by LM Ardor
As she looked the screen became blurry. She put up her hand to check she had her reading glasses on then realised why she couldn’t see—her eyes were wet with tears. For a minute she thought she was about to faint then realised she was hyperventilating. She concentrated on slow breaths, did the exercises she gave patients with panic attacks. It was difficult to keep up. She resolved to be more understanding with people who couldn’t do it.
Slowly she felt better, wiped her eyes and buzzed Janelle.
‘I need some help—can you come in?’
‘You’re all pale. What’s wrong? I’ll get William.’
‘No, I found something in Tom’s file. It’s important. I need to…’ Dee paused.
Janelle was standing in the doorway with half an eye on the front desk.
‘Come in, leave the desk for a minute. Tom Harris sent these to me so they’d be safe. Any other copies have probably been destroyed. This is important, write it down. Can you print out more copies, send hard copies by post to me at home, to Marlena Ng, to Glebe Police Station, Attention Craig Mason and to Rob’s office? Then scan and email them to me and to Raj as well.’
‘I finish at six. Can it wait till morning?’
‘Janelle, if there’s any way you can do it now I’ll be forever grateful.’ Dee held out her trembling hands. ‘I’d do it but I don’t think I’m capable.’
Janelle looked at Dee silently for a moment.
‘Okay, but you need to tell me what’s going on.’
‘Thanks. I will, but not right now. Is that okay?’
Janelle put her hand on Dee’s shoulder. ‘All right. Will you be okay getting home?’
‘Yes, and thanks again. I wouldn’t ask if—’
Janelle interrupted. ‘Shush; go home. It’ll be done. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘Don’t say anything to anyone, please. It’s important.’
Janelle handed Dee her bag and opened the back door for her. Dee gathered the printed pages, went down to her car and drove home.
*
‘Mum,’ Eleanor came out of her room, with a big smile, surprised to see her mother so early. She held out her arms, ‘Cuddle?’
‘Do I deserve this?’ Dee said as her youngest held her tight.
‘Yeah you do. I love you, we all do.’
Dee thought of the horrors waiting for her in her email and she thought of her family.
‘Do you want a roast chicken?’ she asked. There was time to get to the supermarket for a chicken. She’d make a bread and butter pudding for dessert.
*
The smell of the chicken roasting with rosemary filled the house. The warm sweet perfume of vanilla and raisins added a complex dimension of comfort. Like music playing, an orchestra of smells; the bread and butter pudding was the viola—a sweet note of complexity.
The girls were in their rooms with homework and Ollie was practising a piece on the oboe. The smells and sounds made it easier to print out the material from Tom’s file. Dee sat on the floor at the foot of her bed and spread out the pages.
First she sorted them into individual stories and ordered them by date. There were six. Most recently, a year earlier, a medical technician from GenSafe had drowned while snorkelling at Clovelly. The police found traces of party drugs in his system and the conclusion was accidental death due to swimming while intoxicated. The body was bashed around a bit by the swell but police declared ‘no suspicious circumstances’. The obituary in the local paper mentioned his job. Tom must have searched extraordinarily widely, or possibly had inside help, to make the connection to GenSafe.
Another employee of GenSafe had died only a year earlier. The woman was forty and had come off a motorbike in Bali while on holiday with girlfriends. The inquest report addressed her husband’s claims that his wife would never ride a motorbike. Her friends told a different story. The woman had run into a male friend in Bali and didn’t stay with the group at the hotel they were all booked into. The man was not traced although the woman’s travelling companions thought he was someone she had known from Australia. Conclusion: accidental death secondary to riding a motorcycle while drunk.
A later article reported that Lindquist had died because he was driving while intoxicated with rohypnol. The translation of the article mentioned that he was a promising researcher. A year before that was an Australian PhD student in genetics, also found dead with a massive dose of rohypnol in his blood while overseas for a conference—this time in Bangkok. One of his supervisors was Adam Fairborn. Both the dead were working on gene shears although at different universities. Adam had several papers with Lindquist as co-author. Tom had made a note that he was searching for a list of attendees at the conference in Helsinki. Apart from an article in the English-language Bangkok Post no investigation details were given.
The stove timer beeped. Time to turn the chicken breast up for ten minutes to brown and to organise someone to set the table. She briefly checked the other stories. She already knew about these. Adam’s Japanese girlfriend who died when they were all in fourth year at uni. The autopsy report was there. Dee was surprised that Mami had been five months pregnant when she died. Mami’s death was ruled accidental. She drowned after diving and hitting her head on a submerged rock at Lane Cove River Park. No one at uni had known about the pregnancy except, Dee guessed, Adam.
‘Mum, what’s happening? Do you want me to turn the chicken?’ Beatrice called.
‘Yes, thanks. Put the timer on for ten minutes more. Take out the pudding and get your brother to set the table.’
Oliver called out, ‘Done, done, done, done’ in imitation of a clock chime.
Dee looked at the last group of papers. In their final year Ly, Adam’s only competition for the University Medal, killed himself by electrocution in the electrophysiology lab late one night. No suspicious circumstances were found. Ly was known to be grieving a relationship breakup and although there was no note, the careful set-up of the wires was so deliberate that a finding of suicide was made.
