‘Hell,’ he said. ‘I think I’m getting the idea. This involves her even more than Michel. Bits and pieces are starting to fit together.
‘We have the many visits she makes to doctors. And, I suppose, dentists. She picks likely victims. Finds out their office hours, when they’re likely to be alone. No doubt has softened them up a bit beforehand.
‘Those scenes across the car park – that must be Michel holding the camera. But she also takes a camera in with her. Probably one of the little Nikons that we’ve found in the house. They look quite a lot like a mobile phone. She could just have it lying on the top of her bag. The victim wouldn’t suspect a thing – just look at how Lam behaved. I’m bloody glad there was no sound, even though it might have given us even more evidence.’
‘Yeah, the sound of him jerking off I can certainly do without,’ said Troy.
‘Then at some point, once they’ve got a few sequences, they show the guy a copy.’
‘Yeah,’ said Mark from his corner. ‘They send an email, from an untraceable address. Hotmail. Gmail. Yahoo. I’m gathering them all here. But it’s the same instructions for them all. Cash, in plain envelopes. He gives them a number – a sort of reference number – so he knows who it’s from. They have to put the envelope through the back door of the Portsmith unit, marked with that number, at a time he gives them. And from what you people collected last night it looks like that happens every month.
‘And if they don’t do it – you can imagine the consequences. That guy Lam – there are two threats. One is they’ll tell the Dental Board. I guess it must be illegal to have sex with your patients if you’re a dentist. Like doctors. The other is that they’ll tell his wife.’
‘I saw a French film once,’ said Mark. ‘With English subtitles. Madame Bovary. About a woman in France, married, who had sex in a coach pulled by a horse, riding around the town. Not with her husband, you understand. Other guys. Then tried to get money out of them. Seems like we’ve got the Madame Bovary of Earlville here.’
‘In defence of Flaubert, who wrote the book the film was based on,’ said Leslie, ‘I’d have to point out that Madame Bovary liked sex. I’m not sure Madame Janvier does, from what I’ve seen. Which is enough for me, although I suppose I’m going to have to see a lot more before we’re finished with this case. She’s very practised. But lust? I don’t think so.’
‘In the emails, the guy always signs the same way,’ Gino said. ‘Just to show who’s boss. He calls himself “The Controller”. And that’s on the front of all the envelopes.’
‘Looking at that film,’ Leslie said, ‘I’d say she was as much the controller as he was.’
The Controller. That was the name Henry had given Leslie the previous evening. Now Leslie outlined Henry’s tale of woe to Cass, Drew and Troy.
Outside the Portsmith unit he’d taken Henry gently by the arm. ‘Henry,’ he’d said, ‘I was surprised to see you here. There’s no suggestion that you’re breaking the law, is there Detective?’ He looked questioningly at Cass, who was trying to take in this new development.
‘No Sir,’ she said. ‘Ah, I just caught sight of this gentleman when I stepped out the door. He turned and disappeared, and I called to him to stop. Which he has done …’ She looked at Henry. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise …’
‘Yes,’ said Leslie, ‘Dr Jolley and I have met socially. He works in the hospital.’ The man nodded but did not speak. He still seemed to be suppressing sobs, but whether they were of fear, anxiety or relief Cass wasn’t sure.
‘Henry,’ said Leslie, ‘can I invite you up to my office? It’s five minutes away and I have my car. I’m certainly not detaining you. But you might like the opportunity to calm down a bit.’
Still speechless, Henry had nodded and followed Leslie towards the police cars.
‘Detective Borgese,’ said Leslie over his shoulder, ‘can you make sure all that stuff is bagged and brought to the lab as soon as possible? I’ll see you there.’
In the office, he called for a tray of tea. Then he opened a cupboard, found a bottle of single malt Glenlivet, and poured a generous glass for Henry.
‘I’d join you but it looks like we’ll be working long into the night,’ he said. Henry nodded gratefully and took a gulp.
