I had the photo of Laila in my bag, but the idea of stopping any of the busy waiters and asking if they’d seen her get into a car seemed likely to produce hostile stares at best. I played the picture over in my mind, as I had a dozen times before—the car a dark-coloured sedan, a flash of red waistcoat as Laila opened the front passenger door, a plump young man watching from near the entrance to the internet cafe, an older one watching from across the road.
I spotted a vacant seat in a tram and moved quickly towards it, peering through the window at the footpath and the well-lit street. I checked for CCTV cameras in the tram, then looked back at the counter, wondering how long it would take to be served.
A waiter disappeared through swing doors, calling something over his shoulder while another laughed, rotating his hips and posing with his hand behind his shaved head. Both were young and dark complexioned.
I pulled out my photo as the first one approached to take my order.
The waiter stared at it suspiciously then asked, ‘Are you a cop?’
I was so used to this question that the answer rolled smoothly off my tongue.
Light glinted off the waiter’s steel-rimmed glasses. I asked if he’d seen Laila in the club, or the internet cafe next door.
His answer was to widen his eyes and give a tiny, ambiguous shake of his head.
I recalled Owen’s description of the two young men; both dark-haired, one tall and thin with spiked hair, the other wearing glasses. Neither of these waiters was particularly tall. Would they have seemed so, to Owen in his wheel chair?
‘Hey Jake.’ The waiter beckoned with his chin.
I repeated my question when bald Jake approached. ‘No,’ he answered quickly, turning on his heel with a flick of his small black apron.
The waiter wearing glasses watched him go.
‘Did Jake know Laila Fanshaw?’ I asked him.
He looked down his nose at me and said, ‘I’m not going to put words in a mate’s mouth. Ask him yourself.’
. . .
With this advice in mind, I returned to the Tradies cafe the next morning, looking for the daytime waitress who’d been friendly to me, but unable to spot her anywhere about. Ivan had taken Katya to watch Peter playing soccer, and had promised to fill in the forms so that she could join the same club.
An older woman stood behind the counter, patches of scalp showing through her permed red hair. She looked fit, thin and straight-backed, but the fingers of her left hand were twisted and the knuckles swollen. This had to be Pam, who’d brought Owen his hot chocolate, though neither he nor Rowan had mentioned her arthritis.
When I pulled out my photo once again, Pam said, studying me with alert grey eyes, ‘That poor girl.’
‘Did you ever see Laila here, at the club?’
‘Once. Beautiful she was. Face like a rose. Who could murder a young girl like that? Honestly, Canberra used to be so safe.’
Pam rubbed her left hand as though it hurt her. I wondered how she managed to carry plates and trays.
‘Bev mentioned you’d been round asking questions. She didn’t say why you’re so interested, though.’
‘My partner was a friend of Laila’s,’ I said.
The glitter in Pam’s eyes told me she was curious. She told me Laila had come into the club last year.
‘It wasn’t long before Christmas. One of them real busy nights.’ Laila had been with another girl. ‘And right plain she looked, next to that one, too.’ Pam described the other girl as having ‘short hair, mousy like, and in them spikes. What do they use to make it stick up like that?’
‘Gel, I think it’s called. Or product.’
We exchanged a smile, Pam raising a ginger eyebrow. I could tell she’d never give up her perm for product.
‘Well, the girl was plain,’ she said, ‘no getting around it. Freckles from here to George Street. I saw them holding hands. I never served them—Jake did—but I passed close by their table. She had big hands for a woman. Kind of a hunted look about her. Nervous, any rate. All of her attention fixed on the pretty one.’
‘Girlfriends?’
‘Looked like it. Not just to me, mind you. One of the boys had her half of the room. Couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Hovered like a bee. I remember what he said too. He said, “Look at that, will you? Drop dead gorgeous and she has to be a dyke.”’
‘That would be Jake,’ I said.
