Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  Ksenia poured herself half a glass, topping it up with water from a lace-covered carafe on a small draped table. ‘The news of Katica’s death is not as shocking as it might have been,’ she said, in response to my earlier comment. ‘I hadn’t seen her for a long time. My sister was nearly twenty years older than me and I was only a young girl when Katica entered the convent.’

  I noticed the same crucifix that hung in the parlour at the Convent of the Assumption on the wall between the windows. Pellegrini’s must have had a sale. I recalled the cross carved into the flesh of the murdered nun, the miraculous bleeding crucifix of Father Oswald. Somehow, this most horrific of all religious images was central to this investigation, if only I could see it.

  ‘So, where do you fit in?’ Ksenia asked, taking a sip from the tumbler. ‘You seem different from the police who visited me before.’ She had only the slightest trace of an accent and it was more the emphases and word order of her sentences that betrayed her European background.

  ‘I’m not a police officer,’ I explained. ‘I’m an analyst. I’m doing the scientific examination of any physical evidence from the crime scene.’

  ‘What do you hope to gain from that?’ she asked.

  ‘Any traces that might put the killer back there,’ I said. ‘In that room. In other words, the evidence necessary to bring whoever did this to justice,’ I said.

  ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Justice! We are used to death. And murder. But not justice.’

  ‘Who is this “we”?’ I asked.

  She countered my question with one of her own. ‘So exactly how do you intend to bring this killer to justice?’ she asked, and I met her powerful eyes the moment I raised mine from the notebook.

  ‘For a start, you can help me,’ I said, ‘by telling me anything you know that might be helpful.’ We stood together in the cluttered room until she indicated a deep lounge chair covered in a printed velvet tapestry of a hunting scene and I sat down with Aunt Ksenia in the chair opposite me.

  ‘Did your niece ever contact you? Talk to you?’ I asked her as soon as we were settled.

  Again, the funny barking snort of a laugh. She showed pointed white teeth and I sensed something wolfish about her. ‘What’s there to talk about in a convent?’ she said. ‘Prayers, silence, bad food and cold feet in winter.’

  ‘You seem to know a great deal about it.’

  ‘Katica used to write to me from time to time. I visited her a few times. Christmas cards, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Did she ever mention a priest, a Father Oswald?’

  Ksenia rolled her eyes. ‘She thought the sun shone out of him,’ she said. ‘I think she had a crush on him.’

  ‘What gave you that impression?’

  ‘Just the way she spoke about him.’

  The elusive Father Oswald would definitely have to be found and questioned, I thought.

  ‘Do you know where I might find him?’

  ‘He lives out in the bush,’ said Ksenia. ‘Him and his miraculous crucifix.’

  ‘So you’ve heard about that crucifix?’ I said.

  Ksenia rolled her eyes again. ‘My niece loved things like that. All those religious objects.’

  This didn’t make sense with all the icons crowding her walls. ‘What else can you tell me about Father Oswald?’ I asked.

  ‘Katica complained that she could only see him a few times a year. He was so holy, she said. I think he was too lazy. Or had other things on his mind.’

  ‘Such as?’ I asked.

  Ksenia shrugged.

  ‘What else did she tell you about?’ I was close enough to the woman to smell her scent, a mix of a heavy dark perfume and her own personal, not unpleasant, and slightly acid odour.

  Ksenia Jelacic smiled. ‘You probably think I should be weeping and wailing about my niece’s death,’ she said. ‘You probably think I’m a hard, cold person.’

  ‘I’m not thinking about you at all,’ I said, ‘but about what your niece might have written to you in her letters. Was there any mention of a special friendship? Or a special enemy?’ Too often the one becomes the other.

  ‘Nuns don’t have enemies,’ she laughed. ‘The idea is very funny. Who would care two hoots about a middle-aged nun?’

  ‘Someone cared enough to break into the convent and kill her in a particularly savage way,’ I said, irritated by her flippancy.

