“Turn off the washing machine,” Diana whispered.
When the noise stopped, the eagle relaxed, and they tiptoed out.
“Let me put some cream on that lovely cheek of yours to prevent its bruising,” Jason said. He gave his mild, shy grin.
“It’s my leg that really hurts.” Her thigh was hot where the wedgetail had struck her when she captured it.
“Where did you find the eagle?” he asked suddenly.
“On the flying ground.” The instant she spoke, she felt color rise from her neck to her hair roots. She turned to hide her face, coughing. Jason gave her back a tentative pat.
“I hope you’re not getting the bug I had,” he said. “Those new flus are killers.”
When she stopped gasping, her cheeks felt even redder, and there were tears in her eyes.
“You look exhausted,” he added. “What a weekend!”
He walked with her back through the waiting room, where she paused to apologize to the receptionist and her friend, a small, sharp-faced woman whom Diana had seen driving around in a Land Cruiser. “Did those duck-killing drongos shoot the eagle?” the woman wanted to know.
“Not sure,” Diana muttered.
The receptionist said huffily, “I don’t imagine it was one of your animal liberationist friends.”
Back in the van, Diana rested her head on the steering wheel. In her mind she was on the veranda of the old homestead with her mother, welcoming their guests to the weekend of duck shooting in 1973. Louise and Jack Williams had driven over from their property for the Friday night barbecue. Beautiful Louise. “Diana’s very tall for twelve, but so quiet,” she said. “Carolyn, the little wretch, thinks of nothing but boys!” Someone standing nearby quipped, “Like mother, like daughter.” Everyone laughed, even small, dour, wealthy Mr. Williams. Joan Pembridge smiled gently.
Diana started the engine and five minutes later was back at her house in Fig Tree Gully Road.
Grace Larnach bent and straightened slowly as she tidied the wreckage left by the anti-shooting campaigners who had slept on the floor downstairs that weekend. Downstairs was Grace’s part of the house, set up as an art gallery. She ran it with occasional help from Diana; when Diana was away, Grace looked after the birds and the animal hospital in the back garden.
Diana kissed her on both cheeks and went through to the kitchen to make tea. When she returned with the pot and two mugs, she said, “Any phone calls?”
Grace took a long slurp. “I wrote ’em down.”
Diana went to the desk and looked at the list: most of them were radio stations wanting interviews about the anti-shooting campaign.
Grace watched her curiously. “You expecting someone particular to ring?”
Diana shrugged. “The big wedgie was shot, down near the lake. I took it straight in to Jason, so I haven’t had a proper look round yet. I better get going.” She left her tea steaming on the desk.
There were three hours of daylight left, she calculated, enough to drive to the flying ground, check the corpse again, and call the security guards from the research facility. As she drove, she tried to remember details of the body, but her mind was stuck on Carolyn’s unhinged mouth. She must have been yelling loud enough to burst her lungs. Why did nobody hear her? In the stillness of night, someone must have heard her shouting.
Diana looked across the wide fields of burned-off wheat stubble beside the highway. If you knew this country well, you knew where all the houses were, tucked away behind trees—and there were hectares upon hectares of uninhabited land where a woman could scream her head off without being heard.
She drove past the campsite again and along the marshy foreshore of the lake. When she rounded the curve she saw that Morrie was waiting for her. He was now wearing blue jeans and an unbuttoned shirt: clothes she had left for him by the fence post last Christmas. The shirt still had folds in it from its box. Diana remembered how Louise Williams had shocked everyone at that long ago barbecue by ruffling his dark curls. “He’s a sweetie, that rouseabout of yours,” she had said to Diana’s father, who answered in a jocular tone, “Not too sweet when he’s got a skinful.”
Diana jumped down from the van and once more allowed Morrie to lead with his silent, thin-legged stride, making for the place where the body had been.
It was still there. The hands, tied at the back, were contorted like a falcon’s feet when it seizes prey. Diana wondered, Where’s her ring? Carolyn had worn a gold ring on her middle finger. One day in the street a few years ago, when a bearded man—someone from the research facility—had walked past, Carolyn leered at him, rubbing the ring on her middle finger. “Lost it up his bum once,” she said. He hurried on, head down, while Carolyn pealed with laughter.
Diana turned to Morrie. “Did you see a gold ring?”
