The Fourth Season

by Dorothy Johnston

  When he asked if Ivan was there, I said no he wasn’t. Don’s voice sounded extremely tense, held together by force of will, but threatening to shatter every moment he drew breath. He’s had another fight with Clare, I thought. I wondered why he didn’t leave, rent a small apartment, spend his money that way instead of offering it to me. The idea of a small apartment was so seductive that I almost suggested it to him.

  I’d never before had a client who was a suspect in a murder inquiry. Of course I’d never been living with one either. Men and women in Don Fletcher’s position did not hire down-at-heel security consultants. I could have understood his contacting me if the question of how Laila had broken into his protected files was still an open one. But what Fletcher had to deal with now was a motive for murder that stuck out a mile.

  . . .

  That night, Ivan did not come home at all.

  Before dawn, I was woken by a sharp tap on my shoulder, a voice heavy with sleep, but alert.

  ‘Mum!’

  Katya was shivering. I lifted the doona so she could climb in, but she shook her head, demanding in a loud voice, ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart. Come and cuddle up.’

  The grey wash under the curtains was strengthening. I pulled my daughter close, rubbing my nose against her curls, smelling the sweet-sour smell the night had left there. I pressed her cold hands between mine.

  ‘Roll over, and I’ll rub your back.’

  I wanted to tell Kat that her father would be home soon, but what if he wasn’t? What if he never came home again?

  Katya wriggled, then lay still. I moved my hand slowly up and down, feeling the bumps of her vertebrae through her pyjamas, realising that she’d lost weight. She stirred again, flipping her head from side to side. I couldn’t move without disturbing her. I tried to breathe evenly, and not transmit my fear.

  Five

  I spent part of the next morning checking Don Fletcher’s alibi, every moment expecting my phone to ring with the news that Ivan had been arrested.

  Ivan’s continued absence had made the decision for me, and I’d called Don to say I’d take the job.

  Don believed that strengthening his alibi was the quickest way to get the police off his back. I had no better ideas. If nothing else it was a way of occupying myself while Kat and Peter were at school.

  I wasn’t surprised by Don’s friend’s willingness to talk; the friend he claimed to have met at a bar in Kingston a week ago, on Monday night. I’d come across the same thing several times before. People connected to a murder suspect wanted to gossip and reflect out loud, to say this happened and then that—but no, wait, maybe it was the other way around. The fact that people opened up with me was also something I’d experienced. They told themselves I didn’t count; there was no way they could be held accountable for what they said.

  It became apparent, as we spoke, that the ‘friend’, whose name was Simon, was not Don’s friend at all, or not the kind of friend I’d want to rely on when I was in trouble. This made me think about my own friends, and Ivan’s; whether I had any friends I could absolutely trust, apart from Brook. But I didn’t want to go there.

  Simon was prepared at the slightest provocation—at no provocation, really—to knife Don in the back. He was sorry, but he couldn’t account for any time before seven-thirty, when Don had arrived at the bar ‘looking rather thrown together’, or after about eight forty-five, when they’d left. Simon was willing to spend time speculating about why Don had been late, but I soon learnt that he could do no more than speculate. He hadn’t heard from Don since that night, though the police had been round to question him.

  I made the most of Simon’s willingness to talk. Much of what he’d pieced together about Laila’s betrayal of Don was guesswork, and he was keen to have it verified. I felt sorry for Don, having to rely on such a slippery customer. If I could find someone who’d seen him earlier in the evening, then I might begin to get somewhere. I wondered why Don wasn’t doing the leg work himself. Perhaps he was, and I was an extra, pretty desperate, form of insurance.

  Simon offered, without prompting, the fact that Don had been agitated when he’d arrived at the bar. I asked if he’d noticed whether Don’s clothes had been damp or stained, and he replied after too long a pause that Don ‘didn’t take good care of himself.’ Simon became coy then, and had to be drawn out concerning the lack of care, which, after further questions, narrowed itself down to the matter of shoes.

