‘Did you have plaster casts?’
She nodded.
‘Who set them?’
‘Mr O’Brien made Ms O’Brien wet strips of this gauze stuff, then put some white clay—I guess it was plaster—on my arm. It hurt so much. But when he cut them off they were straight.’
Her voice was becoming croaky,
‘Would you like a drink of water?’ he offered.
‘Keep going,’ she said, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. ‘If I go quiet, please tell Mum not to worry.’
Jake forced himself to override his sympathetic reaction to her tears. He had seen victims of trauma do this before—their bodies crying in response to emotional strain, even while the person maintained control over their thoughts and continued to communicate cogently.
‘So, the difference was the first time you woke up in pain the changes to your body were …’
‘I don’t know what Ms O’Brien did to my … what Mum calls my lady parts. I just know there used to be other things there that just aren’t there now.’
‘And the second time?’
‘I’m not sure if it was Mr O’Brien—or if Ms O’Brien came back and it was both of them, or if he left and it was just her—but I think they cut something out of me.’
She was gritting her teeth against a torrent of pain-memory. But was it entirely remembered? ‘Amelia, does it still hurt?’
She nodded. ‘Every day.’
Geezus. ‘Is there a female doctor you’ve met who you trust?’
She shook her head.
‘There’s one more person I’d like you to meet then, please?’ Jake said. ‘If you trust her, perhaps you could talk to her?’
‘Is she a psych?’
‘No, a forensic pathologist.’
‘Like Abby on NCIS … that might be cool.’
‘We could keep your conversations completely off the record, if that would make you feel better?’
She slumped.
‘You don’t have to decide today.’
She shook her head.
‘It’s not that. I can feel time stopping again. I’d say you’ve got about two minutes left before I go inside.’
It was fascinating how she could observe and explain the self-protective barriers her brain shunted into place even as they happened. Jake could understand why some psychologists would be attracted to Amelia as a case study, but also how damaging that could be to her as a patient.
‘I can still hear everything when the world stops, you know?’ she said.
‘When the world stops?’
‘When I go inside my head, somehow it’s like there’s no time passing. Sort of like I’m inside a glass box where other people can see me, and talk to me, and I can hear them, but I can’t talk back because inside my head everything is frozen.’
He had to focus on the task at hand. ‘Amelia, this might be a hard question. Did you become pregnant while you were at the home?’
‘No!?’
‘All right. And I need you to be completely honest—did you have anything to do with what happened to Ava O’Brien?’
Her tears increased. ‘No, but I’m not sorry she’s gone.’
‘Do you know who did it?’
‘You’re asking if it was Charlotte?’
‘Or possibly your father, or Andrew?’
‘I don’t think any of them would do that for me.’
Jake could barely contemplate that, for Amelia, an expression of love might be to murder her abuser. ‘That’s a good thing, Amelia. But they care for you. That’s obvious.’
‘Mum and Charlotte do.’
‘Your brother too, whether you see it or not.’
A sad smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
When this case was over, Jake would explore the possibility of putting Lilith in touch with Amelia and Charlotte. Perhaps they might find some solace in one another.
He felt a pang as her smile faded and she receded into herself, placing her arms across her abdomen and rocking.
Jake stepped into the corridor and found Meena Gill waiting for him. They glanced shyly at each other.
‘On to business,’ she said.
‘Absolutely,’ Jake said.
‘You must have considerable sway in Melbourne. They’ve already sent some results from Lilith Haverstock’s blood sample.’
‘And the cord?’
‘It’s viable, but I have some bad news.’
‘And here I thought my investigation was going so smoothly …’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Meena winked, her warm brown eyes twinkling. ‘So I’ve been able to retrieve blood, and viable DNA from the sample, I think. I already have the alleged mother’s blood type, and with the results of the DNA analyses I should have for her by tomorrow morning I’ll be able to confirm if she was the mother of the child the cord came from. Then I can start work on paternity.’
‘So the bad news?’
‘If the blood type for the mother is correct, then there’s no way Liam O’Brien could have been the biological father of the baby.’
‘How can you know that already?’
‘The foetal blood from the cord is A positive. Lilith is O negative, as is Liam O’Brien.’
‘There’s no way …?’
‘It’s not possible for two O negative parents to produce an A positive offspring.’
‘Right …’
So O’Brien wasn’t the rapist—or at least he wasn’t the man who fathered Lilith’s child. Even if O’Brien wasn’t responsible for that particular atrocity, however, he had to have been involved in Ava’s scheme somehow. A children’s home that had no record of how children came into it; no record of where they went; at least one girl impregnated and later dumped interstate, not to mention her unaccounted-for child born at the home … every instinct told Jake he was looking at a group of perpetrators, not a single older woman.
And Jake hadn’t completely ruled out O’Brien being involved in Ava’s death. Murphy had been right about that the first day of this investigation—nine times out of ten the person who ended a woman’s life with violence was a male relative or ex-partner. Normally, that would put O’Brien at the top of Jake’s list of suspects.
