The Fourth Season

by Dorothy Johnston

  ‘How far can you swim?’

  ‘Oh, I swim regularly. I love it. It says here concession holders $270. Does that include students? I’m thinking of my son.’

  ‘Where does he go to school? We have special rates for school groups.’

  ‘What about university students?’

  ‘If they have a valid card, they can claim a concession.’

  ‘Do you get many?’

  ‘Uni students? No.’

  ‘When people sign up for the south coast, do they have to make their own way there? I’m not fond of driving.’

  ‘There’s a company Toyota that can seat eight people. It’s all in the brochure.’

  I thanked Stanton and waved it as I said goodbye.

  . . .

  I bumped into Brook’s girlfriend Sophie as I was walking to the bus stop. Her relaxed holiday air reminded me that there were places to go, states of mind to aim for, another way of life than this hunkering down to a bitter year in Canberra.

  Sophie’s greeting was friendly. She asked if I had time for a coffee. My face must have shown my anxiety, because she smiled and told me calmly, ‘Whatever it is can wait.’ I imagined her saying the same thing to Brook.

  We sat at an outside table opposite Glebe Park. As I watched Sophie reaching for the sugar I wondered how she could spend so much time with Brook and yet retain her calm. But I knew why. I knew it was because she accepted his leukemia, and had from the day they’d met. She accepted that the disease might arrive again, any week or month, knocking on the door like a guest you were sighing with relief to have gotten rid of. She accepted it, not in fits and starts and angry rushes, like I did, and not like Brook himself, but completely.

  When Brook and Sophie were together—the few times I’d watched them together—this calm lay over Brook’s restless, striving surface like soft, raked sand.

  Sophie stirred her coffee gracefully. I hoped she wasn’t going to offer me sympathy, and felt that, if she did, I’d gulp my drink and go.

  But Sophie had something to tell me. She’d seen me with Don Fletcher. ‘I was just passing by, and I saw the two of you through Tossollini’s window.’

  I waited, surprised, wondering what was coming.

  ‘I know Don, you see. Or at least I used to know him. We worked together in PM&C. Of course that’s going back a long while. Don knew about global warming way back then. He used to talk about it. He was practically a lone voice. Well, in that department he definitely was.’

  I listened, thinking, she’s told Brook—well, why wouldn’t she? Sophie’s told Brook and he’s put two and two together. That’s why he’s so pissed off about the car.

  Sophie’s expression was reflective, slightly puzzled.

  ‘Don moved across to Environment and I left to get married. We lost touch, but I remember him as dedicated and sincere. I was shocked when I heard that he’d been sacked.’

  Canberra was a small town for gossip. A small town for bumping into people, spotting them through the glass fronts of coffee shops. I realised it was a bad idea to have met Don in public, and wondered why he’d been so keen; he’d practically insisted on it.

  Under her politeness and reluctance to push, Sophie was warning me. She wasn’t used to subterfuge, and I watched her battling with it. Sophie had always been friendly to me and had seemed to like me. I’d never been sure if this was genuine, or a front. Now I thought I knew. Sophie was a sincere person, who did not want to see me getting into trouble. I might have told her I was already in practically over my head.

  When I asked what else she knew of Don, Sophie shook her head, but then said she’d heard he’d been suffering from depression.

  ‘Depression?’

  ‘Some sort of mental instability.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Don’s brother, Cameron?’

  Sophie frowned at the change of tack, then her expression cleared. ‘Now you mention it, he did used to talk about an older brother. The impression I got was that he—Don, I mean—was rather in awe of him.’

  I wondered whether Sophie believed Ivan capable of murder, if she was keeping an open mind about this. Sophie didn’t know Ivan. She’d only met him twice. She might assume he was innocent until proven guilty. On the other hand, she might assume the worst.

  With Brook, Sophie was playing for keeps. I reminded myself that she had every right to do this, that Brook and I had had our chance at the end of the summer before last, and that both of us, for different reasons, had walked away from it.

  . . .

