Tall Dark Heart

by Chris Krupa

  ‘Second victim: Pavali Singh, twenty-one-years old. Time of death estimated between 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM yesterday morning. Died from three stab wounds in the abdomen, one close to the umbilicus, two in the... what the frick is that word?’

  ‘Epigastric area.’

  I indicated the human figure diagram and the lines pointing to the gut region.

  I pointed to the third paragraph on Pavali’s report. ‘Look at this... stab wounds caused by a single-pointed end showing a unilateral “fish tail” split due to the blunt back edge on the knife blade. These characteristics were related to a knife with a single sharp edge, consistent with something like a butterfly knife, a single sharp edge with a squared-off back, approximately twenty centimetres long. Stab wounds show square skin abrasions at the ends. These ‘hit marks’ resulted from the knife’s handle contacting the body surface when the knife was vigorously plunged into the flesh. Can I see Renee’s report again?’

  Aunty flipped back to the first page, and I pointed to the last paragraph, written in a messy scrawl.

  ‘Wounds consistent with a butterfly knife approximately fifteen to twenty centimetres in length.’

  ‘Jesus,” Aunty said. “Both were killed with the same knife.’

  ‘Which implies both girls were killed by the same killer. Did either of the girls have alcohol in their system?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If either of them was drinking socially, I might be able to trace back to where they were socialising and make enquiries.’

  ‘Sorry, bud, it says here toxicology on both girls came back negative.’

  Everything pointed to a connection between the three women—Renee, being Tamsin’s roommate, and Pavali, killed on the same night as Renee and dumped a block from the dormitory.

  What were the odds of two women from the same college, living in the same building, being murdered by stab wounds within twelve hours of each other?

  It was beyond coincidence.

  I imagined the horror Pavali must have experienced at the hands of her killer, and felt a profound sadness for her parents, no doubt thousands of kilometers away and feeling utterly helpless and devastated.

  I nodded. ‘Thank you for helping me.’

  She winked. ‘This shit stays between you and me. Comprende?’

  I laughed, and she folded the manila folder and shoved it into the blackness of her hand bag.

  She glanced at the toilets. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Bitch-face is taking a shit, so we’ve got at least fifteen minutes. I’m former ASIO, but I packed that shit in four years ago. I work freelance now. Cherie’s got me on a three-month contract, but she does the fun shit and leaves the bullshit admin work to me. I’m fucking braindead. You ever thought about taking on a partner? I need some action.’

  ‘Honestly? No. Only because it’s not something I can afford to do, so I’ve never considered it seriously.’

  ‘You ever take on cases where you need private information you don’t have access to?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘I’ve got contacts—Roads and Maritime, State Revenue, Social Security. They’re embedded, real deep. I’m talking fifteen years. Trusted family types, you know? The kind that avert suspicion. They take ten percent from my commissions and they relay everything cryptically on Linux. No bastard can hack it. You take me on, my cut’s twenty percent.’

  She gave me her card, an otherwise blank rectangle of cardboard with a handwritten phone number. ‘Call me if you hit a wall.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And if you can’t use your brains, use what God gave you. Hottie like you, should be a snap.’

  I laughed. ‘Thank you for this. If I get stuck, I’ll know who to call.’

  ‘I’m about to go postal if I don’t get to use my brain. Call me.’

  I got up to leave, and Aunty gripped my wrist. Her eyes held mine. ‘Do me a favour? Don’t try to find out my name. You try, and I find out? I get a bunch of pipe-beating mothers on your arse, lay you out flat. We clear?’

  I nodded.

  She said, ‘Better haul arse. Here comes bitch-face now.’

  ***

  On the drive back, I tried to draw connections between Renee and Pavali, and possibly Tamsin, but couldn’t match A to B to C. Millions of maybes ran through my head like wild horses. Maybe the girls were friends and met the same man. Maybe it was a love triangle gone wrong. Maybe Tamsin walked in on something and the girls were taken out, or Tamsin was dealing drugs and it went wrong, or the girls saw a criminal’s face in the building and were taken out.

