Brian couldn’t.
‘I don’t think Jeremiah killed Sister Gertrude,’ I said.
‘What about the weapons you found?’ Kruger asked. ‘You think the killer left them there? They weren’t there when I searched.’
‘Maybe he returned,’ I said, ‘and planted them to implicate Jeremiah. And when Jeremiah saw me bending over the bottom drawer he didn’t know who I was. But now he realises he’s being set up. I think he knows who the killer is. That’s why he’s so scared.’
‘You’d think he’d feel safe in custody,’ said Brian.
‘Would you?’ I asked. ‘I think that’s why he drank the disinfectant. He’d rather take the risk of dying.’
•
I dropped in at the hospital. Iona was looking better, the swelling had subsided and the bruises around her eyes were moving through their spectrum. ‘I’m going to be out of here in a day or two,’ she said. ‘They’re very pleased with me.’
I smiled. ‘They should be. You heal quickly.’
‘Have you any idea yet who is responsible?’ she asked, lowering her eyes. ‘I seem to have this difficult karma,’ she said. ‘Attracting violence towards me.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ I said. ‘All we know is that your attacker is not the same person who carried out the other two university assaults. The DNA is quite different. All I can tell you is that he’s a man.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ she said. ‘Women don’t go in for this sort of thing.’
There was a long pause in which I pondered some of the sorts of things that women do. Women like Genevieve and Alix.
‘That business the other night with Alix,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘I’d like to tell you the whole story,’ I said.
‘I feel I know it already,’ Iona smiled. ‘The end of the affair. With rather bad grace.’
‘It was never really an affair,’ I said. ‘It was a mess. And I don’t come out in such a good light.’
‘Jack,’ Iona said. ‘Please. It’s not an issue.’
I had the wit to leave it alone then.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Your daughter sent me a “get well” card.’ She showed me. Jacinta had addressed it care of the hospital.
‘She’s very interested in meeting you,’ I said.
I didn’t stay long. I was exhausted and wanted an early night. I knew I’d have to make a list and try to bring some order to the several cases I was working on. But not tonight.
I rang Jacinta. Charlie answered, telling me that she and young Andy had taken off for a romantic camping trip somewhere up the coast. ‘They’re going to do some bushwalking,’ he said. ‘I made sure she took plenty of woollies.’
I rang Jacinta’s mobile. ‘Dad,’ she said to me. ‘I’m fine. Stop worrying. No one knows where I am.’ She laughed. ‘Even I don’t. All I can tell you is that there are a lot of trees. And a creek.’
‘It was kind of you to send that card to Iona,’ I said.
‘I am kind sometimes,’ she said. ‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘What about Andy?’ I asked. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘He’s off collecting firewood or hunting, being a male. We seem to be getting on better. We’re going to talk about a few things while we’re here. Oh, here he comes. Better fly, love you.’ And she was gone.
I had a shower and wrapped myself in my dressing gown, settling in for a quiet night. I thought of Iona in a hospital bed only a few kilometres away and wondered what I was going to do about that. There was no denying my interest in her, but at the moment, I had so much going on that it wouldn’t be fair, I told myself, to get too deeply involved in that direction.
It had been a long day and I decided to turn in.
•
I was awoken much too early by a call from Ryan Holbrook, a young Senior Constable from Physical Evidence. ‘It’s Ksenia Jelacic,’ he said tersely. ‘We had an anonymous telephone tip-off suggesting she was likely to commit suicide. Could have been a hoax call, but we followed up anyway and we’ve found her hanging in a doorway in her home. Bob said we should contact you immediately.’
I told him I’d be there as soon as I could and arrived at Ksenia’s place by seven.
‘We’re treating it as a suspicious death,’ Ryan Holbrook said. ‘She was found hanging, but there was some bruising that the pathologist wasn’t happy about at first sight. She’ll tell us more later.’
He showed me the place where Ksenia had hanged herself—the doorway between the saint-encrusted living room and the kitchen. Less than a week ago she’d walked through that doorway, smiling, with her peach wine. A kitchen chair lay on its side among a pile of broken glass and I could see the damage to the paint work and timber of the fanlight. ‘She smashed the glass, chucked a rope over the door frame, and used that chair,’ said Holbrook.
I looked around. Everything was in order. ‘Any note?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
‘You checked the rubbish bins?’ I asked. In one case I’d worked on once I’d found about a dozen versions of a suicide note in the bin.
He nodded. ‘Nothing there to surprise us.’ He looked around at all the icons and saints. ‘It’s spooky with all these guys looking at you,’ he said. ‘It’s like being in church or something.’
And that’s when I noticed something. The gap in the row of saints was gone. A new saint now hung there. ‘That’s odd,’ I said. I went up close and studied him. She had said the missing saint had looked a bit like me. I failed to notice any similarity but there was no doubt that he had piercing eyes. He held a book and wore a nicely checked black and white chasuble. ‘He’s not one of ours,’ Ksenia had said, ‘but Katica won’t mind.’ I wondered again what she meant by this.
‘That icon wasn’t there before,’ I said. Maybe Ksenia had bought a new one. Maybe Sister Gertrude had returned the gift. I peered closer at him. What is the problem with you, mate? I thought. Why do people not want you?
