Tall Dark Heart

by Chris Krupa

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  We shook hands as Zara returned from the house and handed my licence back. ‘Tell me word for word what my sister told you.’

  ‘Evelyn’s worried about Tamsin. She’s gone missing.’

  Zara said, ‘And that gives you reason to assault my husband, does it?’

  ‘Actually, your ex-husband hired me.’

  She swept damp strands of hair from her forehead and sighed. ‘I haven’t talked to Jeff in eight years.’ She fixed Ed with a stare. ‘Sweetheart, can you call the police? I don’t want to deal with this today.’

  I said, ‘Tamsin might be dead.’

  ‘Is that what Jeff thinks?’

  ‘It’s what I think. Tamsin’s deleted her social media accounts and her roommate’s been found murdered. Tamsin may be implicated, and Evelyn’s worried. I know my timing couldn’t be worse, but would you mind if we sit down, maybe share a drink and talk?’

  Zara visibly shook, and her mouth went tight.

  Ed touched her gently on the shoulder. ‘Hon, how about I whip you up a margarita? I’ll make myself a scotch while I’m there.’

  She touched his hand and the rigidness left her body. ‘Can you get my happy pills?’

  He straightened his shirt, and Zara and I both watched as he slowly hobbled to the house.

  I turned to Zara. ‘I think Tamsin might be in danger. Have you seen her recently, or spoken to her?’

  Zara stared at me and her chest rose slowly. She strode to a banana chair and snatched up a luxurious white towel. She flipped her head and her hair violently shifted to one side, a move she’d made a thousand times after a shower. She dried her hair with long strokes and fixed me with cool grey eyes. ‘She showed up after my balance class a few Mondays ago.’

  ‘Can you remember the exact date?’

  ‘I have no idea. The Monday before last?’

  I made a mental note—9th of March.

  ‘She was acting nice, which was an immediate red flag.’

  ‘What did she talk about?’

  ‘I really have absolutely no idea. Something about university and going away. She made herself a cup of tea and went upstairs and sat out on the balcony.’

  Ed reappeared with a tall cocktail glass in one hand and a bag of frozen peas in the other. He’d lined the rim with salt, and Zara took it gratefully. He opened his hand to show two pills, and Zara took them with the cocktail. He kissed her on the cheek and she smiled with flat eyes. Ed eased into a banana chair and spread the bag over his mouth.

  I said, ‘How long was she upstairs for?’

  ‘I didn’t time it on a stopwatch.’

  ‘A rough guess. Ten minutes? An hour?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea because I didn’t even see her leave.’

  ‘She just up and left?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘What time did you notice she was gone?’

  ‘I went upstairs to bed, and she’d left her cup on the table on the balcony. I remember because she can’t stand coffee circles on the table. That might be the only thing she inherited from me. Otherwise, she left without saying, ‘Goodbye, arsehole.’ What did Jeff say about all this?’

  ‘He hasn’t heard from Tamsin in two weeks.’

  Zara scoffed. ‘That’s typical Jeff. Just because she hasn’t called Daddy Dearest, the whole world falls apart.’

  ‘This is serious, Zara. Tamsin’s roommate’s been found murdered.’

  Zara looked at me evenly. ‘You said that. And as terrible as that is, I don’t see what that’s got to do with Tamsin?’

  ‘Well, it’s a strange coincidence if she’s not involved, don’t you think?’

  ‘How should I know? Tamsin made it very clear that she wants nothing to do with me.’ She waved a hand. ‘She’s probably run off with some boy or went on a road trip with her pretentious uni buddies. Who knows? She’s doing what every twenty-year-old does, and fucking around doing whatever the hell she wants. If you’re any good, you’ll find her in bed with someone somewhere. Or here’s an idea: don’t even bother. Leave it a few weeks and milk Jeff for as much as you can. You may as well get something out of it. I know he’ll pay well. He always has. Do me a favour? When you find her? Don’t let the lost little puppy dog act fool you. She’s a narcissistic gold digger pretending to be something she’s not.’

  I said, ‘Do you love your daughter, Ms. Lyons?’