  Weary from the second drive from Sydney in two days, I relaxed late that afternoon in my flat and updated my notes to include Renee and Pavali. I walked down and bought a kebab for dinner, and indulged in two baklavas back home.

  My mobile rang at 11:40 PM, and I stumbled from the lounge into the darkness of my bedroom to answer it. The screen said private number. ‘Hello?’

  ‘I told you to forget about Tamsin Lyons,’ growled a familiar voice. I matched it to my assailant at Clovelly on Saturday.

  ‘Drop the case or we drop you.’

  ‘Who the fuck is this? And don’t hang up.’

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 10

  Renee Prestwidge and Pavali Singh were the top two trending hashtags on Twitter’s news feed Monday morning. Those on the left demanded Sydney university ban males from all campuses as an interim measure to protect female students. Sydney university students demanded around-the-clock police escorts for women entering and leaving campus on foot. Politicians suggested more CCTV on campus and surrounds, and feminists demonised the Y chromosome, linking the murders to rising domestic violence statistics.

  I didn’t know what to expect at the university, but I anticipated high emotions as Renee and Pavali’s peers discovered the horrific circumstances surrounding their murders. I took the extra precaution of taking my leather jacket with me, and once again fired up the ute and took the same roads back into Sydney.

  The grounds of Sydney University are expansive and contain grand buildings in the English Gothic style. An Olympic-sized pool and rugby fields surround a large duck pond, all visible from the main road on the eastern approach. I found an open gate and pulled off Broadway. Signs directed me to the veterinary sciences administration building at the northern end, and I parked in a tiny car park where most of the spaces were signposted for faculty staff.

  I went into a large administration building where a round, ginger man with a patchy beard and wearing a Deadpool tee shirt manned the reception desk. His name tag said ‘Eric,’ but he’d pinned it on upside down. When he saw me, he pushed his glasses up his nose with two fat fingers. ‘How can I help you today, sir?’

  I told him who I was and showed him my licence. He leaned forward, and I caught a whiff of his B.O.

  I said, ‘I’m interested in talking to Tamsin Lyons. She’s a second-year student studying Veterinary Studies. Would I be able to get a list of any classes she may be attending today, or at the very least, the names of her tutors?’

  He tapped some keys and made pursing noises with his lips. ‘One order with the lot coming up.’

  He printed off two pages, nimbly selected a map from a holder, and handed the bundle to me. ‘Have you been on the university grounds before?’

  I shook my head. ‘First time. Be gentle.’

  He unfolded the map and used a sharpie to mark the places he referred to. ‘Everything’s there—room numbers, scheduled classes for the day going right into next week. If you don’t find those guys in those specific rooms, try the faculty lounges. There’s one here in the western wing of the main building in the quadrangle, and two smaller ones over here by the Cathedral.’

  His eagerness to help took my mind off the recent horrible turn of events, and eased some of the anxiety I’d felt since entering the grounds.

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said as I folded the map in half. ‘But in my line of work, I usuall
y don’t get a friendly reception from admin clerks.’

  He waved a hand and smiled. ‘No biggie. These totalitarian fascists think they can withhold information from everyday Australian citizens.’ He raised a fist to shoulder height. ‘Information for the people, I say.’

  I smiled. ‘Thanks again.’

  He casually saluted a flick of the wrist.

  The first lecture was scheduled for 9:15 AM, which gave me twenty minutes to find the right room. Eric’s markings helped. A strong easterly came up as I made a beeline across grassy commons. In the distance, a rugby match played out, and I reluctantly congratulated the boys on being young and privileged. University life seemed alien to me, with the media reporting a rise in binge drinking, anonymous sex, and hazing rituals, irking me rather than intriguing me. Then again, perhaps in some masochistic way, and all things considered, maybe I envied the freedoms enjoyed by the young and the free.

