Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  Gavrilovic looked as if he was about to interject, but I raised my hand. ‘I don’t know what you did while you tried to carve Greater Serbia out of the flesh and blood of the people who already lived there.’ I paused. I wasn’t used to talking like this. But the three others in the room, especially Marko Gavrilovic, seemed to be hanging on my every word.

  ‘Your law cannot touch me,’ Gavrilovic said. ‘No matter what I did there. I haven’t broken Australian laws.’ He had regained his composure, and more. Now there was a touch of triumph in his sneer.

  ‘We could charge you under the Crimes Act,’ said Bob. ‘But I think Dr McCain’s got other things in store for you, pal.’ The way Bob says ‘pal’ to those who are not his pals is downright terrifying.

  ‘It’s not what you did there that concerns me right now,’ I continued. ‘It’s what you’ve done here, in this country, that’s going to get you locked up, Marko Gavrilovic.’ His bravado slid a little more and I watched as he endeavoured to restore it. ‘While you were over there, doing the things that irregular Serb militia groups did, lobbing grenades into houses where people were living, raping, killing defenceless old women and children—’

  He jumped out of his chair but was quickly pushed back down by Brian and Bob.

  ‘And old men, too,’ I continued. ‘You went drinking every day. It’s hard to do the things you did stone cold sober. Best to be in the haze of drunken brutality, then it’s easy.’

  ‘You don’t know nothing!’ he snarled again.

  ‘I know a lot of things,’ I said again. ‘And I don’t for one moment think that Ksenia Jelacic hanged herself. I believe you killed her.’

  Pressed back into his seat, Gavrilovic narrowed his eyes. ‘You can believe all you want, Mr Detective. But how will you prove it?’ He was looking at the envelope I’d brought in with me, and the square package underneath it. ‘Of course you will find my DNA at Ksenia’s house. She was my girlfriend. My depressed girlfriend.’

  ‘The only depressing thing in Ksenia Jelacic’s life was you. She lived for the moment. She loved red lipstick. But she made a big mistake in denying the past.’ I lowered my voice so that Gavrilovic had to strain to hear it. ‘Not looking into the past cost Ksenia her life, didn’t it Marko?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Because if she’d done a little bit of research into you around the émigré traps,’ I said, ‘she would have found out that she was connected to you. She was open-minded enough to have a Serb boyfriend. But she was uncomfortable with an Orthodox icon he’d given her earlier in their relationship hanging with her sainted sister’s collection. So she sent it down to her niece in the convent.’

  I watched Gavrilovic closely. Something was happening to the cocksure manner; it was starting to unravel. ‘She would have discovered she was connected to you by blood. She would have found out that your mother was murdered years ago in the old country—by her nephew. Maybe it was during one of the drinking sessions, when you were trading information about the Croats’ version of how to slaughter people, that you heard the name of your Croatian counterpart, Blei Babic, who was responsible for your mother’s horrible death.’

  Gavrilovic had stopped trying to get up and was listening as hard as the others.

  ‘If she’d known that,’ I added, ‘Ksenia Jelacic might have been more circumspect in her choice of you as a boyfriend. But Blei Babic was dead—he’d died in the same violence that had destroyed your mother. He’d cheated your desire for vengeance. However, you heard there was still a Babic woman somewhere for you to target. It wasn’t hard for you to track down the aunt, Ksenia Jelacic. You became her lover. You found out that the sister of the man who murdered your mother was now living the anonymous life of a Sister of the Assumption.’ I paused. ‘How am I doing, Marko?’

  I was doing great, I could see. He was staring at me, too involved in the retelling of his story to remember to defend himself. But he was used to tight corners.

  ‘You have no proof,’ he said. ‘If you had proof, you would be charging me instead of making up this fairytale! You have no evidence for what you say. It is just a lot of words.’

