The Blooming Of Alison Brennan

by Kath Engebretson

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Richmond.’

  ‘You said you finished work at four. Why were you an hour later?’

  ‘Usually after work, a group of us goes to an all-night café for breakfast. I start work at eight in the evening. We don’t get much of a break to eat. I had breakfast with my friends, and then I was on my way home to sleep. That’s where I want to be now.’ She began to cry.

  The female officer put her arm around her.

  ‘Can you show me where you were when you first saw the body?’

  Leaving the blanket on the seat, she walked over to the bike track that linked to Aquarium Drive. Constable Talbot followed.

  ‘I was here.’ She stood on a spot perhaps thirty metres north of the body. ‘At first I thought he was asleep, but then I realised that he was right out in the open, with no blanket or anything. I stopped my bike and went a bit closer to look. Then I saw his head and all the blood.’ She began to cry again.

  ‘This is very important, Anna. Did you touch the body at all?’

  She was horrified at the thought. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘You’ve done everything exactly right,’ I said. ‘Constable Talbot will take you to the Flinders Street Police Station so you can give a formal statement. When that’s all done, you’re free to go home. We appreciate your help.’ I gave her my card. ‘Please contact me immediately if you think of anything else, even if it seems unimportant.’

  ‘What about my bike?’

  Constable Talbot answered, ‘We’ve got a police van, Anna. It will fit in the back.’

  I saw the Crime Scene Investigations team make its way towards the cordoned off area. The leader was Sergeant Tim Farange, a cautious and meticulous man. His team of three investigators included a photographer, an exhibits officer and a case file manager. They immediately took charge of the crime scene, and I watched as the photographer began to video and photograph the entire area. The Forensic Pathologist would arrive soon.

  I sat on the bench that Anna had vacated and began to fill my notebook with notes about the investigation. I was busy writing when someone came up behind me and waved a cup of rich, dark, aromatic coffee under my nose.

  ‘I thought you’d be hanging for one of these by now.’

  It was the fabulous Jossie — friend, colleague, and lead investigator on this case. I told her what little I could at that stage. The residents of the park, awake now, sat in curious groups around its perimeter, talking quietly to each other.

  The Forensic Pathologist was Dr Patricia Teasdale, an experienced practitioner of few words. When she arrived, she donned overalls, latex gloves, paper shoes, and a face mask. Then she went to the body to carry out her rituals of swabbing, tape lifts, and temperature taking, the photographer recording every movement.

  Jossie and I also put on protective clothing and ducked under the tape to watch as Dr Teasdale did her work. The old man was lying on his right side, and the left side of his skull was almost flattened. Someone strong had done this. The weapon, whatever it was, had battered him over and over again until his skull was a mass of pulped bone and brain.

  Trying to hold back revulsion and vomit, I let Dr Teasdale and the photographer do their work. Jossie stepped carefully around the crime scene making notes. Like me, she’d learnt that wallowing in nausea was a distraction. You just had to get on with it.

  Apart from the smashed skull, there appeared to be no other injury. The old man was dressed in dirty black trousers, an old-fashioned buttoned shirt and a nylon jacket. He wore cheap, black canvas shoes with no socks.

  Dr Teasdale supervised as the man’s body was placed on a body bag, and his clothing removed and stored in sealed and labelled bags. She examined the body again, recording comments into a dictaphone. Finally, she covered his head and feet in paper bags and sealed the body bag, just as the contractors arrived to take the remains to the mortuary to await the post mortem.

  She then motioned Jossie and me away from the crime scene. ‘That’s it from me now,’ she said, peeling off her face mask, gloves and overalls, and depositing them in a holding bin for processing back at the Forensic Division.

  ‘Talk to me, Patricia.’ I needed to know what she’d found.

  ‘As you saw, a very old man, must be in his nineties. Several blows to the side of the head with something heavy. The head trauma is very severe. He’s been dead for a few hours. Time of death? Two or three this morning. I’ll know more after the autopsy.’

