Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  Jacinta and Andy looked at each other. ‘At the end of the week,’ she said. ‘I’ll come over and get my stuff. I’ll probably stay there tonight.’ Jacinta jumped out of her seat, and threw her arms around me and squeezed me. ‘You’re such a weird dad, I’ve just gotta love you.’

  I hugged her back. Bugger Genevieve and her ugly allegations. Right this minute I wanted to put my daughter in protective custody somewhere until Marty Cash was off the streets. I knew the twisted way Cash worked; how the information I’d given him several years ago in order to help me trace Jacinta, would just as easily now be used by him to harm her. Marty Cash knew too much about my daughter.

  ‘It’s a great place. The beach is just down the street and around the corner.’ She grabbed her handbag from under her seat, scribbled the address on the back of a card and passed it over. I glanced at it thinking I hadn’t wanted my daughter to move out quite so soon. I’d come to enjoy her company over the last two years. Now she was off again. I pocketed the card but I was far from finished with this matter.

  ‘What about my car?’ she persisted.

  ‘Jass, I’ve got a lot of things going on right now.’ I saw her face drop with disappointment. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘It won’t be long. A few days.’

  She and Charlie stacked the dishwasher and when she returned to the dining area, I left Andy sitting at the table, finishing a second coffee, and beckoned my daughter.

  ‘Jass,’ I said when we were alone in the hall. ‘I’m only agreeing to this moving in with Andy business because of the situation,’ I told her. ‘And because I know there’s absolutely no point in me forbidding it.’

  She smiled sweetly. ‘I know Dad. You know I’d just do it anyway.’ She put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I can see you’re really worried,’ she said and her voice was gentle.

  ‘So would you be,’ I said, ‘if you knew Marty Cash.’

  ‘You always look on the dark side of things,’ she said.

  ‘It’s where I work,’ I told her. ‘On the dark side of things.’

  ‘What do you think of Andy?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s his birth date?’ I countered.

  She looked puzzled for a moment, then her expression changed. ‘No way! Dad! Don’t do that!’

  ‘All I want to do is send him a birthday card!’ I said, all innocence.

  Jacinta raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘I told him what you were like,’ she said. ‘Now he’ll think you’re even worse than I made out!’

  ‘If he likes you and he’s clean,’ I said, ‘he’ll have no worries then, will he?’

  She flounced off. ‘One day I’m going to write a book about living in a fucking police state!’ she called back. ‘I’m going to call it McCain’s Daughter.’

  I followed her back into the dining area where Charlie had plonked a tub of ice-cream, plates and a bundle of spoons on the table.

  ‘Don’t stand on ceremony,’ he said.

  I reseated myself and watched while Jacinta served ice-cream to herself and Andy.

  ‘I don’t like that sort of language,’ I overheard Andy say under his breath, turning to Jacinta, ‘in a woman.’

  Ha, I thought with pleasure. Cop that, you little bugger.

  ‘I can’t believe you said that, Andy!’ Jacinta squealed, eyes wide in a theatrical expression perfected from watching thousands of American sitcoms. ‘You sound like a complete prude.’

  As she made ready to leave on their outing, Jacinta came to me where I was brewing another coffee for myself, Charlie having poured himself a large port.

  ‘Andy’s birthday is the third of February,’ she said. ‘And he’s thirty-one. And I’m only giving it to you because I’m pissed off with him at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t you think he’s a bit old for you?’ I heard myself saying.

  My daughter stared at me.

  ‘Why is a 31-year-old bloke hanging round with a girl of eighteen?’ I persisted.

  ‘Because he likes me?’ she snapped straight back. ‘Because I’m smart and fun and he enjoys my company? Anything else you want to complain about?’

  When I forget that Jacinta is not like the usual eighteen-year-old schoolgirl, I’m almost instantly taught a very sharp lesson. This girl survived a year and a half on Sydney’s mean streets. She’s probably seen more and done more in her lifetime than I have.

  I saw her face soften, as if she already regretted her sharp reaction. ‘I know you worry that I’ll get into bad company. But Andy’s so against drugs it’s not funny. I feel guilty just taking an aspirin if he’s looking.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand packing up,’ I said, ready to make peace. ‘We’ll get that car soon. I think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ She stepped forward and kissed me. Women only ever kiss me when I’m doing what they want, but I suppose that’s natural.

  ‘What’s the security like at the flat?’ I asked.

  ‘Dad!’ she said in exasperation. ‘Get over it!’ She ducked away.

  I never will get over it, I wanted to say. Sometimes my daughter’s like a little kid, other times like the oldest, weariest player in the world.

  ‘You know I’m going to miss you,’ I said.

  Her eyes were misty.

  ‘Have a pleasant evening,’ I called as they left.

  Andy Kelly turned and shook my hand. ‘It was good to meet you,’ he said. There was that intensity again and I didn’t like it. I might have been checking him out, but Andy Kelly was certainly doing the same to me. I made a mental note to check this young man out as soon as possible.

