘I used to be one of them,’ she said. ‘I went through a stage of hating everyone.’
She got up later and helped my brother clean up. I stayed where I was, watching them, two of my favourite people.
Jacinta wiped down the table, avoiding my mug of coffee, and went back to the kitchen with the sponge. I followed her in and she turned at the sink, leaning her back against it. ‘I’ve been thinking, Dad. I like living with you but I want to move in with Andy,’ she said.
Jacinta has never been one to let the grass grow under her feet, I thought, taking a deep breath and wondering what Genevieve would have to say about that. As if reading my mind, Jacinta continued.
‘But Mum hit the roof when I told her. She said moving in with Andy was like a slap in her face.’
She would, I thought. Genevieve’s sense of morality was conventional, rather than experienced. Her affair with a very dangerous man some years ago had certainly not helped our declining marriage but I had never heard her say one word about that. I’d decided some years ago, in all the pain of Jacinta’s absence, that maintaining a relationship with my daughter was far more important than trying to impose some received, conventional moral standard onto her. She had the right to more respect from me than that. And under the present circumstances, with my daughter being a potential target in Marty Cash’s murky world, moving to another address unconnected with the family might not be a bad idea.
Jacinta started wiping the sink down. ‘Mum wants me to move in with her. Doing that would start the healing process, she said.’
‘What did you say to that?’ I asked.
‘I told her she’d have to start the healing process without me.’ Jacinta flashed her wickedest grin, wringing out the sponge with a flourish and putting it to dry in the sunshine on the windowsill. ‘Poor Mum wouldn’t know the first thing about healing,’ she said.
‘And what is the first thing about healing?’ I couldn’t resist asking.
My daughter glared at me as if I was a complete dickhead. ‘Admitting you need healing,’ she said. ‘That you’re damaged. Mum wouldn’t ever admit that.’
I went over and kissed her on the forehead, then drew back, immediately self-conscious. Damn Genevieve and her allegations.
Jacinta noticed my withdrawal and without saying a word, she hugged me like she used to do when she was a little kid.
That made me feel a lot better. ‘I’d better meet this Andy character quick smart,’ I said.
‘Cool,’ she said. ‘Living at beautiful Bondi will keep me safe.’
I didn’t say a word. No matter where we live, I knew no one is ever safe.
Later in the morning, I drove to the address in Summer Hill that Bob had given me. Number 189 was a stolid red-brick cottage with an overdeveloped garden where a mix of fading artificial flowers, several tinsel windmills and a small dry fountain crowded together around a square of astroturf. A small terracotta figurine of a young girl spread her pinafore on top of the fountain’s empty bowl and under her three garish gnomes seemed to be looking up her skirt. I knocked on the door and waited. The day had warmed up somewhat, but a chilly wind caused the windmills to spin and hum and the fake chrysanthemums to nod. The door opened half an inch on a chain.
‘Who is it?’ asked the voice. I passed my ID through the crack and there was a pause. The door opened more fully and a woman looked me up and down.
My first surprise was her age. She was younger than I’d imagined Sister Gertrude’s aunt should be. She was a handsome woman in her mid-forties, with thick golden Eastern European skin. Long dark eyelashes flashed as she handed my ID back.
‘You can come in,’ she said, pushing dark blonde hair out of her face, stepping back and allowing me through. ‘We women can’t be too careful these days.’
‘I’m very sorry about your niece,’ I said as I followed her lead down the narrow hall. Into a large living area, across an amazing floral carpet. It was a nice old house, still with some of its Victorian features intact, like the old-fashioned opening fanlights over the internal doors. It was a shame, I thought, that those fanlights ever went out of fashion. I remembered the way they shepherded the breeze through a house.
‘I can’t believe that Katica was murdered like that,’ she said. ‘It’s like a nightmare. Maybe talking to you will help it sink in a little. The other police couldn’t tell me much.’
On the wall opposite, Jesus with his thorn-ringed blazing heart confronted me and I looked away. It still startles me after all these years, reminding me of the cold institutions and colder hearts associated in my memory. I reminded myself again that the past was over and oughtn’t get in the way. But in this house, far more even than in the Convent of the Assumption, there was no getting away from objects of sentimental piety. Behind the heavy lounge draped with layers of crocheted and woven fabrics and between the long windows and their heavy curtains, rows of icons of saints were neatly in place along the walls. Images of Jesus, Mary and the crucifix can be found in any Catholic establishment the world over. But the lesser pantheon depends very much on where you are. Patrick, Brigid, Canice and Aidan—known in Australia because of the Irish influence—don’t feature much in Europe. Conversely, many continental saints are unknown to me and the walls of this house were peopled with saints I’d never seen before—a Dominican nun with a halo, and various bearded men in either monkish or princely robes, rolled their eyes heavenwards.
The woman shook her head. ‘Nothing shocks me. Nothing.’
I thought she was about to weep, instead she laughed, a sharp sound like a bark.
‘When they came and told me about my niece, I showed them her picture.’ She indicated the framed portrait of a wide-faced young woman, before which burned a candle surrounded by a garland of artificial purple roses. ‘Don’t you think she’s like me?’
I couldn’t see much resemblance myself.
‘I need to know more about your niece,’ I said. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’
She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of unlabelled wine. ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked. ‘I made it myself from my boyfriend’s peaches.’
I shook my head. ‘I never drink alcohol at all,’ I said. ‘Thanks anyway.’ I’d had someone’s peach wine once.