Leslie continued: ‘I’m happy to have a conversation with you off the record. Obviously there are some things that need to be explained. Several things,’ he added, remembering his conversation with Henry at the Christmas party. Had Henry in fact been referring to himself? Was the ‘misunderstanding’ he’d described the prelude to blackmail?
‘But anything that you don’t want to tell me you needn’t, and anything that looks like it might be … compromising for you, I’ll stop you.
‘I must tell you that we are investigating the death – which the papers are calling murder, although we haven’t said that ourselves – of a woman called Odile Janvier. Her husband is also missing. We’d very much like to find him and talk to him. That is, of course, if he’s alive. He had an office, of sorts, very close to where we met you. We had only just begun to investigate there when Detective Diamond ran after you. So I have no knowledge at all of why you were there, but I’d have to say that I don’t think it’s coincidence.’
Henry took another swallow of his whisky. God, it was a good drop. Then he managed to say: ‘Yes. I know Odile Janvier. Or, I knew her.’ For a few moments he looked down at his hands. ‘I’m sorry I ever met her,’ he continued. ‘But she came to me as a patient.’
‘Ah,’ said Leslie sympathetically. ‘When was this?’
‘Very soon after I came up here,’ answered Henry. ‘About four years ago.’
He sat silent for a moment then looked up at Leslie. ‘It’s not a nice story,’ he said. ‘She came as a private patient. She had a minor problem. I recommended some surgery, day surgery, which she had. I later realised that she hadn’t really needed the surgery at all, it had been a ploy to see me, and trap me. She seemed to have an obsession with doctors, gynaecologists especially. She told me once that she was supposed to marry one. I don’t know what happened, but certainly he had a lucky escape. At the beginning, I thought she was quite an attractive woman, quite vivacious, and well, French, you know.
‘About two weeks after the surgery she called my receptionist very late one Friday afternoon and said she had a problem and needed to see me. Jo, my nurse, said that the rooms were closing and she should go to ED but she was very persistent. Finally Jo told me and I agreed to wait back and see her, without Jo, who wanted to go home. She eventually arrived after about half an hour, looking very dressed up and not at all in pain, but still complaining of a problem.
‘I don’t normally examine a female patient without another woman close by if not actually in the room but I didn’t have any choice and I was not, for God’s sake, expecting any difficulties. I told her to go into the examination room and take off enough clothes for me to examine her.
‘A few minutes later I went in, expecting to see her covered up with the sheet. In fact she was stark naked apart from black stockings and one of those scarves that she wore. They have a very particular design.’
‘A Hermès scarf,’ said Leslie. Henry nodded.
‘Before I could size up the situation and work out what to say to her she had jumped up and – look, I know this sounds ridiculous, but there was a chair next to the examination couch and she pushed me into it and tied my arm to the chair with the scarf and then started … to undress me.’
Henry buried his head in his hands and Leslie tactfully poured himself some more tea. He would have much preferred a glass of Glenlivet himself at this point. When Henry still did not speak he asked: ‘So – did this then develop into something between the two of you?’
‘Yes. Yes. I’m afraid it did. Well, I’m divorced, it had been quite some time … and she was very persuasive. So even though she was a patient I allowed it to happen. Well, more than that. I met her several times in a motel.’
‘She arranged those meetings? Or you did?’
‘She found the place. Well, frankly, I think she already knew it, and that was how she set me up. I’m sure I wasn’t the first. But someone else is involved. The person who … can I have another drop of this? It’s quite a long story.’
Leslie poured a generous measure and Henry continued: ‘We met several times and I have to say I was an active participant. I asked her to come to my flat. I knew she was married but I was quite attracted to her. But she wouldn’t go anywhere except the motel. She booked the room and I paid in cash. But I didn’t pay her; she wasn’t a prostitute. No, she was much worse than that.