Ly was a hard-working boy from Singapore with an unexpected, quirky sense of humour. His old-fashioned chivalrousness had intrigued Dee. They had become friends. Their contact was only occasional. They had different friendship networks but when they did have a chance to talk they understood each other. She was shocked by his death, everyone was, but no one had questioned the suicide. Dee remembered the gracious reference Adam made to Ly in his acceptance speech for the University Medal at their graduation. She shivered and gathered the papers into one pile.
As she looked at the wad of papers, the horror overcame her again. Her blood turned to icy coolant in her veins, flowing but no longer human. No human heart could deal with what this meant. Adam simply killed anyone who got in his way, including his own parents and brother. So far, with Tom, the count was up to ten. How many others could there be?
What could have happened if she had agreed to meet him? A middle-aged doctor certified as insane who was about to be deregistered. An overdose, driving her car off a cliff while drugged—no one would question suicide. Except Raj, who would be dismissed as a victim of folie à deux.
More terror hit her as she remembered her breakup with Adam. How fortunate that she had accepted it quietly. Poor Mami.
The timer beeped again.
In a few seconds she would take the dinner out of the oven and pour boiling water over broccoli to go with it; for the sane, lovely people who were her children. How could someone like Adam exist on the same planet?
The articles weren’t proof but there were too many accidental deaths and suicides around Adam to be coincidence. The police had to investigate.
So far Adam had removed the threat from her by discrediting her. She was about to be officially crazy, obsessed about an ex-lover. He didn’t know she had the files Tom had collected, the evidence of long-term connection to all the deaths. The fact she and Adam were in open conflict might provide her some protection. Surely the police would investigate if she were found dead. Althoug
h suicide was plausible.
Leah was more at risk. She couldn’t live forever in the bush waiting for Adam to forget. Clearly Adam would not forget.
Dee put the papers in her bag—she didn’t want anyone else to come across them. She walked into the kitchen. She had to tell the children something; give them some warning that their lives were about to be turned upside down.
The table was set and the chicken on the carving plate. Eleanor turned off the kettle and poured it over the broccoli.
‘Who wants to carve the chicken?’
Oliver was first up and grabbed the knife.
‘You never let me do it,’ Beatrice objected.
‘Your turn next time,’ Dee said. ‘You get the vegetables out of the pan and onto a serving plate.’
The three of them looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Dee didn’t usually let them handle hot baking dishes or carving.
They sat down and filled their plates and ate silently, intent on the first few mouthfuls.
‘You’re all growing up. Beatrice has her driving test soon,’ Dee said once the urgency of starvation was over.
‘You didn’t forget it’s on Friday, did you?’ Beatrice asked. ‘Indira’s mother’s taking me but I’ll need the car. You said you’d get the train to work.’
‘Yes. I’ll catch the train.’ Dee avoided admitting she had forgotten. ‘It won’t be long before all of you will have licences. Time for some changes. You want to be treated more like adults, don’t you?’
They all nodded but they looked wary. They knew she was stressed out. Who knew what they imagined was wrong with her? Doubts about her sanity? She’d had those herself.
Her nerve failed. She couldn’t spoil their dinner. They didn’t need to know till the medical board decision was handed down.
57.
It was 6.30 pm; five hours since she’d had Janelle ring Marlena. Dee sent newly married Emily to the toilet to get a specimen for a pregnancy test and went through to reception.
‘Nothing?’ she asked Janelle.
‘No, sorry.’
‘And the others knew to put her through?’
‘Dee, they all knew. No one has called you from the police.’ Janelle sounded impatient. ‘Should I call them again?’
‘No, it’s too late. What about my mobile?’
‘Nothing—only a wrong number. Half an hour ago. They wanted a George. Hung up when I said I didn’t know him.’
‘Was it a woman? Aussie accent?’
Janelle nodded.
Dee grabbed for the phone. There was a mobile number she didn’t know. Emily walked back into the surgery with her specimen. Dee put on gloves and took the jar of urine. Emily and Joshua had come in together two months ago for a pre-pregnancy check. This wouldn’t take long to sort out.
‘Okay, do you want to watch?’ Dee asked.
Emily was quiet but nodded her head. Dee sat down and held the test stick over the desk between them. Within seconds a strong plus sign appeared.
Dee was ready with a smile.
Emily burst into tears.
It was a trap Dee hadn’t fallen into for years now. She told the registrars, ‘Always know before you do a pregnancy test how the person feels about being pregnant.’
Dee sighed quietly and asked, ‘How do you feel about that?’
*
Forty-five minutes later, Dee was at her desk alone. She had arranged an ultrasound, referral for termination of pregnancy, information about emergency accommodation and a referral for domestic violence counselling.
Janelle had gone. All the lights were out apart from her room. Dee closed her computer. The backup kicked in automatically. The routine, things proceeding as they were meant to, was usually a comfort. Tonight, it reminded her of how out of control the rest of her life was.
Her phone was still on her desk. She picked it up and rang the unknown number.
‘Hello?’