Pam went red, as though realising too late that Jake might be annoyed. She didn’t move away though. I thanked my lucky stars that there were no other customers just then. Everyone must be out shopping, I thought, or taking their kids to sporting events.
Of course she knew Owen, Pam said in answer to my next question. They were old friends. ‘Dreadful, that accident of his.’
Owen used to ride a motor bike. A car had hit him going round a bend. It had happened over twenty years ago, Pam said, but Owen still talked about the accident as though it was fresh in his mind. And yes, Pam often took him in a hot chocolate.
‘On my break, like. Not that he needs the calories, but what the hell.’
‘One night, a Thursday last October, Laila Fanshaw paid for a session at the internet cafe. Owen remembers seeing her.’
‘A memory like an elephant, that one.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘Goodness, now you’re testing me!’ Pam frowned. ‘It’s like those party games we used to play when we were kids, isn’t it? Someone brings in a tray of stuff and you have to memorise what’s on it.’
‘People often notice more than they think they do,’ I said, smiling at Pam’s analogy, and at her friendliness, her willingness to help me.
‘There were two young men with dark hair in the cafe that same night,’ I went on. ‘One was wearing glasses, according to Owen.’
‘You reckon it was Alan?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.’
It was what Alan had told me with regard to Jake. Maybe Pam already knew this; maybe Alan had repeated his whole conversation with me. It would be a way of filling in the time when they were bored, and Laila’s murder had got all of Canberra talking, though, as more time passed and no one was arrested, the initial burst of interest was beginning to fade.
‘When you walked back here that night last October, did you go straight inside?’
‘Where else would I go, dear?’
‘Did you notice anybody in the street?’
‘Can’t say I did. Don’t remember anyway. I had to carry Owen’s mug. The footpath’s bumpy there. I wouldn’t have been looking round. I would have been looking where to put my feet.’
‘What time did you finish work?’
‘They close the cafeteria at half eleven.’
‘Did you go out again?’
‘Where would I go, for heaven’s sake? You think I’d be getting up a street party?’
I grinned and Pam looked pleased by her retort.
‘You strike me as a lady who likes to kick her heels up now and then,’ I said.
‘In my youth, dear, in my youth.’
I’d given Pam a few minutes’ enjoyable gossip, in return for which she’d suggested something no one else had even hinted at before—that, in spite of being surrounded by admiring men, Laila might have been a lesbian.
. . .
I found myself outside Bronwyn’s house again. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but I was annoyed with her for lying to me.
I glanced across at her neighbour’s garden. It was a blustery morning, the sun obscured by clouds that teased with the promise of rain.
A voice said, ‘Are you looking for someone?’
A tiny woman was holding a trowel in a gardening glove. When I complimented her on her garden, the woman laid her trowel down carefully, saying, ‘It is hard, but I save every bit of water I can.’
I asked if she saw much of her neighbours.
‘Singular, if you’re referring to Bro
nwyn. She’s a woman on her own, like me.’
Bronwyn’s neighbour studied me from underneath a wide-brimmed cotton hat.
‘We help each other out with watering,’ she offered, ‘when one of us is away. Not that I go away often, just to visit my daughter in Tasmania.’
I took out my photograph of Laila, which was becoming rather crumpled, and asked, ‘Do you recall seeing this young woman anywhere around here?’
‘If you’re from the police dear, then I think you should tell me.’
Once again, I got out my card. ‘Laila Fanshaw’s name came up in connection with a client. I called round to ask your neighbour a few questions.’
‘Well, it won’t do you any good. She’s away till Monday, I can tell you that much. She asked me to bring in her newspapers. I’m all at sea when it comes to those computers. I’m far too old for that.’
I felt like telling her that I often felt at sea as well, but decided to save this confession for another time. I thanked her for talking to me, imagining everything I’d said being reported to Bronwyn as soon as she came back.
As the woman turned away, I chanced another question. ‘Have you noticed any strangers in the street? Anybody unfamiliar?’