  ‘But first,’ I said, ignoring his outburst, ‘I had to work out a few mysteries for myself. Then, once I’d done that, I realised there was a way to link you to that crime scene at the convent with your physical PIN number—your own DNA.’ Now it was my turn for triumph. ‘What do you say to that?’

  ‘I say it’s not possible!’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Because it’s not!’

  ‘Is it because you were smart enough to take precautions, so as not to leave any trace?’

  ‘You crims,’ said Brian Kruger, ‘are getting better educated by the minute.’

  ‘I am not a crim,’ Gavrilovic said, swinging on Brian. ‘I am a patriot.’

  ‘Patriots like you,’ I said, ‘give patriots a bad name. You’ve tripped up badly, Marko.’ I could see the fear in his eyes now. He wasn’t sure if I was bluffing or not.

  ‘Let me tell you what happened that night in Sister Gertrude’s room,’ I said.

  ‘I want to ring my lawyer,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying anything more until I have legal counsel.’

  ‘Suits me fine,’ I said. ‘Time is something you’re going to have a helluva lot of once this gets to trial. This will only take a few minutes and then you’ll really need a lawyer, I promise you.

  ‘You’d already visited your enemy’s daughter, once,’ I continued. ‘Just to determine that it was indeed Blei Babic’s sister. Gertrude was frightened, she broke away from you and ran inside. Jeremiah the gardener saw that incident, but because he already knew you, and knew your capabilities, he tried to throw us off the track with some bullshit about a blond giant with a beard. Jeremiah also saw you in Sister Gertrude’s room that night. So we have an eyewitness.’

  ‘He’s a liar! We had a fight. He’ll do anything to cause me trouble.’

  ‘Marko, I don’t need his eyewitnessing,’ I said quietly. ‘Because I have a silent witness, something that cannot err, that cannot perjure itself.’

  Gavrilovic had a hunted look.

  ‘You got into the convent through the fire exit—’ I continued, ‘the security there provided no problem to you—you’ve got into houses before, haven’t you? And you went to Sister Gertrude’s room. You attacked her. And I believe you made sure you left no physical traces of your presence. You were certainly gloved and maybe even wore a disposable overall. You killed her with the hatchet. I believe you were going to hack off her hands and feet, just like Babic had done to your mother, but something happened. You just couldn’t do it. You weren’t pissed like you were in the old country when you did the hacking and the killings. Instead, you cut the Serbian slogan onto the flesh of the dying woman. And I think that’s when you looked up and saw the same symbol on the icon of Santa Sava. That worried you. Because in your mind, it was a very pointed connection to you, a Serbian. You had just cut the same symbol onto the body of your enemy’s daughter and here was Santa Sava, the great Serbian saint, staring at you. Instead, you hacked at the arms and legs of the miraculous crucifix. That way, it looked like a religious crime, rather than what it was—a vicious revenge for a vicious war crime.’

  Gavrilovic was finally silenced. He was watching me like the rabbit watches the snake, wondering when the final strike will come. I didn’t keep him waiting long.

  ‘And we couldn’t find any trace of you in that room.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you can’t prove any of this fairytale about saints and their eyes!’

  I opened the envelope on the table and pulled out the DNA profiles I’d printed off in the laboratory some time earlier as well as the match from Fingerprints.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

  ‘It�
��s your profile. Pretty, isn’t it.’ I put the first one down in front of him.

  He studied it. ‘That’s your physical ID, Marko. Wherever you go, whatever you touch, you leave this pin number, this ID behind.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And here is the DNA profile I got from an article at Ksenia Jelacic’s place.’ I put the second print down next to the first. Even Marko had no difficulty understanding that.

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ he said. ‘I have never denied being at her place. If this is all you have, you are wasting my time.’

  ‘After you’d taken the icon from the murdered woman’s room you slipped up. I’ve never gone in for all that miraculous stuff about paintings and statues that bleed, but in this case, I have to make an exception. You gave us a really miraculous icon.’