  Ed sat up. ‘What the hell sort of question is that?’ He got to his feet and pushed his shoulders back. ‘All right. Sorry, hon, this joker’s got to go. Time to leave, mate, or we press charges.’

  ‘Come on, Ed. I thought we put all that in the past.’

  Zara searched my eyes for a moment with an expression three parts cynicism, one-part harpy. ‘Of course, I love my daughter. Doesn’t every parent love their child? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?’

  ‘I don’t know you well enough to be drawing any sort of conclusions, Mrs. Venables.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ed stepped between us. ‘You’ve had your fun, buddy. Get off our fucking property. Now!’

  I left, and Ed eyeballed me the entire way. At the last moment, I winked and turned the corner before I saw his reaction. As I made my way back to my car, my phone buzzed in my jeans pocket. It was a text from Dee, my ex-wife.

  Dee: big big favour can u look after alice wednesday night??

  Me: Sure. Whats up?

  Dee: got a new job! training for 4 weeks in sydney and need to go for one night

  Me: Cool. Can you drop her at my place?

  Dee: ok thankx!!!

  I figured any time spent with Alice, our twelve-year-old daughter, was a bonus.

  I heard nothing, and saw nothing, but a blow to the back of my head filled the world with bright lights. I grunted, and half turned.

  A thick-necked man with the build of a leg breaker held a blackjack in one hand, and knocked the phone out of my hand with the other.

  ‘Hey!’

  He punched me in the face with a lightning fast jab that forced me back against a retaining rock wall, my teeth shaken and numb. Squinting against the light with my brain hammering against the insides of my skull, I took note of my assailant’s wardrobe. A white sleeveless muscle shirt, jeans, a bandana adorned with the American flag tied around a bald head.

  He leaned his face close to mine and his breath stunk of stale cigarette smoke. ‘Don’t look for Tamsin Lyons. Leave it alone, or we’ll fucking come after you.’

  He stomped away down the hill, his large muscled arms swinging away from his body, and disappeared around the entrance to the Bronte Baths.

  Chapter 8

  I left Clovelly with a sour taste in my mouth and a throbbing head. Zara’s ambivalence annoyed me, and the run-in with the mystery assailant left me sore and on edge. I’d obviously ruffled some feathers, and I wondered who the man in the bandana may be aligned with. In the two years since I’d acquired my inquiry licence, I’d accepted the fact occasional fisticuffs were par for the course; however, an unprovoked attack in daylight at a popular tourist spot read as desperate or urgent, or both.

  At the peak of the Illawarra escarpment a thick, low fog formed, and the temperature dropped a few degrees. Traffic slowed to a crawl and hazard lights flashed a conga line of orange. The occasional rigor mortis wombat appeared at the side of the road. After two clicks, visibility improved enough to speed up, and the familiar vista of Sydney Blue Gums opened up before me, and the sight of grey beaches, thrashed by rolling surf cast from the menacing cobalt blue of the Tasman under dark autumn skies, brought a smile to my face.

  I cruised back into The Gong and more familiar surroundings. The lack of traffic on Cliff Road, where I lived, stood in direct contrast to the summer months, where a typical Saturday saw a swell of tourists swarming the area for soft serve, bodysurfing, and sun baking, despite all the melanoma awareness commercials. In autumn, the locals reclaimed local eateries and breathed a sigh of relief.

  I
pulled into the tiny parking spot at the rear of my strata complex and made my way up to my flat on the second floor, jiggled the keys in the lock, and opened the door to the smell of red curry still clinging to the walls from my attempt at Thai four nights previously.

  I threw my laptop on the three-seater couch and dashed to the bathroom, the phenomenon of sudden urgency increased by proximity to the toilet. After sparking up a burner on the stovetop, I dumped a frozen lasagna into a saucepan along with half a dozen frozen meatballs my mother had made me, and set it at a gentle simmer while I went into my bedroom to change. Once the sauce had cooked through, I took it off the heat, poured a glass of wine, dumped the food into a deep bowl, and topped it with freshly shaved Reggiano cheese.

  I needed to find the name of the woman I found murdered in Tamsin’s dorm room, and then to find a connection to Tamsin, if there was one.