‘You’ve been here before?’ Ryan Holbrook was asking.
I nodded. ‘In the course of another murder investigation. Are you aware that this woman’s niece was murdered several days ago in a convent near Canberra?’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Some sort of family feud?’
‘I don’t know about a feud,’ I said. ‘But I’d say for sure it’s related to the family.’ I told him that Ksenia had a boyfriend, that I believed his name to be ‘Marko’ and that I’d briefly seen him the day he’d picked her up outside the house.
Ryan Holbrook took notes. He wanted to know all the details about Gertrude, and I told him as briefly as I could, my eyes continually going back to the additional saint. Holbrook struck me as someone who would go the extra distance. I recalled the faint dust outline of the object that had been removed from the wall of Sister Gertrude’s room. Was this it? I looked more closely, studying the severe-looking saint again. He held a book, and on that book was a cross. It seemed that wherever I looked in this investigation, I found the cross, but for the first time I noticed what I’d so far failed to see. Although the design on the book in the icon was very faint, in each angle made by the intersection of the crossbars, was something that reminded me of the cross carved in the woman’s flesh. It looked as if two capital Cs on the right-hand side of the cross, with their mirror images on the left side, decorated the angles of the crossbars.
In that instant, I felt the excitement of sudden comprehension. Now I understood the discrepancy in the shapes. Far easier to make two strokes with a knife, rather than drag it through flesh. Just as the Phoenician scribes had been forced to cut angular symbols simply because of the angled tools they used for inscription, the killer’s knife had changed the curve of a C into the right angle of an L. At last I had someth
ing. ‘Get photographs of this cross on the book the saint is holding in this icon,’ I told Ryan. ‘And I want copies. Enlargements. Send them out to every crime agency.’ I stared at the capital Cs and their mirror-image opposites. ‘I want to know what this sign is all about.’
I felt a slight easing of the burdens of worry that I’d been carrying. Jacinta was safely away in the bush. And I was getting closer to the mysterious cross cut into the flesh of the dead nun. Now I needed to find someone who knew about icons and religious history. I felt now I could almost reach out and touch the killer; that we were now only separated by my ignorance. I stared into the deep-set eyes of the saint on the icon. They seemed to go back into a dark place beyond time. I hoped that once I’d filled in the gaps, I’d be able to reach through to the killer’s world and grasp him. I remembered how scared Ksenia had been last time I’d visited, and now she was dead. If my instincts were right and Jeremiah knew the killer, this knowledge had terrified him enough to attempt suicide. I needed every scrap of information possible if we were going to be able to get this killer. It was time to apply the metaphoric telephone book around the head of Sister Felicitas . . .
I left Ksenia’s place as the police doorknock in the street was getting underway. Two uniforms were detailed to visit the club Ksenia worked at and I’d furnished them with a description of the dead woman’s boyfriend. It was hardly detailed—a pale-faced man with dark hair and eyes. But it was a start. I made a note of the attending pathologist’s name. Miriam Furlough. I wanted to know the results of Ksenia’s autopsy.
I drove back to Canberra, aware that something was niggling at me. Something to do with Digby’s ants. Something that didn’t fit. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. Maybe it was just the thought of them making me itchy.
As I neared Canberra, I rang the Convent of the Assumption and told Mother Anacletus that I had to speak with Sister Felicitas. I informed her that Sister Gertrude’s Aunt Ksenia had been murdered.
Ethelberta welcomed me like a long-lost friend. She clattered off down the hall to get Felicitas and I waited as I had done that first day, watching the lime-green vision net move in the breeze. Finally, I heard the sound of footsteps again on the polished floorboards and Felicitas appeared at the doorway, looking paler and older. She even seemed to have shrunk in height.
‘Sister,’ I said. ‘There can be no more prevarication. Another woman in Sister Gertrude’s family is dead. I’m going to have you charged with obstruction and conspiring to pervert the course of justice if you don’t tell me what I need to know. I want to know everything that happened when you went into Sister Gertrude’s room that night.’
There was a silence.
‘Sister Felicitas,’ I finally said, ‘if you don’t tell me exactly what occurred in that room the night you heard Sister Gertrude call out, you will be responsible for a dangerous killer remaining at large. I’m starting to put a few things together.’ I drew closer to her and could smell her; an old nun smell, of plain soap, mothballs and a hint of mildew. ‘No one is safe,’ I warned. ‘Including you.’
‘I’ve told you everything,’ she cried, and her distress was genuine. ‘Except for her last few words.’
‘Tell me.’
‘But they were sacred!’
‘Sister,’ I said, ‘so is the truth.’ I stared grimly at her and her olive eyes faltered. Finally, I could see I had won. I had worn her down.
‘Gertrude said—she whispered—’ Again, she hesitated. I could see what this was costing her.
‘What did she say?’ I thundered.
‘She said, “Justice is done.”’
‘Justice is done?’ I repeated to make sure I had it right.
Felicitas nodded.
‘And then?’