  Back home, I made coffee the way I like it, with milk heated in the microwave and cinnamon sprinkled on the top. I listened to the house creaking and settling as it warmed towards the middle of the day, to not so great a temperature now. I was glad to be alone, glad to sit in my office with the windows open, to think of my children underneath their teachers’ watchful eyes.

  I sipped my coffee and typed in the Lonsdale Street shop’s web address from the bottom of the brochure.

  The site was extensive, with lots of good quality photographs, and a whole section on dive trips. Wreck dives seemed to be a speciality. The Northern Firth, off Bawley Point on the south coast, was described as a great beginners’ dive and ‘an unforgettable experience’. But it was two scuttled tugs off Merimbula, further south near the Victorian border, that caught and held my eye; the barnacle-covered hull of the Tasman Hawler; followed by impressively athletic divers gathered round the Henry Bolte, hobnobbing with the fish before lunch on the deck of the dive boat.

  Sun shone on white wood fresh from a painter’s brush. The sea and sky were blue. Smiling faces and a table covered with food had a thanksgiving air. But one face was rotting as I studied it. How many others had seen what I was seeing, and drawn their own conclusions from it? Was it a mistake, an oversight, that the photo was still up there?

  I counted the people round the table. Nine altogether, plus whoever had been behind the camera. Ben Sanderson was not among them. There weren’t any names, but I had no doubt that the most attractive of the young women was Laila Fanshaw.

  I printed out the page and underlined the date. Then I continued moving slowly through the site, without coming across any more shots that included Laila. Roger Stanton’s pointed teeth and goatee seemed to advance towards me from the home page. He was referred to as the manager; Cameron Fletcher was the owner.

  There’d been a piece in the paper a few days ago, about how the steps to Jindabyne’s old Catholic church had been exposed by the drought, by the receding water. Cameron’s name jumped out from the website just like those church steps. I stared at it, unable to shake the feeling that the website might lead me to a secret place, a room within a room which held the clue to Laila’s murder, and possibly Ben Sanderson’s as well.

  . . .

  Ivan came in looking dishevelled and noticeably thinner. Ivan never though about his weight. He ate or didn’t eat, according to whether food was placed in front of him, and whether he felt hungry. Forced to cook, he would produce either a three course meal or toasted sandwiches, depending on his mood. Unlike many people with a tendency to fat, he didn’t diet, plan diets, break them, then feel guilty and make another plan. This whole cycle was so foreign to him that any suggestion that he ought to cut down, or get more exercise, was met with incomprehension.

  But now he’d lost weight, and, as each day passed, he was losing more. I put more effort than I usually did into preparing dinner. Kat and Peter helped me.

  The evening newsreader declared that there’d been no breakthrough in either murder investigation. The search for weapons had been extended. The police weren’t talking about what exactly they were looking for, but I thought I could make a reasonable guess. Hard sunlight on the lake seemed to penetrate to an unlikely depth, but the searchers came up, time after time, empty-handed. A close-up of a face through a diving mask looked grim.

  I wondered again whether Ben Sanderson’s killer had got rid of the weapon in the nearest stretch of water
, or taken it with him. I realised I was thinking of one killer, not two: that was the way I’d been thinking since first hearing the news about Dickson Pool. I considered how the murderer had planned this second death, observing and learning Sanderson’s jogging route, working out each step. He would expect the police to search the immediate area and then along the most direct route to the pool. He could have stopped off along Mundaring, or Bowen Drive, to dispose of the weapon, which would have taken him very close to where Laila’s body had been found.

  Perhaps the spot had drawn him. But he might have gone the other way, a few hundred metres in a direction the police wouldn’t expect him to take.

  Peter went off to his room to do his home work, and Ivan ran Katya a bath. Ivan had always bathed his daughter when she was a baby, and something of the ritual hung on, though it had been in abeyance lately. Though Kat showered in the morning like her brother, she sometimes asked her father to run a bath for her when she was tired, or felt like being babied. He filled it up with bubbles and she sat there, running more hot water every now and then while he sang to her in Russian.