‘I met her, I guess six or seven times over several months, and we spent maybe half an hour together each time. We, er, didn’t talk very much. I really knew very little about her. Then she called me one day and said she couldn’t see me any more. I was … disappointed, asked why, said if she changed her mind to ring me. She hung up.
‘A week later a letter came to my rooms. Marked “personal”. Inside was a USB stick and an anonymous typed note directing me to look at what was on it, but on my personal computer, not on a government one. I found this message quite unsettling and I wasn’t sure what to do. In fact I did nothing. I put the letter in a locked drawer at the bottom of my desk. I thought about it during the week but I couldn’t think what it was about and I was anxious that it might damage the laptop. I thought it might be pornography but I never thought of it coming from her.
‘A week after that I got another letter, much the same, but much more threatening. With another USB stick. The letter said I had “disobeyed” the previous instructions and I must immediately open the file on the USB or I’d be sorry.
‘I thought about coming to the police but I felt uneasy about what might be on the file, although I still didn’t think of Odile Janvier.’
‘Did you talk to anyone about this?’ asked Leslie.
‘Mmm, no,’ answered Henry, but there was a moment’s hesitation.
‘Go on,’ said Leslie.
‘Well, later that evening when I was on my own I put the stick into my laptop and opened the folder on it.
‘It contained videos of every one of my encounters with Odile, in graphic detail. She must have had a camera all set up in the motel room before I arrived. But I’m sure someone else was involved, maybe her husband? With the videos came threats from this person – “The Controller”. He would tell the Medical Board that I’d had an affair with a patient and she would complain that she’d been “violated”. The only way I could avoid this was to pay. And pay. He wanted a thousand dollars a month. In cash. I was given instructions about putting the money – well, you probably know where. In the back door. I was given very specific times and told that if I missed them the pictures would be sent to the Medical Board and the local paper and my career would be over.
‘I had to produce the first payment within a week of getting the demand. I was in a terrible state. I decided I would do it that week to buy myself time, and then think about what to do. The following week, I received another letter, a warning that I shouldn’t think of reporting the demand to anyone or of not making the payments.
‘The more I thought about it the less I could come up with a solution. The fact that it seemed to me to be consensual sex wouldn’t make any difference to the Medical Board. She was definitely a patient, I’d operated on her, there were hospital notes. I knew her well enough by then to realise she could spin quite a story if she wanted to. I would be deregistered. My family would be horrified, all my colleagues would be appalled. Obviously these people know that … knew that.
‘Another thing about it was that she’d given my secretary a post-office box address. I never knew where she lived. And she always called me; I never had a mobile number. So this had been planned a long time before the first … incident.
‘So I’ve just paid. Every month I’ve tried to find a solution and every month I’ve just paid. It’s got worse for me because I’ve now got a … well, what I hope is a relationship, with someone else. Another doctor. And I don’t know that I could ever tell her about this.’
‘You might be surprised,’ remarked Leslie. ‘I think when it comes to blackmail most people side with the victim. What you’re telling me is not a nice story, but I don’t think you come out of it too badly. Um, so can I ask you when you last saw Odile Janvier?’
‘Saw her?’ Suddenly Henry looked up as he realised the implications of the question. ‘Leslie, I never saw her again once she broke it off. Not like that and not as a patient. I’ve seen her once, at some distance, in Myer and I immediately left the store. And Leslie,’ his face grew haggard, ‘I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘No,’ said Leslie, ‘I’m not suggesting you killed her. Apart from anything else, if you had it’s unlikely you’d have been where we found you this evening. What took you down there?’
‘I saw the TV news yesterday evening; found out that she was dead. I was in Sydney, staying with my daughter. I decided I should come back here and I took this morning’s flight. My daughter was quite perplexed, I couldn’t tell her why I was suddenly changing my plans. But I was worried there might be more tapes of me. Well, I’m sure there are. I didn’t really have any plan apart from seeing if I could get in there and maybe take the tapes. I put some tools in the car, silly of me really, but I didn’t have any definite plan to break in. Whenever I’ve been there before I’ve always just made the drop then left straight away, as they told me to.’