  ‘What about identification? Was there a wallet, health care card, Centrelink card in his clothing? Anything that might tell us who he is?’

  ‘No, nothing. The Crime Scene Investigators might find more. I only looked at the body, but there seem to be some other personal effects over by that pylon.’ She pointed to a graffiti-covered pylon one hundred metres or so to the right of the body.

  ‘Okay, thanks Patricia. When will you be able to do the autopsy?’

  ‘As soon as I can this morning, let’s say ten o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Now it was the turn of the Crime Scene Investigators. They would comb the area, taking samples of footprints, DNA, and photographing blood spatters. They would go through the victim’s effects, looking for anything that would identify him. Every tiny piece of potential evidence would be collected.

  Finally, Tim Farange came to us. ‘Yeah, finished here now. Not much to report. We’ve bagged up everything, but there’s no way to identify him. We’re gathering he slept next to that pylon. That’s where we found other effects that we’re assuming are his — a sleeping bag, pillow and tarp.’

  ‘Nothing to help us find out who he is? No sign of a weapon?’

  ‘No. We did find something a bit unusual, though.’ He held up a transparent evidence bag in his latex gloved fingers. It contained a book, A5 size, with what seemed to be a soft, brown leather cover, very dirty, well thumbed with some pages untidily separated from the binding. Across the cover in faded black type were words in a language I didn’t recognise.

  Zbierany Poezja 1940 do 1944.

  And underneath was written: Borys Staskiewicz

  Jossie reached for the book then pulled her hand back. We weren’t to touch the evidence even if it was in a plastic bag.

  ‘It’s Polish. Collected Poems, 1940 to 1944 by someone called Borys Stasiewicz.’

  I’d forgotten that Jossie had Polish ancestry.

  ‘That’s all I’ll be able to read, though. Most of my Polish has gone.’

  Jossie’s grandparents came to Australia with many of their countrymen and women after the Second World War. Her parents were born here, so Polish was her second language. She spoke English with a broad Australian accent.

  ‘Anyway,’ Farange said, ‘we need to get this evidence to the lab.’

  ‘Anything else you can tell us?’

  ‘Flattened grass and footprints close to the pylon where there seems to have been a struggle, then the same two sets of prints leading over to where the body was found. I’m guessing there was a fight, the old bloke tried to get away and the killer followed.’

  ‘The book of poems,’ Jossie said. ‘Can we have a closer look?’

  ‘Sure. It has to go to the lab, but we’ll photograph it for you and send you the printouts.’

  ‘Thanks, Tim, every page please. It might tell us something about him.’

  Groups of the park’s occupants sat in clusters watching and talking. Dog walkers and suited office workers passed by on the path watched by the uniformed police. The morning sun glinted on the river and the first tourist ferry sailed past. A thin crowd of spectators stood along Aquarium Drive. A sunny morning in Melbourne, with all of its lightness and darkness, was underway.

  Jossie turned to me, smirking when she said, ‘Good luck with the autopsy, Trent. I know how you love them.’

  I hated them. You can’t tell me that anyone actually enjoys seeing a human body sliced open and its organs removed, liked some hide
ous biology experiment, but autopsies are part of the job. As a team leader, you needed to be there to get a heads-up on the evidence. There was also a weird kind of thing I felt, that I needed to stand guard, to honour the victim as his or her body was being dissected.

  ‘You start on the interviews, Jossie. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  I phoned my boss, Inspector Heather Mattioli, from the car to inform her of the investigation so far. The interviews would take all day, and like most other jobs in a homicide investigation it would be slow, plodding, boring work, but it had to be done. The old bloke deserved at least that.

  Chapter 15

  Colin Brennan

  Monday, 11 April

  Another disaster with Bernadette, and now it seemed that Harry had disappeared.

  I was horrified by the fact that Alison had gone home to that situation. Honestly, those two were incapable of being responsible parents. Leo called this morning to tell me that Bernadette was in hospital, and I came right away. They’d taken everything of Alison’s out of the house by then, and she was arranging her possessions in Leo’s spare bedroom. I was grateful to Leo for the way he’d managed things, making the best decisions he could for Bernadette and Alison.