  Ksenia stood up and walked over to blow out a candle which was smoking heavily. For the first time, I noticed a gap in the row of icons along the wall, the small hook in the plastered surface. An icon had been removed.

  ‘Someone’s been demoted?’ I asked, remembering the purges of the Vatican and how poor St Christopher, the traveller’s friend, bit the dust.

  ‘You are a Catholic?’ she asked me.

  I shrugged. ‘Not anymore.’

  She smiled. ‘The saint who used to hang there, I gave him to my niece. He was a gift from my boyfriend but he wasn’t one of ours and I didn’t want my sister turning in her grave. I didn’t think Katica would mind.’

  ‘It wasn’t a miraculous icon, was it?’ I asked her. ‘Dripping blood on the carpet?’

  Ksenia brushed my bad joke aside and looked hard at me. ‘Come to think of it,’ she said, ‘the saint in that icon looked a bit like you.’ I wondered if she was flirting with me. ‘He had the same piercing eyes.’

  I steered her back to the subject in hand. ‘Miss Jelacic,’ I said. ‘If you were in my shoes, and investigating this case, what would you do first? Where would you start?’

  Ksenia pushed back the heavy bronze hair that swung round her face with an unconscious hand. ‘My sister was a deeply religious woman,’ she said. ‘She married a man who was no good for her.’

  The world is full of women who think like that, I knew. But I made a note of the direction of the woman’s comment. Was this an answer to my question or was it a change of subject? Either could prove important.

  ‘And do you think that’s why your niece chose a religious life? Because of her mother’s influence?’ I asked.

  ‘I think she became a nun because of family reasons, yes,’ Ksenia said, rephrasing my question. But it wasn’t quite the same thing and I had the feeling that the woman was playing with me, a different game from Sister Felicitas, but a game nevertheless.

  ‘So what was your brother-in-law like?’ I asked.

  Ksenia made a little face. ‘I didn’t like him at all. He came out here after the war,’ she said, ‘and big-noted himself among all the postwar migrants from Yugoslavia.’

  ‘His name?’ I asked.

  ‘Josip Babic—the great Josip Babic, some people said.’ I wrote it down. ‘He was a renowned patriot during the war. A great fighter against the communists. But like so many men, he brought the war out here with him when he came. And passed it on to his son.’ I had a flashing memory of my father and of me, and of Charlie. Generation after generation the war continues, except in our family it was much less obvious. ‘Australians say we should just put the past behind us once we arrive here and become Australians. And you know what?’

  I said nothing, waiting for the usual list of grievances.

  ‘You know what?’ Ksenia repeated for emphasis. ‘I agree with them!’

  Easier said than done, lady, I forbore from saying. The past is built into us, into the unknown and unknowable parts of our mind, our atrophied coccyx, the minerals in our bones, untold aeons spiralling in our very DNA.

  ‘My nephew couldn’t let go of the past and it killed him,’ she said. Again the sharp barking laugh.

  I followed her eyes and saw she was looking beyond the framed photograph of young Sister Gertrude to the portrait of a handsome young man in uniform. ‘Blei died nearly thirty years ago.’

  Brother dead, I jotted down. ‘How long h
ad your niece been in the convent?’

  ‘Since about that time. Not long after her brother’s death she became a nun.’

  Ksenia glanced at her watch. ‘I have to get ready for work now,’ she said. ‘My lift will be here in a minute.’

  ‘I won’t keep you any longer. But anything about the family can be very helpful. Can you tell me something about your nephew Blei?’

  ‘Blei.’ She shrugged. ‘He was like so many young men. Chip on his shoulder and a fire in his belly.’ Her mixed metaphors were helpful and I noted them while I tried to identify his dark uniform.

  ‘Maybe Katica went into the convent to pray for his soul,’ she said. ‘If there is such a thing. Me, I’m not religious. Or political. That’s what causes all the problems. All that religious craziness. All those arguments.’ She must have noticed my puzzled glance at all the religious iconography in the room because she made a wide gesture towards them. ‘All these saints, these icons,’ she said. ‘I only keep them because they used to belong to my sister. She would come back and haunt me if I took them down.’ She paused. ‘And I don’t suppose they can do any harm.’