  Finding a missing person means finding the reason the person went missing in the first place. In some cases, its murder, and finding both the body and the degenerate responsible becomes imperative. In most cases, the reasons aren’t so cut and dry. People go missing for a vast range of reasons, but in all cases, establishing the person’s last known movements is vital, and is where the real gumshoe work takes place.

  In a Word document labelled ‘Tamsin Lyons’ on my laptop, I made some notes covering what I’d learned. I wrote the names of Tamsin’s known family members and made notes against each name:

  Jeff Lyons – contact date and unknown.

  Zara – Tamsin visited Monday 9 March (evening – 2 hours approx.) unknown reasons/not close – say goodbye? Money? Not likely.

  Ed – ? no apparent connection/Tamsin, step-father – what capacity? Not close.

  The easy work included trawling social media accounts, last known residences, and relevant work histories. The next leg involved talking to people—family members, bosses, boyfriends, girlfriends, exes, and social circles. With the close family members, Jeff and Zara, out of the way, I deduced Sydney University to be the next port of call to track Tamsin, or hope someone there had seen her sooner than Tuesday, 6 March, the day Tamsin visited her mother under mysterious circumstances. My stomach filled up quickly, and I slipped in and out of consciousness until my laptop fell off my lap and woke me up, at which point I went to bed.

  Chapter 9

  I woke late, after dreaming one of the women from the Peekaboo launch had been killed, with a headache thanks to the blow from the blackjack. I felt a lump at the base of my skull as I contemplated the laziness of a quiet Sunday spent swimming at the continental pools, and maybe hitting the gym.

  I sparked up a burner on the stove top for the percolator, turned on the ABC Sunday morning news, paid some bills online, and heard the percolator. As I retrieved a mug from an overhead cupboard, the news reader announced the body of a woman had been found murdered in Camperdown Park.

  The park was a block from the Queen Mary Dormitory.

  I jogged through the archway into the lounge room and turned the volume up.

  ‘...grisly discovery was made by a council worker in the early hours of Saturday morning. The twenty-one-year-old woman, a university student in Australia on a student visa, had been stabbed, and her body partially covered. Homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Corey Vinyard said police have recovered her mobile phone in an effort to establish her last known movements.’

  An overweight, middle-aged man appeared and talked out the side of his mouth.

  ‘We’re piecing together some pertinent information, and ask for anyone who spoke with or saw the victim to get in touch with us as soon as possible.’

  A Crime Stoppers phone number appeared, and the news reader moved on to the next story. An ache in my gut told me it was Tamsin, and I pushed the thought away as I retrieved Ivers’ card from my wallet in my bedroom, called his mobile, and went through to his voicemail, where his gruff voice said to leave a name and number.

  I didn’t.

  The switch at the Sydney Homicide Squad put me through to his voicemail, and I hung up. I brought up the Glebe morgue website and read the FAQ’s. One of them said it was possible to have a general viewing of a body in special circumstances, if arranged prior to the post mortem process.

  I retrieved my knuckledusters from the bottom drawer of my tallboy, got into my car, and stopped at the closest Shell to check the oil, water, and tyres. I took Mount Ousley, and sped through the southwest section of Sydney until reaching the CBD. I squeezed into a tiny spot a block west of the Glebe morgue, to go the rest of the way on foot.

  The morgue itself was a plain-looking, single-storey affair built in the seventies and attached to the local coroner’s court. Three people stood before me at the counter. As I waited, one of the people in line, a heavy-set Maori woman with cropped hair, in a navy pants suit, collapsed heavily to the floor.

  The young blonde woman she’d been talking to screamed and stood over her in a panic.

  I ran to the woman on the floor, knelt beside her, and told the other woman to take a step back. A silver bracelet on her right wrist had a plate with the word ‘Epilepsy’ engraved on it.

  I looked up into the panicked eyes of the blonde woman. ‘She’ll be okay. She’s got epilepsy. We need to wait it out.’

  I took out my phone and started the stopwatch feature. After two minutes and forty seconds, the woman’s convulsions stopped. I gently rolled her onto her right side, being careful that her head didn’t flop against the floor. It was another minute before she came to and her eyes focused on me.