‘Well it’s hardly a medieval village. Strangers walk past all the time. With all these new flats, who’s to know your neighbours any more?’
‘Someone who did more than walk past. Someone who may have been watching Bronwyn’s house.’
The woman blinked, her eyes shadowed by her hat, then said, ‘I did see—not a person on foot, but a car. I wouldn’t have noticed except that the driver stopped and stared at me.’
‘What did the driver look like?’
‘I couldn’t him see very well, but it was a man. He was wearing dark clothes and a cap of some kind. One of those baseball caps.’
‘What colour was the car?’
‘Red. One of those small Japanese or Korean ones. I’m not very good with cars.’
‘Did you notice the registration number?’
‘Oh, no. I never thought of that.’
‘Did the car come back?’
‘That’s the funny thing. It did. That’s why I remember. I saw it again when I was going to the shops, or at least I saw a small red car driving slowly up the street.’
‘Did you see who was driving it that time?’
‘No, it was too far away.’
A phone rang in the house. With an ‘Excuse me,’ Bronwyn’s neighbour hurried off to answer it.
. . .
I returned to Bronwyn’s street that night, parking at the opposite end of it this time.
Ivan had grumbled when I’d told him what I had in mind, and told me I was too old for climbing through windows. Kat and Peter were both sound asleep, Katya ecstatic that she’d be starting soccer training that week.
I’d dressed in dark clothes. Trees gave extra shadow, and the moon, though three-quarters full, was hidden behind clouds. It was after midnight. Bronwyn’s living room was at the front, kitchen to one side, two bedrooms and a bathroom at the back. I’d memorised the layout. I tried the front door, then walked around to see if there was a back entrance. Well-maintained fences stretched unbroken for the length of the block. I stood on tiptoe and peered over. A noise puzzled me till I realised that it was made by ducks, the sound carrying easily from the lake. I retraced my steps to the front, checking the windows as I went. All fitted snugly. The catches were new and tight. There was no front fence or gate. I was about to check the letterbox when I head a noise.
I crouched behind some bushes in the neighbour’s yard. Footsteps approached along the street, and turned into Bronwyn’s drive. A man whose shadow looked familiar walked to the front door and knocked. After waiting a few moments, he sighed and knocked again. I heard him moving on the porch. He seemed uncertain what to do. I strained my ears, but heard nothing further till he turned and walked towards me.
I shrank back behind my bushes, but the man kept going past them. I waited till I could no longer hear his footsteps, then for another five minutes, wondering where he’d parked, and if he might have recognised my car.
Slowly and cautiously, I made my way to the front door, keeping to the grass at the side of the path. No letter or parcel had been left on Bronwyn’s porch. I lay on my stomach and peered under the door. If a note had been pushed underneath, I couldn’t see it, and it was certainly nowhere within reach.
A dog barked further down the street. I trotted to the postbox, accompanied by louder barking, and a whistle. I flicked the lid up. It was empty.
I drove home mulling over who Bronwyn’s visitor had been, annoyed with myself because I should have recognised him.
Thirteen
I woke to the news that a man’s body had been found floating in Dickson’s fifty metre pool.
Blue and white police tape shone in the strong, climbing sun. Yesterday’s clouds had gone without delivering so much as a drop of rain. Even from a distance of thirty metres, which was as close as the public was allowed to go, it was obvious that the fence around the pool had been cut. Knots of spectators were standing further back. Curiosity pricked my finger ends. I felt pleased to be alone, watching a scene framed by a wire fence—an ordinary scene I’d been part of a thousand times, of grass and paths and water—distinguished now by the tape and groups of police officers, one studying the concrete at the shallow end of the pool, another the hole in the fence.