  There had been sandy gravel; ‘grit’ Simon called it. ‘Grit at the toes.’ He’d noticed because Don had tucked his feet under him, thus drawing attention to them rather than the opposite. Simon’s tone of voice suggested that most of Don’s intentions backfired. Don’s hands had been shaking too. Simon had asked what the matter was, and Don had mumbled something about Clare.

  As to the dampness, his shoes had ‘looked damp’. Where had the dampness come from? You could strike a match on the footpaths. We were in the middle of a drought.

  There was something pathetic in Don’s assumption that an independent person representing him, asking questions on his behalf, would somehow be able to neutralise the damning words of this so-called friend. Yet a part of me was pleased. I felt more than a hint of treacherous pleasure that, if Don had killed Laila, Ivan couldn’t have. I was immediately ashamed of this, and of having drawn away from Ivan so far in my heart that I could contemplate it. I asked myself again why Don had hired me instead of a lawyer; but perhaps he’d hired a lawyer too, and had failed to mention it, just as he’d failed to mention the state of his clothes.

  . . .

  My phone call to Simon had been a long one, but as soon as it was finished, I rang Don to ask, ‘Did you stop for petrol on your way to meeting Simon, or to do a bit of shopping? Anywhere there might have been a CCTV camera?’

  Don said he wished, oh how he wished he’d run a red light, speeded down Northbourne Avenue, copped a parking ticket.

  When I asked how he’d managed to get damp gravel on his shoes, he replied that the shoes he’d worn that night had been taken for testing, and if anything incriminating had been found on them, he would surely have been arrested by now.

  When I persisted, Don said it must have been from the flowerbeds being watered. Water must have run down from the beds onto the gravel. Had he noticed anybody watering? Hand-held hoses only were allowed.

  Don began complaining. It was increasingly difficult to face Clare in the evenings. He couldn’t bear the accusations, the complete lack of trust. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold on. He told me that I should put pressure on Simon. No suggestions as to how. What he really needed was for ‘that pig Brideson to get off my back.’

  I asked Don for a list of the reports and other documents he’d made available to Laila—the legitimate ones, the ones that were the ostensible reason for her visit. He grumbled that he didn’t see how they could be of any help, but said he’d look them out.

  I put the phone down with a feeling that Don hadn’t been alone, and wondered who his companion might have been. I didn’t think it could have been his wife. I’d asked to be paid every week. I thought of the money going into my account with the nearest thing to physical pleasure I’d felt in a long time.

  I decided to take a look at the bar in Kingston for myself, stopping on the way to post off my report for the education department.

  A cement footpath led from the street to the front door of the small, narrow-fronted bar. On either side was a thin strip of gravel, plus some bushes that looked extremely sick. The flowers, if there ever had been any, had died long ago.

  After circling the building to make sure there were no flowerbeds at the back, I jotted down some notes, and called by to check on Tim. While I was there, I picked up a copy of the group’s membership list.

  Back home, I made myself coffee and started going through it. Seventeen women and nine men. Some didn’t want to talk to me. I asked those who were willing to talk if they thought Laila mi
ght have been having an affair, mentioning no names and not expecting truthful answers; but listening carefully to tones of voice and preferred means of evasion. Most assumed that I meant Ivan. Two said, hoping to reassure me, that Laila wasn’t interested in older men.

  One young woman, at first shy and reluctant to speak, suggested I contact Bill Abenay, who, though not a member of their group, had been around environmental politics for years, and had been a close friend of Laila’s. Not interested in older men? Well, we’d see about that.

  . . .

  Ivan came in carrying two bags of groceries, looking clumsy, over-burdened and exhausted. He deposited the bags on the kitchen table and walked to the sink, where he downed a glass of water without stopping. His skin, in the bright noon light, was white with greyish splotches, but a pulse beat strongly in his neck, as though to signal that it was doing its best.

  ‘The police asked us if we could scuba dive,’ he said, glancing back at me. I was sitting at the table because I didn’t trust my legs. ‘They treat us as a pair. Rivals. Or non-rivals, I should say.’