  After twenty minutes or so, Ivan joined me in the kitchen, his shirt front soaking wet. I wanted to touch him, place my hand on those damp, living patches, but I was afraid, knowing that he was hanging onto ordinary actions by a thread.

  Once Katya was in bed, I told Ivan about the photo on the website and asked him if Laila had said anything about a dive trip to the coast.

  Ivan stared at me. ‘I only knew her for six months. When you think about it, that’s no time at all.’

  I made myself focus on the question. ‘Did Laila talk about her diving?’

  ‘I remember once when I called in she was talking to Tim about water depth and pressures.’

  Katya called out, and Ivan turned to go. It was just as well our conversation had been cut short. It wouldn’t do, I told myself, to become impatient or to lose my temper when he was at last making an effort.

  When I rang Tim Delaney from my office phone, Tim said morosely, ‘I told the police I could barely swim. Ivan and I compared notes on our poor performance in that area.’

  ‘And you haven’t got the excuse that you were born in the middle of Russia.’

  I was keeping my voice low and fighting the irritation that Tim immediately produced in me.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘Point is, my parents never paid for swimming lessons. My school neglected its duty in that department too.’

  Tim made me hold while he checked the dive shop’s website, then subjected me to a lecture on disrespect. Laila’s photo should not have been allowed to remain up there like that, without any message of sympathy, or even an indication that she’d died.

  After listening politely, I said, recalling Roger Stanton’s assurances, ‘Anyone can learn to scuba dive.’

  ‘Not true. You have to be a reasonably competent swimmer, for a start.’

  ‘What about Phoebe?’

  ‘Phoebes? I doubt if she could swim a stroke.’

  I’d almost forgotten about Laila’s second housemate. The fact that she’d suddenly popped into my head might mean something, I thought.

  Phoebe answered her phone on the second ring. She said she was planning to pick up her stuff from the house next morning, and I could meet her there.

  Sixteen

  Phoebe seemed very young, younger than the Laila I was trying to understand, and almost a different generation from Tim, for whom grief built on a gravity I guessed had always been there.

  She led me through to her room, while I imagined Ivan in the house with Laila. Jealousy welled up. I caught my breath and steadied it.

  Apart from three cardboard boxes and a case in the middle of the floor, there didn’t seem to be much sign of packing. Phoebe’s room was neat. I’d expected clothes tossed on the bed and piles of books. But was Phoebe a reader? I had no idea.

  She said over her shoulder, ‘I’ve got so little stuff. You’d think it wouldn’t take me more than half an hour.’

  When I asked if she’d like a hand, Phoebe was swift in her refusal. ‘Oh, no. Why don’t you sit there and we’ll talk.’

  She pointed to a chair beside the window, then pulled open a drawer under the single bed and took out some sheets, explaining that none of the furniture was hers. The desk belonged to Tim’s brother and the bed had been Laila’s.

  ‘Laila had two beds?’

  ‘She bought a double bed and said I could use this one.’

  Phoebe agreed to show me Laila’s room, but looked nervous. I didn’t know whether Tim had talked to her about my earlier visits. It seemed reasonable to assume he had, but she didn’t seem suspicious, only concerned about the time.

  ‘I’m expecting Laila’s parents, actually. They rang a little while ago. They want to come and get her things this morning. I’d like to be finished before they arrive.’

  Since time was obviously short, I decided to dispense with preliminary questions and to jump straight in.

  ‘Did Laila have a boyfriend?’

  Phoebe made a dismissive noise, bending to another drawer. ‘You’re married to that Russian guy, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not legally married.’

  ‘You live together, right? I’m sorry if it shocks you to hear it, but she blew him off.’

  Phoebe wasn’t at all sorry. I wondered if she’d been leading up to what she hoped would be a revelation. She projected sensitivity, but underneath I glimpsed an altogether harder person.

  ‘Was Laila a lesbian?’ I asked.

  Phoebe laughed, straightening up and squinting at me, as though grateful to discover that I had a sense of humour.