The voice was male. Dee’s heart sank. To hope it was Marlena was a fantasy born of desperation. She had to get the new evidence to someone official.
‘Oh, sorry, I had a call from this number, I thought it was from someone I knew. Sorry, I’ll let you go.’ As she spoke there were muffled sounds from the other end. The man’s voice came back.
‘Hang on a minute, a person here says they rang someone on my phone.’ The voice changed to Marlena’s unmistakably flat Aussie vowels.
‘Dee?’
‘Marlena, you got my message.’ Relief. ‘There’s new evidence, I sent copies to you.’
‘No, please no.’ Her voice was high, anxious. ‘Where’d you send it?’
‘To your house, I think. Janelle sent it yesterday. It should be there now.’
‘Shit, thank goodness.’ The relief was clear in Marlena’s voice. ‘This has all blown up. I can’t talk to you. No one from the station can. The commissioner’s warned us off. My promotion’s probably off.’
‘But this new information links Adam to multiple suspicious deaths over years—’
Marlena cut her off. ‘Dee, if he’s committed genocide we still can’t go after him. That’s it.’
‘Can you at least read what I sent?’ Dee heard the desperation in her own voice.
‘Dee, you have to forget it. Please stay away from this. Your professor’s got some friends in very high places. If work even knew I’ve spoken to you I could lose my job. I have to go.’
‘How can I get in touch with you?’
‘You can’t. Please, Dee, I can’t do anything about this. No one can. Leave it alone.’
Marlena hung up.
58.
Dee drove home and parked outside the house. The children were with Rob. That felt safer. He wanted to know why they had to change their night but was okay when she said she couldn’t tell him. Her heroic struggle to be civilised and accept his new life/wife had paid off.
Would she need to move them all to somewhere with proper security?
The house was completely dark, the glass walls opaque and reflecting the street. She was safe in the confined space of the car: the doors were locked; she could see all around, and she was in view of neighbours. Anyone could be lurking in the dark spaces of the house. Once she turned on the lights inside, her vision of the surrounds would be gone. She would be visible to anyone in the bush.
She looked around. There was no one about. No unknown cars were parked in the cul-de-sac. Nothing was out of order but the darkness spread out into horrible possibilities. It no longer felt safe to go home.
When the kids were home their noise and enthusiasm banished the blackness. She could ring them at Rob’s. They’d think she was pathetic. She was pathetic.
Where was Raj? With him she was comfortable. He was the only person who knew about all this and who didn’t think she was crazy. Once he read the emails he’d surely ring.
A night alone exposed by her transparent house was too much. She started the car and drove to work. She parked in her car space and waited till she saw a couple get out of their car. She walked up the stairs with them.
Once she was on the street it was busy, people talked, ate, lived, had ordinary lives while in her head she was in a thriller. Her anxiety seemed overwrought in the midst of normal life around her. Why would Adam do anything more to her when she was totally discredited?
She walked to Darling Harbour and checked into the Ibis Hotel because she knew it had secure lifts. The receptionist gave her an upgrade to an executive room with full-length glass windows overlooking the harbour and the city. The sheets were crisp and smooth. The smell and smoothness of freshly made white ironed linen was luxurious. After dinner she would have a bath, a full hot tub with jasmine bath salts.
It was silly to be frightened. She was hungry. She wouldn’t let this stop her from having a life. She picked up her wallet and went downstairs. The hotel food was boring and expensive so she went next door to the pub for a bottle of Shaw and Smith Sauvignon Blanc then across the road for a bento box of prawn and
vegetable tempura from the local Japanese. It was fine. No one sinister was following her.
*
Back at the hotel an Asian man in a suit got into the lift with her. He used his key card to go to floor seventeen. She got out there too. He turned left along the corridor while she walked slowly to the right. She glanced back. He was still walking; his room must be at the far end. She stood at a doorway without a light under it and opened her wallet as if to search for a key card. She didn’t have to pretend to fumble with it, her hands were shaking.
It was ridiculous. The man had a key card for the lift. Why was her heart thumping? She heard a door close and looked again. He was gone.
She walked back to the lift. It was empty. She found her card and went up to twenty.
Back in the room she dimmed the lights and changed into the hotel’s white robe. The city and the harbour were laid out for her. She ate without regard for crumbs or who would have to clean up. In the morning she could sleep in. There were no worries about traffic or what to wear.
In the bath she was half asleep in a cloud of scented steam. There was a knock at the door.
‘Turndown service,’ said a male voice with an Asian accent.
‘Not tonight. I’m okay, thanks,’ she called back.
Then she heard the door handle turn. She sat up. There was a wine glass on her chest. She moved it onto the floor and stood up. She stepped out of the bath and grabbed a towel.
The door to her room was open. Her thoughts sped up. The best move was to get out to the corridor and scream. But he must know where she was. She’d go along with it till she could see where he was and then run.
‘Hey, I’m in the bath. Can you come back …’ Dee said loudly as she peeked into the room.
A small Asian man stood next to the bed. He was the same build and age as the man who had got into the lift with her but was in a hotel uniform. He looked startled.
‘Sorry, sorry. Turndown service.’ He held a Lindt Lindor Ball out towards her as evidence.