  Once the young couple had headed off, I went outside and stood on Charlie’s timber decking. I wanted clean fresh air to clear my head. Sometimes I wished that things had been different, that I wasn’t such a suspicious bastard, that I didn’t half-expect the worst of everyone, that my mother hadn’t been a drunk, that my little sister hadn’t been stolen away. I knew these tragedies cut me out of the herd, marked me as an outsider in a world of people desperate to conform. Was it my background as Charlie always said, the domestic war zone where I grew up that drew me to crime scenes? Was I automatically suspicious of Andy Kelly simply because he was there? Closer to home, I had my ex-wife’s hatred to deal with.

  Other men my age seemed to be living very different lives from mine. Golf, a few beers and telly in the evening. And here I was, investigating the murdered daughter of an old war hero, a smashed-up crucifix, a cross carved in flesh, as well as trying to track down a psychopath who posted anthrax to his victims.

  It was a black night without any moon and Charlie followed me out, shivering. ‘What are you doing out here, freezing them off?’ he asked.

  ‘Wondering about Andy Kelly,’ I said. ‘And how to deal with Genevieve and her allegations.’

  ‘There’s a good chance that’ll just fall away,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine the cops being able to launch a case.’

  ‘And I was thinking about how the bloody nuns are holding out on me.’ I filled him in about Felicitas and her reluctance to tell me everything. ‘I know she’s withholding information.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not letting your own stuff get in the way of your investigation?’

  When Charlie talks like this, I want to pull my hair out. Chalk and cheese we are.

  ‘What is this “stuff” to which you refer?’ I asked.

  ‘You know you need to be clear of all your baggage. Or at least aware that it’s there. If you let that get in the way, you won’t see what’s in front of your eyes. You’ll see your own stuff instead.’

  I knew what Charlie meant. I’d seen how badly misled some investigators had become, owing to their preconceived belief in someone’s guilt. Or innocence. It was my job to gather facts, to proceed from ‘what is’ to ‘what is’—to place my fi
ndings before the courts. Judgment was not my business.

  I followed him back inside and gulped down the rest of the coffee. Then I rang Colin Reeves. We set up a planning meeting for the next day and I drove to Malabar. I went through the empty house, checking window locks and doors, making sure that the place was secure. I went over my notes and had an early night.

  Thirteen

  First thing in the morning, I rang a contact at the hospital and asked that samples of the BA that had killed Livvy Worthington be amplified in the hospital’s PCR system and the results couriered to Forensic Services. I wanted to have more samples to send to TIGR for genetic investigation. If every sample contained the same strain, it was information that could help the investigation at a later stage.

  Then I picked up Charlie and together we drove up to visit our father in the mountains. I dozed a bit, only waking when Charlie’s choice of music became very dramatic. It was a misty day and Charlie drove with his lights on, cutting white swathes through the fog that lay in patches across the road.

  We drove into Springbrook and turned off into the road that runs past the rectory and then around the corner to the house we grew up in. The new tenants must have been gardeners because the place looked tidier and less weedy than usual. We drove down the driveway, past the house, and pulled up outside the shed my father has lived in for many years. Even when my mother was alive and we kids lived in the house, he spent more and more time in his shed, eventually equipping it with a camp bed and other furniture from the house. After we two boys left home, he added a shower and toilet, invested in more old kerosene heaters, let the house and moved into the shed completely. My father was almost a recluse, and spent almost nothing. Ever since I was a kid, I knew he’d hidden biscuit tins of cash in and around the shed. God knows how much he might have buried in the overgrown garden down the back, like an old dog buries bones.

  It was very cold when we got out of the car, the icy wind whipping through the fabric of my trousers. I hugged my coat tighter around me and Charlie stepped up and knocked on the door.

  I was shocked when my father opened it.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said in his sour way. ‘It must be Christmas.’

  He was even more diminished than when I’d last seen him, more stooped, thinner, with the never-absent cigarette dangling from nicotine-stained fingers. He stood in the doorway, blocking it. ‘I’ve only seen you once since you had all that bother.’

  ‘All that bother,’ referred to a very unpleasant murder investigation I’d undertaken a while back for Bob—one that had nearly been the death of me.

  Charlie had always got on better with Dad than I had so I let my younger brother do the initial greetings and finally stepped up into the bachelor space, where books and magazines toppled on surfaces and several dirty cups cluttered the sink. Cartons of tins of baked beans were stacked near the stove. I knew it wasn’t past my father to subsist on beans, bread and cups of coffee. A kerosene heater gurgled, though it seemed to make little difference to the temperature in the shed. There was no insulation and any heat rose up and left by the roof.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ I asked.

  In response, he stuck it out and pulled up his trouser leg. He lifted the dressing off and showed me. An area of bruising around the infection was so dark and my mind recently so preoccupied that for a moment I imagined it was the cutaneous lesion of BA. He must have seen the look on my face, because he dropped the dressing back into place and smiled his bitter, down-turned smile. He swayed and I thought he was going to fall so I grabbed him and steadied him.

  ‘Jack here thinks I’ve got the dog’s disease, Charlie,’ my father said.

  ‘Where’s the coffee?’ my brother asked, opening cupboard doors.

  ‘It looks nasty,’ I said. ‘That needs attention. A course of antibiotics. Use some of your bloody hoarded money for a change.’