  ‘You’ve been with the police? All this time?’

  ‘Tim can swim,’ said Ivan. He began to put the groceries away. ‘Though by his account just barely. Laila on the other hand—Laila loved the water. It was second home to her. They asked me if I went scuba diving,’ Ivan repeated, staring at me, as though he’d forgotten what he’d said a few seconds ago. ‘I told them I was frightened of the sea. Laila borrowed the car from somebody called Bronwyn. Brideson keeps asking me about her. Do I know Bronwyn? Is she in the group? Did Laila talk about her? Not to me, she didn’t. Laila told me sweet fuck all.’

  ‘Ivan, why didn’t you call me? Why are you doing this?’

  Ivan put his head in his hands. ‘I—I can’t.’

  This time I felt no impulse to comfort him. ‘You could have texted me. Just to say you were okay.’

  ‘I wasn’t okay. I’m not.’

  ‘But Pete and Katya—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ivan said.

  I made more coffee. It felt oddly formal, sitting there opposite Ivan as though I was conducting an interview, yet everything about him was familiar, with the kind of close domestic familiarity that takes years to grow.

  ‘I slept in the car. When the police had finished with me. I drove up to the Brindabellas.’

  When I asked why, Ivan said, ‘It was a way of looking down.’ And then, ‘I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do anything.’

  He fiddled with his coffee mug, then stared around the room as though reminding himself that the fridge was where it should be, and the stove hadn’t moved.

  When I told Ivan about Don Fletcher, I expected him to be angry, but he was past anger. He nodded as though my decisions, the way I lived my life, had nothing to do with him.

  Then he roused himself, saying roughly, ‘It’s a joke, our business. We’ve never done anything more than fight to keep out of debt.’

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. ‘We’ve put food on the table,’ I said. ‘We’ve bought soccer boots.’

  We’d been unlikely partners from the start, yet we’d muddled on. Our business had stayed afloat, albeit a leaky vessel; our private partnership as well. And there’d been times that had been a great deal more than muddle.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sandra,’ Ivan said again. ‘It’s just that I feel so terrible.’

  Terrible was a big word. I wanted to fight my way clear of such big words, and I understood, at that moment, that I didn’t want to mother Ivan. It was not the role for me. Some women seemed able to create a general haze of motherly concern, even, or especially, when they were under threat themselves. But I didn’t want to be that kind of woman and, even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have known how.

  Then Ivan said, ‘This Don sounds dodgy. Aren’t things complicated enough?’

  I told him I couldn’t argue with that.

  . . .

  I’ve always felt that my adrenaline was in short supply. I resisted Ivan’s objections to taking Don’s money, passive and sporadic though they were, but resistance drained me of what little energy I had left. I slept badly and my arms and legs felt leaden. I grew too tired to bother about housework, too tired to wash my hair. I had tried to keep up an appearance of coping, for Pete and Katya’s sake, but each new day made a mockery of this.

  I was aware that Derek, my ex-husband, would take Peter for a while, and Katya too; Kat got on well with Derek and his second wife, who had no children of her own. I knew that they’d be better off away from Ivan, and that Peter, from the expression in his eyes when he caught mine sometimes, thought so too.

  Peter’s eyes accused me of having failed him and his sister, and this failure somehow went deeper than the trouble Ivan was in.

  . . .

  Then, one afternoon, a couple of days after Ivan had slouched home with those bags of shopping, he walked into the house with Katya, holding his daughter’s hand. I’d been about to take up my post waiting at the street, but he’d beat me to it. Katya’s blue school bag, looking ridiculously small, was slung across Ivan’s broad, vulnerable shoulder, and the bond between father and daughter was an elastic, lambent skin. Their expressions mirrored one another’s, and borrowed something in addition, from the hard, dry air of that extraordinary autumn, the sweat of battle, the need for fortitude and courage.

  Katya fetched the drawing she’d been keeping, and Ivan hugged her, exuberant with praise.