  On the way back from taking her empty glass through to the kitchen, she picked up a coat draped over the end of the lounge and collected her handbag from a small table in the corner, taking out a silver compact and comb. She ran the comb through her hair and applied a vivid red lipstick. She turned to look at me and smiled. ‘Do you like this colour?’

  ‘It suits you,’ I said, because it did. Her golden skin was luminous against the colour and she was suddenly fifteen years younger.

  ‘My sister never wore lipstick. She thought it was sinful and vain.’ She threw it into her bag and flung her coat around her shoulders. ‘But my religion is very simple. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow—’ She snapped the compact shut.

  Now she was wriggling into the sleeves of her coat and I stepped around to do the gentlemanly thing.

  ‘So,’ she said, tugging on the collar and straightening the coat. ‘You see now that my niece had no friends and no enemies in the convent. Some crazy intruder has done this.’

  ‘Did she ever mention anyone else?’ I said. ‘Maybe she had a friend outside the convent?’

  Ksenia turned round. ‘Do you mean a man? Nuns don’t have friends like that,’ she said. ‘Not like you mean it.’

  Outside, I heard the sound of a car pulling up.

  ‘You must excuse me,’ she said. ‘That’s Marko now. I don’t like to keep him waiting.’

  ‘One more thing.’ I whipped out my notebook where I’d sketched the cross with its little angle bracket decorations. There was no need to tell her about its source, the bloody flesh of her aunt. ‘This cross,’ I said. ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  Ksenia took it, frowning. She studied it then shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

  We stepped outside together and I saw an old brown Subaru, engine idling, in front of Ksenia’s extraordinary garden.

  ‘If you hear anything,’ I said as she walked past the windmills ahead of me.

  ‘Sure,’ she said and her manner was careless. I watched her get into the car and I saw the man behind the wheel kiss her long and hard. I was sure he was looking past her at me, because I thought I saw his eyes as he pulled out of the kiss and switched on the ignition.

  I stood there staring after them. Even if she doesn’t seem too concerned about the death of her niece, I thought, good luck to her.

  •

  When I got back to Charlie’s nobody was home so I let myself in with the secret key in the basil pot and was making some grilled cheese on toast when the phone rang. For a few moments I couldn’t work out who it was, the voice was so frail.

  ‘Charlie? Is that you?’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s his brother,’ I said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘The problem I have is beyond help. It’s part of being a time-space worm.’ It was in the sharpness of the reply and not the voice that I recognised him. Even now, all these years later, my father’s voice could still cause me to tighten up the defence system.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’ I asked.

  I heard the grunt that he used when he was displeased.

  ‘Your brother said he was coming up soon,’ he said instead. ‘Would you have any idea when that might be?’

  ‘I’ll get Charlie to ring you,’ I said.

  My father was an impossible man. Sometimes it seemed that everyone in my life—apart from Charlie—was impossible to deal with.

  ‘This leg of mine’s not getting any better,’ he continued. ‘It’s played up since that fall I took.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you’d had a fall. When was that?’

  There was a silence in which I braced myself.

  ‘You don’t know much about me at all,’ he said. ‘You never take the trouble. Now that you’re a forensic scientist.’

  I kept my voice steady despite the sarcastic tone of the last two words. ‘I’ll tell Charlie you rang,’ I said. I was in no state to deal with my father. I needed a shower, a shave and forty winks. I hung up and stood staring at the wall for a few seconds.

  Then I crashed and slept for about two hours on the little day bed on the enclosed back verandah, keeping warm under an ancient kangaroo skin rug that I remembered from our old home in the mountains. Jacinta rang to say she wouldn’t be home for tea.