He was supposedly dead to the world in a bedroom above the pub all night, though there would have been nothing to stop him from going out for several hours without being seen. What would have prevented him from being solely responsible for her death was his decrepit physical condition. He would have needed help to move her body.
There were too many conflicting pieces of information. It was time to rattle the grieving brother’s cage to see what fell out.
Chapter Thirteen
Dunton, Tasmania
Wednesday, 12.46 p.m.
Back at the station, after securing an interview with O’Brien later that afternoon, Jake decided to stretch his legs and wander to the local takeaway for lunch. He exited to the wide road that ran directly through the middle of town.
For the first time since he had arrived in Dunton, the sun not only cleared the interminable fog from the streets but was strong enough to warm his skin. Jake rolled up his sleeves and began to stroll, pausing at each food premises he passed, checking their menus for items made with fresh strawberries along the way.
The bakery and a jarringly out of place pop-up café were offering items made with them. There were punnetsful at the supermarket, alongside strawberry-flavoured bubblegum, ice creams, milk and even lip balms. He hadn’t noticed how ubiquitous they were before, but if you were put off by strawberries, Dunton’s main street was a minefield.
After ordering a salad sandwich from the woman behind the takeaway’s counter he stood away from the queue by the drinks’ fridge, rehearsing the questions he’d ask O’Brien. He didn’t realise at first tha
t one of the other patrons in the shop was speaking to him.
‘… found who killed old Ms O’Brien?’
He brought his focus back to a short, rotund woman standing in front of him, her head capped by a halo of fairy-floss white hair.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, have you had any luck finding the man who killed poor old Ava O’Brien?’
‘I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,’ he said.
‘Well you’re no fun.’ She laughed. ‘So serious. Mind you, it’ll have been one of those campers.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘No one round here would do something like that. It had to’ve been someone who was passing through.’
‘Oh yeah, she was found up at the Campbell place, hey?’ said the younger woman serving behind the counter, joining the conversation as she held out change to another customer.
A woman standing alone near the takeaway’s sole dine-in table gave a harsh ‘Huh’.
Jake inspected her closely. With short, spiky blonde hair and a thin face, he was certain it was the woman in the beaten-up hatchback who’d given him the finger as he’d raced to the campground to look for Jamie on Friday morning. ‘Is something funny?’
She laughed again, bitterly, picked up her purse and a parcel of hot chips and walked toward the exit.
‘Please stop and explain, Ms … ?’
Something in Jake’s voice reached her. She paused halfway through the fluttering plastic strips in the doorway.
‘O’Shea.’
‘What’s funny about finding Ms O’Brien at the Campbell manor?’
She appeared to weigh up her answer. ‘I wasn’t thinking about the manor.’
Jake groped for her meaning. ‘The girls’ home?’
‘That’s not all it was.’
Finally! Come on, woman, tell me more. ‘What else was it?’
‘Ask these ladies. They’ll know,’ she said, leaving, plastic strips clacking loudly in her wake. She walked rapidly along the cracked cement footpath, the bundle of hot potato clutched to her chest.
What exactly did she mean by the girls’ home being more than it seemed? At least he had her name now. If need be he could track her down for an interview.
Jake spun back to the serving counter. The younger woman smiled at him; an older woman beside her stared at the worktop, immersed in sandwich-making. Jake noticed they both bore gold crosses—similar to Evelyn’s—on fine gold chains around their necks.
‘Do either of you have any idea what she was talking about?’
The younger woman shrugged. The older woman ignored him.
He turned to the woman with white hair. ‘Do you?’
She cackled. ‘Sonny, if you’re not old enough to know then I’m not old enough to tell you.’ She took her paper-wrapped package from the counter and pushed her way through the door strips to the sunny street outside.
Jake waited until he was the only patron left. He moved to stand in front of the older woman behind the counter, her short, dyed chestnut curls bobbing to reveal grey roots as she buttered bread with industrial enthusiasm. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘have you lived in Dunton long?’
Her head shot up. ‘I’m no blow-in! I’m sixth generation.’
‘So you’ve lived here your whole life?’
‘That’s what I just said.’
Right, time for answers. ‘In that case, you know about the girls’ home that used to be behind the Campbell manor.’
She twitched a shoulder in response.
‘Do you, or don’t you?’
She flashed him a look of anger. ‘Why would I know anything about the bad girls’ home? I never went there.’
‘Why would you go there?’
‘I wouldn’t.’ She flicked her eyes to the younger woman next to her. ‘Never needed to.’
Jake tried employing silence. He stood, face passive, staring at the older woman waiting for an answer …
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ The younger woman rolled her eyes. ‘Stop being so secretive. Look …’ She waited for Jake to give his name.
‘Jake. Detective Jake Hunter.’