  I’ll tell him that soon. I find it hard to give compliments, especially to Leo. There’s so much I disapprove of about his lifestyle.

  Going to the hospital was pointless. Her doctor refused to allow anyone to see Bernadette yet. Then there was Alison. The two weeks with her at Golden Beach were idyllic, and she relaxed, played, chatted, and laughed, as a young girl should.

  Now she was back to this. I had a moment alone with her at the hospital, and she begged me to talk the doctor into allowing her to see her mother. I had to advise against it though, repeating the doctor’s recommendation that Bernadette be left alone for a time.

  ‘Think of yourself for a change, dear girl,’ I said. ‘Your mother’s in good hands and is well looked after. She needs time to get better. Concentrate on your own life for a while. Get involved in your school work and sport, and you’ll be able to see your mother soon enough.’

  I was full of questions, most of which I couldn’t admit to anyone.

  What is it in Bernadette that makes her unable to deal with life’s exigencies? Where is that fool Harry when he’s needed? She’s my daughter, what is my responsibility here? What should I do to make sure she gets the treatment she needs?

  I was an authoritarian father and I knew she was frightened of me. Mary often chided me for it, begging me to be kinder to her. Somehow it wasn’t in me. I wasn’t patient enough, and my head was always full of a deadline for some complicated judgment. I worked too much, long days in court and in chambers, and I disappeared into my study most weekends.

  There were secrets between them, Mary and Bernadette. After the first breakdown, Mary shielded her from everything. She didn’t push her when the agoraphobia set in. She allowed her to hide. I didn’t agree with it then, but now I was less sure. My strategies certainly didn’t work.

  I would have to stay in Melbourne until everything was sorted out. Alison would be at school, but I’d try to see her in the evenings. I’d booked into the Club, and after an hour or so with Leo, I decided to go back there for lunch. I would go back to the hospital again in the evening, and then I’d take Alison out for dinner.

  Leo saw me to the car and stood waiting. There was something he wanted to say. I wasn’t good at body language. I should have guessed what was on his mind, but foolishly I gave vent to my own agenda.

  ‘What’s wrong with the bloody woman?’ I exclaimed in exasperation. ‘She’s had every possible advantage. Why can’t she pull herself together and take care of her daughter? Learned helplessness, that’s what it is. And self-pity.’

  That was enough to set Leo off. He’d clearly had a very difficult night and day, and he turned on me. ‘Dad, this isn’t about you. It’s about Bernie who, for reasons neither of us understands, needs the support of her family more than anything now. And it’s about Alison. Incidentally, it mightn’t hurt you to think about your role in this. You’ve judged and belittled Bernie all her life, even when it was obvious that it was making her worse. She grew up believing that you despised her …’

  ‘Despised?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, despised. I know it’s an ugly word, but that’s how your attitude came across. Try some empathy for a change, you old bastard. You’re not a judge now, and she’s not a criminal in your court waiting for you to condescend to sentence her. Think about it. There are all kinds of reasons for Bernie’s illness, and just maybe, you’re one of them.’

  I reeled under the force of his accusations. I slammed the door of the car without saying goodbye and escaped to the privacy of the Club.

  In the lounge I sat with a pre-lunch whiskey, and the day’s Australian spread on the table in front of me. This was usually taken as a sign that you wanted to be left alone, but that convention must have escaped old Rudy Hegarty. He was the garrulous, retired state Liberal backbencher, and all-round political know-all, who was now a fixture of the Club, and its resident motormouth.

  ‘Well, well, Judge Brennan, we don’t see much of you these days. Heard you’d locked yourself away in some fishing hamlet on the south coast. Come back to savour the bright lights of the city have you?’

  What a bore!

  But there was no point in snubbing him. I gave up on the paper and settled in to let him talk. It only needed the occasional nod, or ‘Really?’ or ‘Good God!’ or some other neutral exclamation to keep him going.

