by Diane Wood
Close to tears, he turned and strode back into the lounge room.
“What’s he talking about?” demanded Nathalie, staring at her mother. “Why is he saying that?”
“Because he’ll say anything to get you to stay,” she snarled. “The fool thinks he’s in love with you. I don’t want you having any further contact with him. You don’t deserve us and from now on you’re on your own.”
* * *
On Sunday, Nathalie got several calls where the caller hung up or remained silent when she answered. On each occasion the originating phone was listed as a private number. She assumed it was George. Then at four o’clock, it rang again. This time the silence only lasted a few moments before Alex’s voice came on the line. She sounded businesslike but unsure.
“Hi, Nat,” she said. “I know you don’t want to hear from me, but I need to speak to you.”
With a pounding heart, Nathalie asked, “What do you want?”
“I want to meet with you. I want you to tell me you don’t love me and that what we had was all a figment of my imagination, because I don’t believe it was.”
“Alex, don’t do this,” she replied after a long pause. “This is how it has to be.”
“Then tell me why. Tell me the truth.”
“I met someone else, a man. I love him.”
The silence seemed to go on forever. “I don’t believe you,” she said eventually. “And I need to see you. I need to be able to watch your face. You owe me that much.”
“Yes, I suppose I do,” Nat answered dully. “But not today. I can’t do it today.”
“Then when?”
How long could she put it off? How long before Mother or George told Alex that she was a member of the Silver family? Not long she suspected, given the mood George was in. Sighing, she surrendered. “If you can arrange for your mother to be there, I’ll come over now.”
“My mother…I don’t understand.”
“Please, Alex. I need her to be there. I can’t do this twice.”
By the time she arrived at Alex’s house, her head was pounding and it took every ounce of will to force one foot in front of the other to reach Alex’s door.
“Come in,” Alex requested flatly as they moved into the lounge room.
“I don’t want to sit down,” Nat replied quickly when offered a seat on the sofa. “I’d rather do this standing up and then leave.”
“And I’d rather you sat down,” stated Norma Martin bluntly. “I would have thought this was between you and my daughter, but as you’ve asked me to come, I think the least you can do is take the time to explain yourself properly. Now please, sit down.”
Recognizing Norma’s protectiveness of her daughter, Nathalie did as requested and moved into one of the lounge chairs.
“So, what is this about?” Norma asked more gently.
They looked so unprepared for the blow she was about to deal them. But there was no easy way. “As you know, my name’s Nathalie Duncan,” she began, addressing Alex. “But what you don’t know is that my mother’s name is Charlotte Silver…and my brother is George Silver. Your sister Christine died while she was living with my brother.”
Norma looked as if she’d been struck, but Alex looked confused.
“Silver?” she muttered, looking at her mother. “No. That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re…you’re the Nathalie that Christine met at school?” stuttered Norma. “Nathalie Silver?”
“Silver was never my surname…but yes, that is who I am.”
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Norma continued while Alex sat stunned. “Your family destroyed my daughter and now you’re sitting in my other daughter’s lounge room bragging about who you are.”
“I didn’t know Alex was Christine’s sister,” she said, shaking her head. “I had no idea. I really had no idea.”
“George Silver,” gasped Alex, staring confusedly at Nathalie. “That was George Silver in your flat that night. That’s where I knew him from. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know who you were until I went to your mother’s house and saw the photo of Christine. It was the same day George remembered how he knew you. I ended our relationship as soon as I found out.” Her voice had tapered to a virtual whisper.
“You have to be making this up,” Alex muttered, shaking her head in denial.
“Your family killed my daughter,” accused Norma angrily. “She was sweet and innocent and then she stopped going to school, stopped talking to us and stopped coming home. In four years we only saw her half a dozen times…and then she was dead.” Her voice was stilted and tearful, and Alex moved closer to her mother.
“It’s okay, Mum,” she whispered, touching her hand. “We have to get to the bottom of this.” Then turning to Nathalie, her face white, her eyes blazing, she said, “I want to know what happened to my sister. Your family shut us out and the police didn’t tell us anything. George only gave us back her personal items when Mother turned up demanding them.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know if I can,” she replied flatly, unable to hold Alex’s gaze. “But I was away at university when she died. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s it?” Alex demanded. “You’re sorry? You were supposed to be her friend, but you helped her turn her back on her family and then your family destroyed her life.”
“Yes,” she muttered miserably.
“Why didn’t you stop it…why?”
Alex looked furious. Her mother looked close to tears.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Nat replied quietly. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. Christine made her own decisions and back then I didn’t think that what we were doing was so wrong.”
“But you knew she was using drugs?”
“We all used drugs.”
“But you didn’t become an addict, and neither it appears did your brother,” stated Alex evenly.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Why didn’t your mother do anything to stop it?” Norma asked suddenly. “You were living under her roof. Why would a mother let that happen?”
“My mother isn’t like you,” Nathalie answered dully. “She encouraged us to experiment. That’s why young people wanted to be around her.”