  Later, Charlie cooked one of his three well-honed dishes, chicken risotto, and I made myself useful in the kitchen, bringing my brother up to date with the BA story and the progress of the investigation into Sister Gertrude’s murder, the break-ins that had distressed Mother Anacletus, the earlier incident with the bearded blond man. Charlie is the only person in the world, apart from Bob, whom I would trust with this sort of information. I told him about the crucifix and the way it had been chopped up and I showed him the photographs of the murdered nun, and then I took out the drawing I’d made of the cuts on her ankle.

  ‘Do you have any idea about this?’ I asked, showing it to him.

  Charlie took it from me and studied it. ‘Nothing comes to mind straightaway,’ he said, going to his bookcase. He pulled out several books, flipped through them and I watched while he checked various designs. But I could see he’d drawn a blank when he closed the last book. ‘There’s nothing quite like that one,’ he said. ‘Although I feel I’ve seen it somewhere before. Or something very like it.’

  Much as I didn’t like the suggestion, I couldn’t ignore it. ‘Could it be a Satanic marking of some sort?’

  Charlie sat back down. ‘I wouldn’t be in too much of a rush to blame the lunatic fringe,’ he said. ‘Those earlier incidents sound like mischief, not murder. This injury is much more calculated.’ He stared off into the middle distance. ‘I’m also interested in the chopping. Most of it is not directed at the woman. But at an object. A religious object.’

  As I was pondering Charlie’s remark I heard my daughter’s laughter. The relief that flooded through me, that she was safe and sound, made me see how tense I’d been. Jacinta wandered in. Behind her strutted a young man, very handsome in a narrow, furrowed way. I took an instant dislike to him.

  The young man shook my hand hard, his eyes darting from me to my daughter behind blue-tinted John Lennon spectacles. Everything in me resisted him. Was I turning into one of those pathetic fathers, jealous of their own children, critical of anyone who might want friendship or intimacy with them?

  ‘I thought you weren’t eating here tonight,’ said Charlie, smiling.

  ‘We’re going to the pictures,’ said Jacinta, who scolds anyone she hears using the American term ‘movies’, ‘but we dropped in because I wanted you to meet Andy.’

  She paused, noticing the risotto. ‘Yum,’ she said. ‘That smells nice. Is there enough for us
do you think?’

  Charlie looked across at me and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I said I wouldn’t be in and now I am and I’ve got someone with me.’ She laughed. ‘Families have to be flexible,’ she said, quoting something I’d once said to her.

  ‘Watch it!’ I shouted, chasing and trying to flick her with a tea towel until she squealed and begged for mercy.

  •

  ‘I forgot. Dad rang for you,’ I told my brother during the meal.

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘He said his leg’s not improving.’

  ‘It won’t while ever he refuses to do anything about it,’ said Charlie.

  ‘When I get my car, I could drive up and see the horrible old man.’ That was my Jacinta, no bullshit about her and I loved her for it. ‘I could take the poor old coot to the doctor if he made the appointment on a day I’m free.’ She turned to Andy. ‘You could come, too. It’s a nice day trip up to Springbrook.’

  ‘Maybe you should speak with more respect about your grandfather,’ said Andy, no longer smiling. It was an awkward moment and I wondered how long Jacinta would last with this self-righteous young man.

  ‘Maybe you should meet him before you say things like that,’ she bounced straight back. ‘And we’d see how much respect you think he deserves. He’s a horrible old man.’

  ‘Andy,’ I said. ‘What do you think of Jacinta’s plan of moving in to your place?’

  ‘I say cool,’ he said, fiddling with his fork. ‘My place is big and my flatmate just moved out. We could have a room each, for studying.’ He raised his sharp dark eyes to mine and I couldn’t read their expression. ‘It feels funny,’ he said, ‘talking like this to her father. About her moving in with me. In some places, this conversation would end up in a big fight. Maybe even a shooting.’ Again he smiled, as if he’d quite like that outcome.

  Until Marty Cash was safely locked up, Jacinta had a point about it being safer for her away from the family.

  ‘Then it sounds like an ideal situation,’ I said. ‘When are you thinking of moving?’