  A Royal Commission into the five main banks compounded the matter by blaming cronyism in universities as a major cause of corrupt bank practices. As I made my way across the grassy expanses, I imagined the famous alumni of the past, such as former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and supermodel Elle MacPherson, rubbing shoulders with the infamous, including former Prime Minister hopeful Mark Latham and right-winger Tony Abbott.

  Bells rang out from the carillon tucked behind a spire of what must have been St. Paul’s College, and for a moment I felt as if I’d stepped into Cambridge, England. I scanned female students, in the hope of recognising Tamsin, as they made their way in groups to various lecture rooms. They pushed against the wind and raked windswept hair out of their mouths. I managed to ask some of them if they knew or heard of Tamsin, but none of them had. I asked two girls sneaking a smoke under a copse of trees, and at the mention of Tamsin’s name, they each shot knowing looks at one another before shaking their heads.

  As I crossed the majestic quadrangle to the School of Veterinary Science’s building, I noticed a young man following me. Beak-nosed with thick eyebrows, he wore tight jeans and sneakers, and a hoodie enveloped a waifish frame. When I casually glanced in his direction, he smirked, took a sharp left, and vanished behind brick pillars.

  The entrance to the Sydney School of Veterinary Science building features sandstone pillars and a crest adorning the large doorway, and a parapet tops a small tower. The corridor to the lecture hall lacked light and air conditioning. Signs directed me to hall S10, which featured a classic pitched floor. I studied the eight students as they typed on their laptops—none of them were Tamsin.

  A short woman in her sixties slowly paced the lower stage from side to side, and concluded a lecture. Two video screens above her head said, ‘Introductory Veterinary Pathogenesis.’

  She thanked her audience, and the students packed up and quickly filed out past me. I went down to the stage, and she smiled and raised a hand. ‘Stop there. Stand still, and don’t say a thing. Give me your hands.’

  Her eyes sparkled, and a harmless, motherly aura radiated from her.

  It beguiled me.

  She said, ‘Come on. Entertain an old woman. I promise I won’t bite.’

  Against my better nature, I found myself taking her hands into mine.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and rocked on her heels. Within a minute, she slowly opened her eyes and met mine. ‘You don’t seem to be the judging type, do you? You have a very open face. Promise you won’t judge an old woman?’

  I smiled. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Ah, there you are. You are an Alpine. That’s a breed of goat. I see people as goats.’ She admonished me with stern fingers. ‘You promised you wouldn’t judge! I’ve been around goats and studied them for forty years, since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. One day, I brought in my father’s goats from the paddocks, because his father was a goat herder from the Ukraine, and I had an epiphany. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The Pygmiess, the Boers, the LaManchas, each had their own unique quality, and each had their own foibles and downsides. I realised that people are like goats.’

  I didn’t know what to think. All I could do was introduce myself and tell her the reason I was there.

  ‘I’m Liz Dorsett. A pleasure to meet you. My Carpe Noctem girl hasn’t been to class of late. She’s a sweetheart, Tamsin is.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Tamsin says it at the end of every lecture: ‘Carpe Noctem, Mrs. D. ‘Carpe Diem’ was too cliché for her, you see? You know Carpe Diem?’

  ‘‘Seize the day’.’

  ‘Right. Well, Tamsin always says ‘Carpe Noctem.’ It means ‘seize the night,’ because she’s a night owl and a serial procrastinator. Beautiful girl, smart, intelligent, but she has a nasty habit of submitting her assignments at the last minute. She’s one of those people who can get by with four hours of sleep! God knows I can’t!’

  ‘Has Tamsin been to any classes lately?’

  ‘No. Funny you say that, now that I think of it. I haven’t seen her in... it must be two weeks now. I assumed she dropped out or changed course, but no one tells me anything. Try the gym. She’s very committed to getting her body fat down and entering a body sculpting competition. It’s one of the big ones, and I’ll think she’ll get there. She’s in the gym just about every day. I’m afraid I’m not much help to you at all, am I?’

  ‘Actually, you’ve been very helpful. Did you recognise if she was having trouble studying, or if things were getting her down?’