“Experiment with drugs?”
Nathalie nodded. “And more.”
“Then it should have been her child who died, not mine,” Norma spat. “Christine should be here in Alex’s house, instead of you. And your mother should have been the one watching her daughter buried. She should have been charged.”
“Mum,” interrupted Alex, trying to calm her mother. “We need to know why this happened, so that we can let Chris rest in peace.” Turning back to Nathalie, she asked, “How did Chris get caught up in prostitution? Was it for money for drugs?”
Pain coursed through Nat’s body and her eyes closed, and for a brief moment so did her mind. But it was short-lived.
“We read two of her diaries,” continued Alex accusingly. “They were among the personal items George threw into a box when Mum harassed him. We know all about the sex at your mother’s house and the parties she went to and the fact that it continued after she and George moved into the flat. But she never wrote how it started or why she was a part of it.”
“Does it matter now? It doesn’t change anything,” Nathalie muttered.
“I want to know,” gasped Norma. “I want to know why my little girl would change so much. You said you would tell us anything we wanted to know, so that’s the least you owe us.”
It took a minute to focus. But they were right, she did owe them.
“When I met Chris she was sad,” she began. “Her father was dead, she was at a new school and feeling isolated. She was lonely, vulnerable and sexually curious, and that’s what we took advantage of.” Pausing to gather her thoughts and rub her aching head, Nathalie forced herself to continue. “I think at first our lifestyle seemed fun and exciting, but Christine was dec
ent and her background was decent and in the end it ate her up.”
“So why didn’t she just come home?” demanded Norma, tears forming in her eyes.
“Because she was ashamed and it was too late, she was in too deep with the drugs and too dependent on the family—especially George. It wasn’t her fault. It is how Mother works.”
They were staring at her as if she was from another planet.
“You mean she did this to other families…to other kids?” Alex looked exhausted, but her eyes still blazed pure fury.
Nathalie couldn’t look. Dropping her eyes and standing up, she mumbled, “I have to go now. I don’t expect you to understand, but if I could have died instead of Christine, I would. If I could take back your hurt, I would. I’m sorry.”
Norma’s voice stopped her in her tracks halfway to the door. “All I hope is that one day you know the pain of having someone you love snatched from your life, so that you can suffer the way Alex and I did.”
“Oh, trust me, I already do,” she mumbled without turning around.
By the time she’d closed the door behind her and reached the car, Nathalie could barely walk. The journey home seemed to take only moments. Then she was curled on the couch, her mind blank and her emotions numb. Somewhere in the misty distance she could see Good Mother’s face and she was crying—reaching out to her with tears in her eyes. Opening her own eyes, Nathalie made the image disappear. There was no Good Mother and this numbness was her reality. The thought brought some measure of comfort.
* * *
At first Alex was worried about her mother. When Christine died, Norma had been eaten up with guilt and recriminations and in the end she’d broken down. That was when Alex had met Dieter. He’d been her mother’s counselor and had helped her to understand and deal with her grief. As a result Alex had changed courses at university to study psychology.
This time though, it was different. This time her mother seemed to be the strong one and it was she who was struggling to cope. The conflict of hating Nathalie for what she and her family had done warred with memories of the love they’d shared. But right now bitterness and anger had the upper hand.
Norma stayed the night—both of them feeling the need to talk. And in the morning Alex rang work and was granted two weeks’ leave. Nobody questioned it. Nobody doubted that something very serious had been troubling Alex Messner recently.
“I’m sorry this has cost you your relationship,” her mother said at breakfast when her daughter finally emerged from the bedroom looking as if she hadn’t slept a wink. “I know you love her.”
“Some psychologist,” Alex stated morosely. “I can’t even tell the good guys from the bad anymore.”
“It’s never that simple, is it?” Norma responded, dropping some toast onto Alex’s plate. “When Chris died I wanted so much to find someone to blame, but the one thing I learned from Dieter was that even when you do, it doesn’t make the pain go away.”
“You sound almost as if you forgive Nathalie for what she and her family did!”
“I suppose I’m confused,” Norma answered, sitting down with a coffee in her hand. “In my mind I saw them all as monsters and I still feel that way about the mother, but I look at Nathalie and she’s this attractive, intelligent person in a stable job and I wonder, if Christine had lived, would she have worked that hard to move away from her past?”
“We’ll never know, will we? Because thanks to Nathalie and her family, Chris never got the chance to have a future, never got the chance to meet someone decent, maybe have a career or kids. And they didn’t even go to her funeral—that’s how much they cared about her.”
For a long time, Norma remained silent.
“I wouldn’t let them,” she said finally. “Nathalie and George both asked. I refused to let them. I was very angry.”
“I didn’t know,” Alex mumbled. “But I’m glad they weren’t there.”