  Peter felt it too, the sudden turn in fortune, as he dumped his backpack and displayed his eggplant bruise, now more yellow and green than purple. When Ivan called it a ‘ushib’, Peter giggled the way he used to when he was a small boy and Ivan plucked a Russian word out of the air.

  Ivan cooked, while Peter sat at the kitchen table sighing over his homework, but pleased, I thought, to have something ordinary to sigh over. Ivan left the stove to explain a graph, and Peter had to stop him planting a finger covered in tomato paste in the middle of his book.

  After dinner, the three of them watched television, Kat curled in her father’s arms, Peter with his long legs tucked underneath him at their feet.

  I told myself I could put off phoning Derek, and that the four of us might come through this after all.

  Six

  The proprietor of the first internet cafe I visited looked Middle-eastern, and spoke English with an accent. I decided to pay for a session first, and ask questions later, well aware that he could refuse to answer them.

  I logged on to my provider’s website, checked my mail and sent off a few messages, at the same time glancing round the cafe, noting how many booths there were—twenty-three, packed close together. The cafe was in the middle of Civic, open long hours. It had to be staffed by more than one person.

  I paid my two dollars, then said to the proprietor, ‘I’m wondering if you can help me.’ I handed him my business card. ‘An investigation I’m working on leads to one of your computers.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The man sounded hostile and on guard, and I told myself I should have worked out a more indirect approach. But it was too late for that now.

  I explained that, on 12 October last year, on a Thursday night from about nine o’clock, a hacker had been using one of his computers. He looked at me as though I’d asked him to recall his entire childhood and recite it back.

  When I asked if he ran the business on his own, the man replied that he and his brother managed it between them. He recovered and said testily that he couldn’t possibly remember who’d been in the cafe five months ago, and that no logs or histories of their customers were kept.

  The second cafe to which Ivan had traced the environment minister’s would-be hacker was much smaller, and actually in our neighbourhood. It wasn’t open such long hours as the one in Civic. The hacker, or hackers—I reminded myself that there could be more than one—had used the cafe on a Thursday night as well, a week later and at the same time.

  A woman in her sixties, with hair d
yed black and lipstick practically the same colour, stood behind the counter. This time, I dispensed with any pretence at being a customer and showed her my card straight away. I’d rehearsed approaches in the car, and decided I did not have time to beat around the bush.

  Prepared for another brush-off, I nevertheless put more care into explaining what I wanted. The woman told me her name was Rita Thomas, and that she and her husband, Owen, managed the cafe between them. When I told her the date and time, she stared at me and went pale behind her make-up.

  ‘I think you should speak to my husband,’ she said.

  . . .

  Owen Thomas—he introduced himself with a handshake that was damp but firm—was seriously overweight. He leant forward in his wheelchair, breathing in hoarse, uneven bursts. Extra chins and cheek fat made his face look ponderous and slow, but his expression was alert and his eyes took in everything there was to notice about me, from my hair that needed cutting to my denim skirt that could have benefited from close contact with an iron.

  Owen brought along a photograph of Laila cut out of the newspaper to make sure there was no mistake.

  ‘That waistcoat—she was wearing it the night she came in. It had goldy brown embroidery. Like autumn leaves.’

  He told me he’d rung the police as soon as he’d recognised Laila’s picture in the paper. An officer had interviewed him. ‘Young chap. Polite.’

  Listening to Owen’s description, I saw the waistcoat as clearly as though I’d created the design myself, an abstract design of reds, dark golds and browns. I recalled Laila at the Lennox Gardens picnic, the flashes of colour under the trees, her hair darker than the shadows I’d been hiding in.

  ‘Am I to understand this girl was a hacker?’ Owen said.

  I explained briefly, then asked if by any chance he recalled which machine Laila had been using.

  Owen wheeled himself away from the counter to where he had a clearer view of the three rows of monitors and the aisles between them. I hesitated, wanting to follow him, to see what he saw, yet not wanting to interrupt his concentration.