  I did tune in, however, to his stream of irrelevant gossip when he remarked. ‘Big funeral at St. Paul’s the other day. Surprised you weren’t there.’

  ‘Whose funeral?’

  ‘Jack Constable. Didn’t you know he’d passed away?’

  I didn’t know, but doubted I would have gone to his funeral. He and his wife were regular dinner guests at our home in the late eighties. He was a fellow judge, senior to me, and condescending, but the connection was really between Mary and his wife, Sylvia. She was an intimidating, bossy woman whose only personality lay in her organising skills. She’d recruited Mary to some of her causes, and seemed to have decided to take her under her wing.

  Although I saw Jack at dinner parties and events for charity that Mary and Sylvia organised, I never liked him. He was a dreary drunk. I loved a whiskey and a good wine, so the drinking itself wasn’t the issue, but at a certain point in the evening he would become red-faced, belligerent and argumentative.

  Rather than being embarrassed for him, Sylvia would smirk with pride at his boorishness, as if he was a gifted child. I learnt not to interrupt his diatribes against the media, the welfare system, and the latest minority group scapegoat. It was better to nod now and then, and wait for Sylvia to scoop him up to leave. There were rumours about a certain fondness for sleazy table dancing establishments, and once a scandal about an affair with a very young intern in his chambers. Jack was all bluster, and Sylvia publicly dismissed the rumours as just another conspiracy against her brilliant husband.

  I was thankful that after Bernadette’s breakdown, Mary withdrew from Sylvia’s circle of influence, and we didn’t have to see the old bore again.

  So Jack Constable was dead. I was pleased to have outlived him.

  Thankfully, Hegarty left for a lunch appointment elsewhere, and I went alone into the dining room. I asked for a small table by a window, far away from the other lunch guests.

  Leo’s words replayed over and over in my mind. Had I really despised Bernadette? Could I be one of the causes of her psychiatric illness as Leo had suggested? His words stung — more than stung. I was deeply hurt and angry, but I didn’t know who to be angry with. I couldn’t blame Leo for his outburst. No, I realised, hardly noticing the food in front of me, that the pain came for a certain unexpressed, half-hidden knowledge of my own that he was right.

  I had failed Bernadette — was still failing her.

  I fel
t empty inside, as if I were a brittle glass bowl just waiting for the tap or knock that would shatter it into thousands of pieces. For the first time ever, I felt old and irrelevant.

  Mary, I cried silently. I need you.

  Chapter 16

  Jossie Wallachia

  Monday, 11 April

  I got tired of people telling me I looked too young to be a detective. I had the track record, six years as a uniformed officer on the streets and then detective school. I’d worked on some big cases that had led to convictions. I was a team player. It was the only way, despite the novels, movies and TV series that glorified the lone maverick.

  I had been patronised, hit on, called ‘girlie’, and subjected to sexist jokes and misogynist banter by colleagues who should have known better. But I didn’t take any of it now. They got back what they gave. That was why I loved working with Trent; there was no sub-text. We were professionals, equal colleagues. We worked as a team.

  I knew it would be hard to get anything out of the residents of the park. They saw the police as the enemy, there to make their lives more difficult, to move them on, to stop them begging. They’d find it hard to figure me out, a small, blonde woman in jeans, T-shirt and runners claiming to be a Senior Detective.

  After the first hour, I gathered my team to compare notes. We had learnt exactly this much: a) The victim was old, crazy, foreign and anti-social; b) No one knew his name; c) He’d been sleeping in the park for about three months; d) Sometimes he raved at passers-by in a foreign language; e) No one had heard or seen anything early that morning when the murder was alleged to have occurred; f) Two people had noticed him sitting by his usual pylon at about midnight, but saw and heard nothing after that.

  The next person I interviewed was Stu, a muscular man with a bikie beard. His body was a mosaic of tattoos. He seemed to want to help, but he couldn’t tell me much. He did say, though, that I should talk to a woman called Bett, who often slept in the park. He’d seen her talking to the old man once or twice.