Again there was a long silence, while they concentrated on buttering toast and sugaring coffee. Eventually, Alex said, “I feel like such a fool. I knew Nat had terrible secrets in her past, what with the nightmares all the time and the evasiveness when I asked about her family or her childhood. But to find that she was responsible for what happened to Chris—it’s too bizarre—too awful. It’s like I betrayed Chris somehow.”
“Do you believe that Nathalie didn’t know you were Christine’s sister?”
“God!” she answered, holding her head in her hands. “I really want to, but then I wonder if she didn’t break it off because she thought she’d been discovered when George came to the flat unexpectedly. What if being with me was all part of some horrible game? Everything else that family did was hateful and immoral. Who’s to say Nat wasn’t up to her eyeballs in it?”
“Are you really that bad a judge of character?”
“Obviously I am,” Alex finished weakly. “Not that it matters now.” She said with a sigh. “It’s over and she’s gone for good. Now we can forget the Silver family and hope they rot in hell.”
Somehow Norma didn’t think it was going to be that simple. And her heart ached for her oldest daughter and the pain of her latest loss.
Chapter Eleven
Piecing It Together
The team had only been at work an hour when they got a call about a body in a Dumpster behind an abandoned warehouse in an outer suburb. When detectives from the local area investigated, they’d found identification in the name of Jacqueline St. Clare. Finding the missing person’s warning on the system, they immediately notified Josh.
“We need to get down there and see what they’ve got,” Josh told the team. “If it is St. Clare then we need find out where she’s been in the last week and her body may tell us something.”
“I can identify her,” volunteered Nathalie quietly. “Otherwise you’ll only have the description to go on.”
Reluctantly Josh agreed.
It took only a minute to identify the body as that of Jacqueline St. Clare. Even though she didn’t like the girl, Nat felt a twinge of regret that she’d end up dead in a Dumpster. According to forensics at the scene, Jacqueline had been dead about a week. The cause of death was presumed to be the bullet wound to the chest. Until an autopsy could be carried out, they would know very little else. An anonymous tip to the local police had alerted them to the existence of the body. The call hadn’t come through the triple zero emergency line, so there was no recording and the police officer taking the call couldn’t tell if the caller was male or female, young or old.
“Do you want to tell Inspector Pittolo about this?” asked Josh after they’d finished talking to the attending detectives. “Uniform will inform the parents, once we find out where they are.”
* * *
“Stupid bitch,” Bella gasped when Nathalie told her about Jackie. “Stupid, stupid bitch. Why couldn’t she just have stayed home and made a go of it with me? Instead she’s out picking up some stranger who shoots her.”
They were in the coffee room on the fifth floor and the door was shut. Bella looked pale, and her eyes showed a mixture of anger and pain.
“We don’t know what happened yet,” Nathalie said quietly. “But obviously we believe there’s a connection between Jackie’s death and the others. Hopefully we’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Surely you don’t still believe she killed the other three women?”
“We don’t know,” she answered carefully. “All we know is that she was shot in the chest, which is different to the other three, but at this stage we’ve got no idea with what.”
Bella nodded.
“Bella, did she have anything at your house…you know, personal effects?”
“Not much. Perhaps some toiletries, underwear, that sort of thing. Why?”
“We’ll need anything you’ve got,” Nat replied. “The small things are all we have to go on right now. Jackie’s flat has been sealed and a search team will be going through it. We desperately need to find something other than
the argument in the club, to connect the three…now four…of them.”
“Do you still think they could be random lesbian killings?” Bella asked quietly.
“Possibly, but we don’t really know.”
“Do you want me to take you home?” Nat asked after she’d made Bella a coffee and they’d talked some more.
“No,” she replied quickly. “I don’t see any point in doing that. There’s nothing there for me. I’d rather be around to see if they find out anything new.”
It was awkward, but it had to be said. “Bella, Josh isn’t going to allow any information that comes out of the investigation to be passed on to you. I’m sorry.”
“Why?” she spluttered. “I thought that was because I might pass on information to a suspect? I can hardly do that now.”
Without answering, Nathalie reached out and touched Bella’s hand.
“Jumped-up little germ,” she spat. “Who does he think he is? I outrank him and I should be kept informed.”
“He’s an acting inspector, Bella,” Nathalie reminded her gently. “And if you go over his head, the bosses will know it wasn’t just a friendship between you and Jackie. And they still won’t give you what you want because you’re personally involved.”
“But you will, won’t you, Nat?” she begged. “She was my girlfriend.”
Again Nat shook her head. “Go home, Bella,” she suggested. “Take some time off. When you’ve had a chance to get over the shock, you’ll recognize that none of us have a choice. We have to cut you out of the loop. Technically, you could be a suspect. We don’t know for sure it’s the same murderer.”
When she left, Bella insisted on taking her own car, and in a strange way, Nat was relieved. Things had obviously been bad between Bella and Jackie, but she didn’t doubt that Bella was upset. Once the initial shock wore off, Bella would need a friend. But right now, Nathalie was barely managing to get through the day herself.