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I got some stuff from the chemist and it didn’t make much of a difference.’

  Charlie eventually found some instant coffee and after the jug had boiled passed round three mugs. My father staggered back and sat back down in the sagging armchair he favoured while Charlie and I perched among the piles of scientific literature. My father had been a science teacher and retained a strong interest in things scientific.

  ‘I suppose you’re all running around in your labs looking at white powder,’ said my father.

  ‘You should come down and help me, Dad,’ I joked. ‘Looks like you’ve been reading up on bio-weapons.’ I indicated the surrounding science journals.

  ‘So what is it?’ he asked me, after a noisy slurp on the coffee. ‘Who’s been killing these people? Have we got mad mullahs sending anthrax spores in the mail or just everyday ordinary malice and hatred showing up?’

  I considered. Outside I heard the shrieking of black cockatoos and remembered the boy I’d been who believed he could understand the language of the beasts. I suddenly felt unaccountably sad as I recalled the long-ago days of childhood and playing with my sister Rosie under the huge jacaranda tree outside.

  ‘Too early to really say,’ I said finally. ‘But I’m inclined to come down on the side of malice so far.’

  ‘You’ll never go wrong that way,’ said my father, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray that wobbled on a pile of newsletters beside him. A crash startled us, but it was only a carton of empty baked beans tins falling to the floor. Charlie jumped up and picked them all up, shoving them back in the carton, and taking it to the door.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, putting it down. ‘I don’t think you can stay here like this.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve stayed here like this for years. It’s my home.’

  Charlie looked away. I knew what he was thinking. It was only a matter of time before we’d have to try and convince him to move somewhere else where he could be cared for. I hated to think of his diet.

  Our father leafed through a science journal article, one of the millions, no doubt, spawned by the American BA attacks. ‘There seems to be a lot of argy-bargy about how easy it is to make anthrax weapons. Or not.’

  I nodded. I was aware of the many different positions taken by scientists all over the world, with some saying it would be simple and easy and others suggesting it was much more complicated.

  ‘Weapons-grade material demands certain requirements,’ I said.

  My father looked at me. ‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘Any fool knows that.’

  Some fools didn’t, I knew, thinking of the Aum Shinrikyo group.

  ‘Listen to what the FBI says about the person who posted anthrax in the States.’ He picked up a magazine folded open beside his sunken chair. ‘A male loner with a job,’ he read, ‘who possibly works in a lab, requiring little social contact. Someone with a scientific background and access to the equipment necessary to make the pathogenic material. Someone nonconfrontational, a nurser of grudges, and maybe known to the scientific community.’

  ‘Sounds like you, Dad,’ I said, looking around the limited world my father lived in. ‘You’d only need a bottle of chicken broth and a hot box.’

  My father glared at me. My joke wasn’t well received and I could see that Charlie, usually the most easygoing of brothers, was not pleased either.

  ‘I rang the community health people,’ Charlie said to my father, ‘and they said you are entitled to be visited by a health worker. They can send someone round here in the next few days.’

  ‘I don’t want some strange female round here,’ Dad said, ‘poking her nose into my affairs.’

  ‘Either you let someone come here and dress that injury,’ said Charlie, ‘or Jack and me will stick you into a home for old codgers.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ roared my father. But he finally let me clean up the wound as best I could and bandage it.

  ‘I’ll be ringing i
n the morning,’ threatened Charlie. ‘I’ll check up with the community nursing people.’ Charlie looked at his watch. ‘Come on, Jack. I’ve got a client at five.’

  Our father stayed sitting in his chair, sulking, with his bandaged leg stuck out on a chair in front of him. He barely looked in our direction as we left.

  I was pleased to get out of there.

  Charlie and I were silent on the drive east until the descent to Emu Plains.

  ‘He can’t go on living there,’ Charlie finally said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He can’t. But how are we going to move him?’

  My brother didn’t answer. One day, we’d have to find a way.

  Fourteen

  I met Colin Reeves in a bar near Central. It’s a bloodhouse of a place and I remembered getting totalled there on one occasion years ago. I could barely stand up that night and when I’d glanced at the television screen above the doorway, the news was running an interview with me taken earlier in the day. I’d stared up at the television, drunk enough to have to lean against the bar for support, while the professional detective countered the police roundsman. It had been a surreal moment.

  Bob came in only minutes after us and we sat a table near the back. I gave him the details of Andy Kelly’s birth date. Bob raised an eyebrow. ‘You know I can’t do this,’ he said. But he pocketed the piece of paper. Bob got himself a middie while Colin and I both resorted to lemon, lime and bitters. It was a year or two since I’d seen Colin and the rangy young man was now solid and well-built. We got down to business straight away.

  ‘We can set it up when it suits us,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got the bastard on tape, telling me exactly what to do. We could get him on conspiracy alone.’

  ‘I don’t want any loopholes,’ I said. ‘I want him done cold. Redhanded. I want him in it up to his fat neck.’

  ‘He might be too toey to get involved personally,’ said Bob. ‘He’s cunning as a shithouse rat.’