Detective Sergeant Brideson was standing at one corner of the men’s change rooms, talking to the pool manager. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but I strained after the manager’s raised voice, as he pointed to the fence. Brideson nodded, then looked across in my direction and frowned. His physical assurance impressed me once again. A head taller than the manager, he flexed his rugby player’s shoulders underneath a white shirt that looked as though it had been unwrapped from its packaging that morning.
A green utility with a mattress in the back was parked on the tiled area in front of the office. The water in the smaller pools looked murky, brownish in the morning light. I considered the logistics of dragging a body through the hole in the fence. The fact that the wire had been cut didn’t prove the body had been taken in that way, but it certainly looked like it. The fence was topped with barbed wire all around. Had a young man cut the fence, got through it, and drowned himself? Youth suicide figures were high in Canberra, but it seemed unlikely. Half hidden by bushes, the stretch of fence was a sensible place to choose in terms of driving a car up close, but it was much further away from the fifty metre pool than the fence on the other side, close to Antill Street. To carry the body of an adult all that way required a fair amount of strength, to drag it would have left clear traces on the ground.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised, when I turned to study the bystanders again, to spot Don Fletcher among them. Don shaded his eyes, lifting his head in my direction.
When I walked across, he asked what I was doing there.
‘It’s my neighbourhood,’ I said. ‘My pool.’
Don smiled as though I was making a weak joke. But what I felt mostly strongly then was some kind of possession. I was angry that this place of all my children’s summers, this modest oasis in the drought, was now a murder scene. I felt a fierce possessiveness towards it, and towards the man whose lifeless body had rocked against its sides.
‘This one lets me off the hook,’ Don said with another smile. ‘I was at home with Clare last night. Surely it’s the same killer, a serial killer it must be. Someone with a fetish for water.’
I stared at Don, who seemed perfectly satisfied with this summing up. Indeed, he seemed lighter altogether, as though the weight of suspicion, in lifting off him, had caused him to lose several kilos. Yet, at closer inspection, Don gave off an air of anxiety, even fear. The mental lassitude I’d associated with him earlier was gone. He gave me a sharp look, as though he was ahead of me along some path, or quest. If this was the case, I asked myself silently
, why had he sought my help? I wondered if he was about to tell me that my services were no longer required.
‘It must be somebody who likes water, don’t you think?’
‘Likes, or is afraid of it,’ I said.
Don left. After waiting a few moments, I walked towards the pool’s front entrance, which someone had covered with sheets of black plastic.
A young lifeguard was unlocking his bike from the bike rack. We’d had a nodding acquaintance all summer, and I said hello.
The lifeguard straightened up and frowned, hunching his shoulders self-protectively, his light blue eyes not meeting mine. I was sure he recognised me, but he clearly didn’t want to.
‘I wonder if you could tell me, who slept here last night?’
Ignoring my question, the lifeguard jumped on his bicycle and rode away.
I loitered for a few more minutes outside the main entrance, then, as there seemed nothing more for me to do or observe there, I walked home. The dry heat made me feel as though summer couldn’t give up, loose its hold. Leaves were falling off the trees without first turning yellow. Many of them, unless given water soon, would die.
. . .
It was the lead item on the mid-morning news, and the biggest surprise was that my friend Brook, not his colleague DS Brideson, had been appointed in charge of the investigation. I hadn’t even known that Brook was back from Thailand.
He faced the camera squarely, but paused to clear his throat before answering the reporter’s questions, a small habit that made him sound uncertain.
It was clearly a case of homicide, not accidental drowning. The young man had been killed by several blows to the head, and his body dumped in the water. His name couldn’t be released until his parents had been notified. The interviewer asked about connections between this latest murder and the Fanshaw case, but Brook refused to speculate. He appealed for anybody who’d been in the vicinity of Dickson Pool the night before to come forward. When asked if any of the pool staff had been on the premises, he confirmed that a lifeguard had been sleeping in the office. The journalist commented that the lifeguard, whose name was Joe Bianchi, had declined to speak to the press.
The Fourth Season Page 9