‘Jake. When I was little I had a cousin who had to go there. It was all so stupid. She was pregnant—even though no one said anything, it was obvious. Then, one day, she wasn’t. When I asked about it one of the other cousins said she’d gone to the bad girls’ place. Of course, what they meant was she went there to have an abortion.’
The older woman gasped. ‘We’re not that kind of people!’
‘Then what?’ Jake pressed.
She snorted. ‘Girls who got into trouble could have their babies there, knowing they’d be adopted by a family who deserved them. Then the girls could get on with their lives.’
‘That’s stupid,’ the younger woman said. ‘What if they wanted to keep their baby?’
‘It was better for everyone,’ the older woman said.
‘You do know we’re in the twenty-first century, right?’
Jake wasn’t sure the passage of time meant much around here. But he finally had an answer as to where the children in the home had come from. They weren’t government placements—they were babies deemed by Dunton’s moral code to be undesirable.
‘Out of curiosity,’ he addressed the older woman again, ignoring her now crossed arms and enormous frown, ‘when people call it the bad girls’ home, do they mean the girls who grew up there, or the girls who went there to give birth?
‘Both, of course. Born of sin or vessels of sin, it’s all the same,’ she said with a superior sniff.
‘That’s insane,’ her companion protested.
‘You don’t have to work here.’ She smacked Jake’s lunch on the glass countertop and stormed into the walk-in pantry.
‘Sorry about my mum,’ the younger woman said with a sympathetic smile.
Jake picked up his lunch and headed to the station, mulling over this new information as he walked.
He’d spotted a park a few blocks from here on his first reconnaissance of the area. Clusters of trees huddled along the edges of the lawn in partially shed cloaks of decaying leaves, interspersed with the murky green of misshapen pine trees. The piercing whistles of wrens and finches mixed with the cacophony of a trio of screeching black cockatoos. Their unnerving cries reflected Jake’s thoughts.
So the whole town knew—but denied—that some of their own children and grandchildren were born at the girls’ home to be given away like so much excess produce. Or at least, some of the women knew. There had to be grandmothers in Dunton who knew their granddaughters had lived there. They let them grow up believing their own mothers had died and their fathers didn’t want them—that they were essentially orphans—when they had extended family just a few kilometres down the road.
The park offered painted benches in front of a skateboarding zone, a well-maintained football-oval-cum-cricket-pitch, and a dirt car park. A bevy of black swans floated on the creek that skirted the edge of the park while what must have been half the local teenage male population rolled up and down concrete waves.
Jake chose the bench furthest from the skateboarders and began to eat his sandwich. Once again, it was the taste of childhood. Bleached white bread that melted on his tongue, the greasy feel of cheap margarine and wafer-thin tomato, lettuce and beetroot for the salad filling.
How could the older citizens of Dunton abandon their own flesh and blood so callously? Choosing to give your child up for adoption because you believed it would be better for both of you was one thing; Jake could understand that completely. But forcing your own daughter to give up her baby out of fear for your family’s reputation? That was something he couldn’t come at.
He found himself staring at the mothers of several small, screaming children as they chatted near a set of swi
ngs, firmly ignoring their offspring. It was only when one pink-clad child was pushed from the top of the slide by a blue-clothed one that a parent broke away from the group, standing the fallen child back on its feet and telling it to get on with things.
Did this revelation about the girls’ home also open up the pool of people who might have a motive for killing Ava O’Brien? Had one of the women of Dunton—forced by her family to give birth at the home and leave her baby behind—sought revenge on the person she saw as stealing her child?
And what of the male children who were born there? If local women or teenagers were going there to give birth, they wouldn’t all have had girls. About half of the babies would’ve been boys. Where were they? Did they go the same route as Lilith’s baby?
Jake finished his sandwich and strolled toward a cork noticeboard protected from the weather by clear plastic sliding doors. The tattered, yellowing posters inside advertised children’s dance classes, cheap vegetable seedlings and a community forum on the future of a building that had stood empty for the past thirty years.
Working his way across the board Jake found evidence of a long, drawn-out battle between warring factions of local knitting, crocheting and sewing groups. Competition for members was rife, apparently.
Returning to the investigation, he wondered if it was possible that Ava’s murder wasn’t ultimately related to the mutilation and rape of children at the home, but instead to Dunton’s unspoken policy of forcing unmarried women to give birth there?
Itching to arrest someone, Jake re-entered the station and continued to prepare for his afternoon interview.
*
Liam O’Brien looked uncomfortable. The sanguine, hungover man Jake had first met at the Campbell manor last week now looked as though life’s rug had been pulled from under him, leaving him with nowhere to stand.
O’Brien startled each time Jake spoke as they settled opposite each other in the interview room.
‘I’ve recently returned from Melbourne,’ Jake began.
‘That’s nice.’
‘I interviewed a young woman—once called Matilda—who lived at the home with Ava.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you remember a Matilda?’
The Great Divide Page 16