  I could see Bob’s face wearing the expression it did when he was trying to follow me, determined to, but failing. I pulled out the print I’d lifted. ‘And here’s your thumbprint,’ I said, ‘taken from the icon at Ksenia’s place.’

  Gavrilovic leaned back in his chair. ‘Like I said, I’ve never denied being there. It’s quite natural my fingerprints will be all over her place. You’ve wasted all this paper!’

  He swept his hand over the three print-outs. ‘You think you are so clever. I can hear your own prosecutor telling you to stop wasting the state’s time and money. You have nothing to charge me with.’

  ‘And here’s Sister Gertrude’s DNA profile,’ I said, taking no notice of his crowing. ‘You will notice that she has three very distinct peaks at one of the marker points.’

  I jabbed my finger under locus 23. ‘We’ve never seen that result before. But there it is, and it makes her very distinctive indeed.’

  ‘So?’

  It was time to bring out my trump card. ‘When you struck Sister Gertrude’s neck, your violence created a fine blood spray, almost like a mist, invisible to the naked eye—and some of it landed against the wall near the door, including on this icon. It was the finest mist only. And it required high magnification for me to find it. And it dried very quickly and would have rubbed off quite easily. We know you pulled that icon off the wall and took it away with you. At that stage, you were wearing gloves, but later, when Sister Gertrude’s murder was hours perhaps even days behind you, and there was no need for gloves, you hung it on the wall of your murdered girlfriend’s house. Another patriotic triumph for your Fatherland.’

  Surprise, bewilderment, anger and incomprehension showed on the tight, handsome features. For the first time, he was lost for words. ‘But when you did that, when you prepared the icon to give to Ksenia, you weren’t wearing your little rubber gloves. And this is when the miracle happened. The minuscule physical traces left by your thumbprint, reacted with the invisible blood mist on the surface of the icon to create something rich and rare.’ I paused because I myself had been touched by the scientific perfection of this trace evidence. ‘A most beautiful piece of evidence,’ I said, ‘something that I have never seen before in many years of examining physical evidence.’

  I took out the scanned colour print ready to show him. ‘You left a picture of your thumbprint—exquisitely enhanced by Sister Gertrude’s blood. Your DNA spliced with that of the woman you killed. It was as if Sister Gertrude were to rise from her grave right now and point a finger at you and say “Behold my killer—Marko Gavrilovic.” And write it in her blood.’

  I paused to let it sink in. ‘Now that’s what I call a truly miraculous icon. Try explaining that away,’ I said.

  Gavrilovic had shrunk, I thought, from the defiant man who’d tried to dominate the room earlier. ‘You did that! You police did that! You put it there!’

  Again, I ignored his outburst. ‘When our scientific people take another look at the wall you took it from, they’ll find more of that fine blood spray. And they’ll find the square where it’s missing. That icon will fit back there like a piece in the jigsaw that puts you right there in that room. And they’ll photograph that and enlarge it and it will be presented to the jury. Just as they will do with this thumbprint.’

  I’d expected Gavrilovic to rant and struggle and maybe yell a few war slogans. But he just sat quietly in his chair. He knew when he was beaten.

  Brian Kruger took him away to charge him and Bob still had that puzzled look he gets when he knows I’m onto something and he’s just a little way behind.

  ‘So what about that place she’d marked in her prayer book?’ he asked. ‘And what did she mean when she said something about “blood”. She couldn’t have known about the thumbprint, surely,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘And I still have to ask myself why didn’t Sister Gertrude cry out for help? Why didn’t she dob Gavrilovic in after the first time he frightened her? She was scared enough to ring Toby Speed. If I knew that someone like him was coming after me with vengeance on his mind, I’d make sure I screamed blue murder. Why didn’t she?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Bob. ‘And have you got the answer?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m working on it.’