‘She tried to say something else. I put my ear to her mouth. Then she said a strange thing. She whispered “it’s blood” or something that sounded like that.’ Sister Felicitas placed a weathered hand over her flat chest, as if swearing an oath. ‘Just those two words. Something about “blood”.’ Felicitas paused. ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘I’ve told you everything. Poor Gertrude tried to say more. I was right there close to her lips, but then all I heard was that last long breath. She was dead.’
I considered what I’d just heard. ‘What did you think she meant by that?’ I asked.
Had she been frightened by the sight of her own blood? The killer hadn’t bled at the scene. If he had, we would have found it.
‘I thought—I hoped—that she’d seen the miraculous crucifix bleed,’ said Felicitas in awe. ‘Before she died.’
Once I would have lashed out at this but now I held my tongue.
‘When will you return it?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that for a while,’ I said. ‘It’s part of our investigation.’
‘Is there anything else you want me for?’ said Felicitas, pulling a fob watch out from under her scapular. ‘I need to get ready for Divine Office.’
‘You could tell me where I can find Father Oswald,’ I said.
The minute I said this, her whole demeanour changed. She seemed to straighten up, even brighten up at the mention of the name.
‘Father Oswald,’ she whispered, ‘stands between us and evil.’
I remembered the time in the garden, when I first met Jeremiah.
‘Sister,’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘How can you ask me that,’ she rounded on me, ‘when the whole world is black with sin and wickedness? When people break into our holy places and desecrate our sanctuaries?’
‘That’s been happening since the world began, Sister,’ I started to say.
But she wasn’t listening, she was on a roll. ‘The world must turn to God. The world must repent its Godlessness. Before it’s too late.’
Here we go again, I thought. Same old same old. ‘Sister,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Have you tried the chapel at Rockwell?’ she asked.
‘He’s not out there. I’ve checked.’ I took out my notebook and waited.
‘Then he might be out at the sports club,’ she said. ‘Further along the Heronvale Road. He does a great deal of good among the local young people.’ I jotted down the directions she gave me, somewhere west of the township.
‘There’s one thing you haven’t told me,’ I said. ‘Something was taken from Sister Gertrude’s room the night she was killed.’
‘Yes,’ said Felicitas. ‘You accused me of that.’
‘I believe an icon was taken. The portrait of a saint holding a book.’
‘I wasn’t familiar with that saint.’
‘Tell me what he looked like.’
‘He had a very miserable expression on his face. And he had a checked cloak. And the book you mention.’
I sketched a new improved version of my diagram, this time curving the L-shaped angles into C-shapes on each side of the cross bars. ‘And on the book was this cross.’
‘You’ve already asked us about that,’ she said, rather too smartly.
‘Tell me, Sister,’ I said. ‘What do you understand by the expression “the way of the Cross”?’
Felicitas’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘The way of the Cross is the painful journey undertaken by Jesus through Jerusalem,’ she said, ‘to the place of crucifixion outside the city. Why do you ask?’
‘That’s all?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t have another meaning?’
Felicitas looked offended. ‘He died for your sins,’ she reminded me.
‘I’ll pass on that,’ I said. But spite had entered my heart. ‘I didn’t tell you everything,’ I said. ‘I didn’t tell you that this symbol was carved with a knife blade into the flesh of Sister Gertrude.’
Felicitas drew back in horror. ‘Oh my Lord!’ she said.
I was instantly ashamed of myself.
Eighteen
On the drive past Heronvale I thought about what Felicitas had told me. I regretted my final attack on her. Charlie was right. Old issues were still alive in me. Then I kept wondering what Gertrude’s dying words might have referred to, what ‘blood’ she was talking about. Was it just some pious reference?
I turned off the dirt driveway near an oval. A faded timber sign announced the Stjepan Radic Athletics Club. The sports club was fairly basic, a large barn of a place, with a climbing wall on the far side and various other bits of athletic equipment and a fair-sized gym. I asked the lanky youth who manned the boxed-in office room where Father Oswald was.
‘He’s gone to Sydney,’ he said. ‘Back tonight.’
‘Where does he stay when he’s in town?’ I asked.
‘Here or out at Rockwell. Sometimes he sleeps here,’ the youth said, indicating a sofa bed against the wall of the office covered in box files and sporting equipment.
I gave the youth my card. ‘Please tell the Father to ring me,’ I said. ‘It’s important.’
My mobile rang and I took the call outside. It was Bob. High above, an eagle circled.
‘Neil Stewart’s last known address was some one-horse town near Rockwell,’ he said. ‘He left Sydney, according to his ex-girlfriend when she kicked him out of her place after he totalled her car and lost his licence for five years for drunk driving. She apologised for not being able to help.’
‘She’s been more helpful than she knows,’ I said.
I went back to the car fairly confident I’d find Neil Stewart. The ex-girlfriend had told me everything I needed to know. I stopped at the Rockwell pub, and had a chat to the barman. He knew all his regulars and none of them were called Neil Stewart.
‘The person I’m looking for,’ I said, ‘wouldn’t live too far from his local because he hasn’t got a car. Is there another pub between here and the city?’
The publican shook his head. ‘It’s a fifteen-kilometre drive to the next one just on the outskirts.’
Lethal Factor Page 25