  ‘Tamsin’s not like that. She’s very head strong, and if she sets out to do something, by God, she does it. I’ve only had her for two units, but both were distinctions as far as I can remember. She’s always inquisitive, always pushing herself. If anything, Tamsin can be a little reserved and keeps to herself. I’ve tried to encourage her to mingle with others, but she prefers the gym in solitude, when no one else is there, only from what others have told me.’

  ‘Do you remember the last time you saw her?’

  She smiled a charming, impish smile. ‘You’re testing the grey matter. Tamsin came and saw me in the staff room last Tuesday, or was it Wednesday? No, Wednesday morning. She wants to change her degree to physical fitness, and wanted to know if any of her units could be transferred.’

  ‘Any reason why?’

  ‘We lose forty percent of students in the first year, and a bunch more either swap degrees or carry over what they’ve completed, and if they can’t, they transfer or drop out. It’s just second year jitters’

  ‘Any possibility she’s being influenced by anybody, as far as you know?’

  ‘Everyone’s influenced by everyone and everything, know what I mean? She doesn’t have a huge circle of friends, if that’s what you mean. She spends every day in the gym, when she’s not studying.’

  ‘Would you know if Tamsin has any boyfriends? Or if anyone takes an interest in her?’

  She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God, is this about the two girls who were killed?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I can’t make any direct connections other than Renee being Tamsin’s roommate.’

  ‘Oh, those poor girls. You don’t think Tamsin is involved, do you? I saw it on the news this morning. Usually twenty show up to the lecture. Well, you saw how many there were today. Maybe that’s got something to do with it. The whole university’s in shock mode today. I think it’s hit some of them very hard. They were both such beautiful girls.’

  I nodded. ‘What about Tamsin? What sort of goat is she?’

  ‘Tamsin’s a British Alpine—very independent, doesn’t rely on others at all. A bit of an enigma. She keeps to herself, never comes to lectures with anyone. She’s always early, always sits by herself. Hands assignments in on time, asks sensible questions. She stands out by her inconspicuousness. She makes her presence known but never attracts attention.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate your time.’

  ‘Are you seeing anyone else today? Sorry if I’m being a sticky beak.’

  ‘No, that’s fine. I’
ll be going to Dr. Edmondson’s lecture in the psych rooms.’

  She put her face in her hands.

  I said, ‘Dr. Edmondson one of the bad goats?’

  ‘A Nubian—stubborn, irrational, and responds very well to affection.’

  I had thirty minutes until Edmondson’s lecture, so I ordered a latte in the campus cafeteria and took up a seat by one of the front windows, in order to keep an eye out for Tamsin. I heard whispers and glanced around.

  On the other side of the cafeteria, the waifish young man who followed me earlier sat with two other men. They were swapping jokes and laughing manically. Wrappers and empty drink cans littered their table.

  I approached them, introduced myself, and asked if they knew Tamsin. They barely stifled their amusement at the mention of her name, and eyed each other.

  The one on my extreme left, a blond, heavyset rugby type, took the lead. ‘Haven’t seen her around. She might be busy.’

  This drew laughter from his two cohorts.

  I said, ‘Busy doing what?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can go into details. I have a lot of respect for Tamsin, and this isn’t the best time or place, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t. You’re going to have to humour me.’

  He glanced at his buddies for assistance. They covered their mouths and tittered. He turned back to me and shrugged. ‘Tamsin’s always very—’ He made quotation marks with his fingers. ‘—busy, yeah? Always on the go, popular with the boys. Know what I mean? She likes making new friends and indulging in.... How should I say this?’ He made more air quotes. ‘Extra-curricular activities.’

  The cronies laughed again.

  The smirking beak-nosed waif pretended to clear his throat. ‘She probably wore out the knee pads, mate. She’d do anyone with a knob.’

  A quick survey of the architraves told me I’d be caught on at least two CCTV cameras, so I quashed the red-hot desire to ram my fist down the waif’s throat.

  They pushed their chairs back as I jammed my fists into my pockets. The blond leader gave me a peace sign, and they sauntered out of the cafeteria.