  Twenty-two

  The best thing I heard that day was that Natalie Haynes was out of danger and expected to make a full recovery. She’d only inhaled a small amount of BA. Everyone was relieved that the anthrax killer had turned out to be just a nasty scientist, and not a toxic religious ideologue, like white supremacist Timothy McVeigh and the mass murderers of the Islamic jihad. Now, it seemed that all I had to worry about was whether or not I could keep up with the paperwork of the chief scientist position and how I could ensure that Marty Cash didn’t come anywhere near Jacinta before he got locked away good and proper. I didn’t think there’d be any chance of recovering the million dollars missing from the Delmonte Deli case, but it made for a nice fantasy.

  I asked Bob to meet me and together we drove out to the convent where I’d organised to meet Father Oswald and Sister Felicitas. But when we arrived, there was no sign of Father Oswald. Felicitas met us in the parlour and stood defensively near the window while I spoke, handing Bob the manilla envelope with the pearl-covered prayer book in it.

  ‘Father Oswald sends his apologies,’ she said. ‘He felt ill.’

  ‘Sister,’ I said, ‘you know the truth of what happened here that night. You’ve always known. You knew who Sister Gertrude was. That she was Josip Babic’s daughter. You knew that she entered the convent to offer atonement after she discovered what her brother Blei had been doing in the old country.’ I saw her stiffen as she went into defensive mode, and the olives in the jar behind the thick glasses became larger and more opaque.

  ‘I may have known something about her,’ she said.

  ‘You knew everything about her. You’ve done everything you could to interfere with this investigation. You’ve withheld information. You haven’t been honest.’

  ‘I haven’t told any lies!’ she said.

  ‘You know there are lies of omission,’ I said to her, showing off my knowledge of the Green Catechism. That quietened her down. ‘You were fearful that if we realised who Sister Gertrude was, your wonderful Father Oswald might be exposed as something more than just an elderly priest.’

  Bob watched as I pulled out the prayer book. ‘And you nearly pulled it off,’ I said. ‘You didn’t really want us to find Sister Gertrude’s killer. Because that would expose other things. Things you didn’t want to come to light. Like how you and Father Oswald worked in Rome to get men like Gertrude’s father out here through the Vatican rat lines to make new lives for themselves in Australia. War criminals, acceptable because they were hostile to Communism, the Church’s big bogey man.’

  Sister Felicitas drew herself together. ‘I don’t need young whippersnappers like you telling me about my church,’ she said. ‘We had to defend the true faith against evil.’

  I don’t know what I might have said then
but Bob took the prayer book out of the envelope and handed it to me. ‘I think Dr McCain has something he wants to say about this.’

  I opened the prayer book where Harry Marshall had placed the marker. ‘At first, I thought maybe Sister Gertrude had been meditating on the miraculous crucifix, and that’s why she had it opened at this page—a section dealing with crucifixion. But then I put Gertrude’s actions together. She didn’t call for help. She didn’t tell the police about the danger she was in.’

  I opened the prayer book and started reading Pilate’s words as he washed his hands before the multitude: ‘“I am innocent of the blood of this just person. Look you to it.” Then answered all the people and said, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”’ I looked up. ‘Sister Gertrude didn’t try to escape or call out. She knew what her father and then her brother had done in the old country. Maybe she overheard them, trading horror stories of what great patriots they’d been as they got drunk on slivovic. I believe that by entering the convent she hoped she was making reparation for the deeds of her father and brother. Perhaps she even told you about this.’

  Sister Felicitas made no attempt to contradict me.

  ‘That’s why,’ I continued, ‘she accepted the death that was coming to her. Sister Gertrude believed that justice was being done. She believed—no, more than that—she accepted that she was going to die for the sins of her father and her brother.’ I paused.

  Felicitas stood silent, her mouth slightly open.

  ‘Sister Gertrude,’ I continued, ‘was one of those rare souls who really understands that vengeance only breeds more vengeance. She was trying to quote the mob’s response to Pilate’s words when he said he was innocent of the blood of this man. And they yelled out, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”’