  ‘Anything’s possible. But that? I really doubt it.’

  Phoebe continued folding clothes into a case, while telling me she had not been close to Laila. She doubted whether anybody had. Laila had been a ‘very private person’. Tim believed that Laila had confided in him, but Tim was delusional. From the few times Tim had mentioned Phoebe in my hearing, it didn’t seem as though he liked, or had a high opinion of her. Phoebe was giving me the strong impression that this low regard was mutual.

  Laila had mostly talked to her about stuff to do with the house, Phoebe told me. They’d discussed music as well, both liking Radiohead and the John Butler trio.

  When I asked Phoebe if she’d noticed a change in Laila over the last couple of months, she replied, apparently without needing to think, ‘Laila was excited about something. She quarrelled with Tim over it. Don’t ask me what because I don’t know.’

  Phoebe’s expression changed, becoming sad and inward looking. ‘I hate shouting and fights,’ she said. ‘I had enough of them while I was growing up. One night I heard the front door slam. And then later on, when I went to get a cup of tea, Laila was standing in the kitchen staring out the window. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me. I made tea for her as well and we took it into the living room. What did we do then? Oh, yes. We watched this program on telly. I thought Laila might talk to me about what was going on with her and Tim, but she didn’t. If Laila didn’t want to talk about something, there was no way you could make her.’

  When I asked what the program had been about, Phoebe replied, ‘Some shipwreck or other.’

  ‘What was the name of the ship?’

  ‘Mary something, I think. It was like really old. Oh yeah, that’s right—it was when the English and the French were fighting. Anyway, like hundreds of years old and it was stuck in the mud in the middle of a river bed. And this diver or someone saw a bit of it sticking out, and then finally they pulled it up and it’s in some museum.’

  ‘Mary what?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Phoebe said.

  ‘Did Laila ever talk to you about diving in Bass Strait?’

  ‘Bass Strait? Isn’t it too deep? Laila had some weird ideas, but I don’t think that was one of them. Actually, she went on one trip that I remember. To Lake Jindabyne. Apparently there’s a whole town up there got bu
ried underwater.’

  Laila had gone to Jindabyne with ‘one of her greenie friends’. Phoebe said that Tim would probably remember who. ‘There was some sort of accident. I know that they had words about it. Tim and Laila were always having words.’

  ‘What about diving instructors?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Did Laila ever mention any?’

  Phoebe screwed her nose up. ‘Well, she did her training in Victoria. She would have done, wouldn’t she? Sorry I’m so vague. Is all of this because of your partner? Is that why you’re asking all these questions?’

  I said it had begun with that and asked if Laila had referred to any diving instructors by name. Phoebe couldn’t remember if she had.

  The doorbell rang. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘That’ll be them.’

  Phoebe disappeared and returned leading a woman with Laila’s delicate, strong bones, and a man so pale his face looked blue.

  The man cleared his throat, then said, ‘Excuse us, please. We’ve filled in a form at the post office, but if any letters do arrive for Laila, can you please forward them to this address?’

  He thrust a slip of paper towards Phoebe, adding, with a swift glance in my direction, ‘Come on, Belle.’

  I could see that the woman had made an effort, put on a certain kind of armour, but her lipstick was smudged and some had transferred itself to her teeth. Her eyes looked like two muddy puddles that some small child or dog had run through, making shapeless footprints. Though Laila’s mother had painted her face bravely, now she didn’t care if two strange women, who might, for all she knew, have been close to her daughter, saw the ruin of it.

  As Phoebe was showing me out, I turned back to ask where she’d spent the night of Laila’s murder.

  ‘You’re not the police, you know,’ Phoebe said crossly, shutting the door with a small sharp click.

  . . .

  I tried Tim’s phone, but it was switched off. I made notes, bolding the points I wished to raise with him.

  I hadn’t warmed to Phoebe. It was partly the sense I had that she interpreted Laila’s death only in terms of her own responses to it. She’d been jealous of Laila and remained jealous of her. But didn’t that apply to me as well?