‘Did you ever think that the Controller could be Odile Janvier herself? That she might be doing it all?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ He seemed surprised by that idea. ‘The letters – they seem to imply another person. A man, I’ve always thought.’
‘You have them still?
‘They’re locked up in my rooms. With the USB sticks. I was always hoping that some day I’d get some justice in all this.’
‘That time may have come. But we are going to ask you to make a statement. Although we’ve only just started to go through the material we’ve found in Janvier’s office, from what I’ve seen and what you’ve told me I’m pretty sure we will find film of you. And it would be part of the evidence in any court case. Blackmail’s an ugly business, I’m afraid.’
Leslie stood up and added: ‘Well, that’s quite a lot for one night. I suggest that I get one of my men to drop you home, and that you give him your car keys so we can bring your car back to you. I think you might be approaching the limit to drive yourself. And then maybe tomorrow we can arrange to talk to you formally, get a statement, about your relationship with the Janvier woman.’
Leslie called Sergeant Garth and arranged Henry’s transport home. He shook his hand in farewell. But as he watched him retreat down the corridor he wondered about Dr Henry Jolley. Was he telling all he knew, about Odile Janvier and his presence at Portsmith? He’d noted Henry’s hesitation when asked if he’d told anyone else about the blackmail. Who might he have spoken to? Had he, for example, ever discussed the problem of Odile Janvier with his colleague Dr Ingram?
And what kind of alibi did he have from 28 to 31 January, the days during which her death had most likely occurred?
Far North Queensland,
4 March 2011
Mid-morning, Friday. Two traffic police were cruising along the highway near Innisfail, south of Cairns, listening to local radio. ‘If You’re Gone’ by Matchbox 20 was playing.
In front of them was a dirty white Mitsubishi Outlander with NSW plates, going just a bit above the speed limit. It slowed when the driver saw the police car but otherwise proceeded normally. Something sparked deep in the brain of the officer in the passenger seat. A white Mitsubishi. He couldn’t quite remember what it was but he decided to run a check on this one. Then he saw that the rego number was partly hidden by mud. Well, that could happen on dirt roads; there was quite a lot of mud on the vehicle itself. Was the middle number 53 or 58
? Or even 33?
He started to run through all three numbers in the database, muttering to himself. As he was doing so, the Mitsubishi pulled left suddenly onto a side road, and picked up speed. The police car continued along the highway.
‘So 53 is a white Honda. 58 is a grey Honda, must be from the same factory batch. 33 is a Volkswagen … what the fuck?’
‘Mitch,’ he said to his partner, ‘something funny here. Let’s go after them.’
A row of semis was coming towards them, followed by a motorbike, so there was a pause until Mitch could turn the car, and then they were stuck for a few moments behind the semis before they got back to the turn-off.
‘A white Mitsubishi Outlander, Dave,’ Mitch said. ‘That woman who was found in the forest near Kuranda …’
‘Yep. That’s it! Fuck! I hope we haven’t lost them.’
Mitch put the accelerator to the floor and followed the road towards Silkwood. It was mixed countryside, small farms of bananas, some fields of sugarcane, some original rainforest. Each time they passed a house or a sidetrack Mitch slowed and they peered in, looking for the tracks of the Mitsubishi. Dave called up another car, which would take a while to arrive but would come into the area from the north. Between them they could cover the whole district. Meanwhile, Dave had learned that the NSW car with 53 in its rego, the white Honda, was reported stolen six months previously.
Forty minutes later Mitch noticed new tyre tracks in a dirt road leading deep into the bush, close to the base of Mt Cullumbullum.
‘That looks like it could be him,’ Dave agreed. Mitch nosed the car in and began to follow the tracks. These went on for several kilometres. There were a couple of small acreages to either side that petered out into low rainforest and scrub. Deep ruts in the mud made progress slow. Nobody was about.
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