  ‘Sweet baby Jesus,’ she groaned.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Think so,’ she said between gritted teeth. She rubbed her lower back. ‘Just another bruise for my big arse.’

  ‘Do you need some help getting up?’

  ‘Just give me another minute, hon. Thanks.’

  The other woman gasped with relief and leaned over the both of us. ‘Aunty? You okay?’

  Aunty rolled onto her back and lifted her arms straight up. ‘Yeah, I’m good Cherie.’ She glanced up at me. ‘Muscles, be a darl’ and help ten-ton Tessie up, will ya?’

  I put my phone away, grabbed her by the wrists, and heaved her to a vertical position.

  She tightened her grip as she struggled to regain her balance. The top of her head came to my chest. ‘Thanks, Muscles. I’m lucky there’s still angels like you in the world.’

  ‘No problem at all. We’re all cut from the same clay, am I right?’

  She looked up at me and smiled. ‘How did you know to time it?’

  ‘My ex-wife’s brother is severely epileptic. My wife showed me how to time his fits.’

  ‘How long was I gone?’

  ‘Two minutes and forty seconds.’

  She rubbed my shoulder. ‘That’s eight seconds off my PB.’

  She readjusted the strap of her handbag, brushed her suit jacket down, and swept her hands down the backs of her legs. ‘You a cop? Built like one.’

  I shook my head. ‘Private investigator.’

  She sighed. ‘That must be exciting. Got a card, Dick Tracy?’

  I fished out one my cheap knockoffs and handed it to her. She glanced at it, then shoved it into her oversized handbag. ‘What’s a nice boy like you doing in the stiff shop?’

  ‘I’m investigating a missing person, and I think she might be tied to the recent murder victims—the two women killed in Camperdown.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw that.’

  ‘I need to find out their names. I’m hoping there’s a connection to my case, but I’m blocked by red tape.’

  ‘Steady on, Sunshine. Unless you’re family, you’ve got buckleys chance of getting through those doors. Tell you what. Hang about. I’ll see what I can do for you.’

  I shot her a quizzical look, and she raised a hand. ‘Karma, bro. Karma.’

  She elbowed my arm, then re-joined Cherie at the front counter. I took a seat in the waiting area and watched as the receptionist provi
ded the women directions, and as they made their way down a long hall and through double doors that read, ‘Authorised personnel only. No public access.’

  After forty minutes, they reappeared. Aunty held a manila folder. Cherie said something to Aunty, then made a beeline for the female toilets.

  Aunty strode over and sat next to me. ‘I Googled you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have found much.’

  ‘Relax, Muscles. I always suss out my peeps. Your name popped up at Cash and Hendrix in Wollongong. Nice place, always wanted to go there. Talked to an American bloke. He was only too happy to spill the beans on you. Hope he’s not a mate of yours.’

  Tact wasn’t one of Reggie’s admirable traits.

  ‘That’s Reggie,’ I said. ‘He’s a little bit left of center, but mostly harmless.’

  ‘He told me everything I needed to know.’

  ‘So, am I legit?’

  ‘You checked out. Listen, there’s a park up on Glebe Point Road, not far from here. Meet me there in ten minutes for a smoke.’

  ***

  The Foley Rest Park was a little oasis of ferns, Moreton bay fig trees, and a children’s playground nestled amongst the busy streets of Sydney. I found a bench seat under a stainless-steel cable trellis.

  Soon Aunty approached and sat next to me. She opened her ginormous hand bag and pulled out a manila folded that had been roughly folded in half.

  ‘I ran into one of the morticians I went to uni with, and he printed copies of the autopsies.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  She opened the manila folder and pulled out photocopies of two autopsy reports. She scrolled the text with her index finger as she read the handwriting near the top of the page in the first report.

  ‘First victim: Renee Prestwidge, nineteen-years-old. Time of death estimated between 10:00 PM Friday night and 1:00 AM yesterday morning. Cause of death due to massive blood loss due to multiple stab wounds from a single-edged butterfly knife. No sign of blunt trauma.’

  She flipped the page and read from the second report.