He shook his head. “Look.” He pointed to the fence. About fifty meters from where they were standing, there was a gate. Diana followed him to it. In very wet years this stretch of ground, known as Top Paddock in the old days, had a stream running through it, although mostly the watercourse was dry. But gilgais flourished, making it a good sheep paddock. When they reached the gate, Morrie pointed at a gilgai. Diana thought she could just make out in the dry ground beside it the outline of a tire. The dark-green stems of grass were damaged. “Drive along here.” He began to walk backward from the gate toward the corpse, pointing all the time at the ground, murmuring, “Look, look: fox. And little fox. You see: lotsa feet.” Bending over, he touched the ground, showing the marks left by foxes. “I throw stones. Make them go.” Foxes would have been pleased to feed on the body, Diana knew. Morrie halted, pointing urgently at the grass. “Look. Shoe. You see shoe. Nother shoe. Two people. You look: two walk.” Diana shook her head in frustration. He ran to one of Carolyn’s gold sandals, picked it up, and placed it over a footprint he could discern.
“Don’t touch things!” Diana said. She glanced across her shoulder, at the house on the ridge, then pulled her shirt out of her jeans and wiped Carolyn’s sandal where Morrie had held it. “I’ll have to get the police now.”
In a moment Morrie had reached the old fence. He hurdled its sagging barbed wire and was gone, up the slope, into the trees.
She stared after him. Can I risk it? she wondered. Can I risk lying about Morrie? It had been this time of day, twenty years ago, when police dogs had found him in the Pembridges’ barn. When he was led out, his eyes were white with terror. A detective returned to the homestead that night to say Morrie had confessed. “Seems he was infatuated with Mrs. Williams. Got jealous,” the detective said.
Diana looked back at the corpse once more. There were some long, dark hairs on Carolyn’s T-shirt, which she had noticed earlier. Now, paying attention to their length and texture, she felt the fine hairs on her arms rise, like the fur on the back of a cat. She picked off a few; there were still plenty left for the police.
A gray-uniformed guard, weary with boredom, came out of the gatehouse beside the sign that said EXOTIC FERAL SPECIES AND MICROBIOLOGY RESEARCH CENTRE. PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED. “Name?” he asked.
“Can I use your telephone?” Diana said.
“Name?” he repeated irritably.
“Diana Pembridge. I need to ring the police. There’s been an accident.”
He yawned and jerked his head to indicate she could use the telephone in his box.
Chapter Three
Sonja Olfson was one of the civil servants who had survived the privatization mania of the late 1980s, when the government downsized the Exotic Feral Species and Microbiology Research Centre. All scientific staff were now on industrial payrolls, while a handful of government employees—directors of administration, finance, housing, science liaison, security, and personnel (the Gang of Six)—saw to the day-to-day running of the place. Sonja was director of personnel.
When her husband was away, she often spent time in Kalunga with Margaret McLeod, who worked for Jason Nichols, the vet. Sonja had taught Margare
t decoupage and was helping with a cuff-link box that Margaret was decorating for Jason’s thirty-first birthday. Margaret had been a general science teacher in an inner Sydney school, but after a stress breakdown she moved to the country “to hang loose.” In High Street, Kalunga, townsfolk in wide hats nudged elbows against freckled arms when Sonja and Margaret appeared, the one so small, alert, and tailored, the other large and given to wearing alarming colors. Ms. McLeod, people said, also liked a drink. Through Margaret, Sonja had got to know Jason socially.
After Diana had left his clinic on Sunday, Sonja said, “I watch her from my veranda every morning, training those hunting birds. What’s she like?”
He grinned and glanced at Margaret, who snorted. “Grazier’s daughter. Typical country attitude: if you haven’t lived here for three generations, you’re a tourist.”
“That’s a bit harsh, Margie,” Jason objected. “I find Kalunga people quite friendly.”
“You’re the vet!” She turned to Sonja. “You know what they call you directors?”
“What?” Sonja’s small, pointy face under its thatch of carrot-colored hair made her look, sometimes, like a fox.
“Cruisers,” Margaret said.
Sonja seemed hurt by the gibe. Jason patted her shoulder. “You’re missing John, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “He’s in South Australia. Then he’s going to Sydney to give some lectures.…” She sighed so deeply, the others stared. John Parker would not be an easy man to be married to, they were thinking, and Sonja was hardly the type to brush aside difficulties. She was often unwell; if somebody sneezed on the other side of town, Sonja caught a cold. Jason and Margaret marveled that she could be Senator Hilary Olfson’s sister. “Somebody scrambled the genetic code,” Jason once quipped.
Sonja did not live in the staff condominiums at the Research but in a pretty wooden bungalow, raised on pylons, out near the lake. It had its own little oasis of native trees and a guest pavilion. When she arrived home that afternoon, she stood on her veranda, gazing at the silver-blue water, feeling profoundly peaceful. From the back of her house it was only fifty meters to the fence, and beyond it lay the campsite where the duck shooters had cursed and caroused for two nights. Now the guns had stopped, the shooters had left, and the world seemed clean again. Sonja gave a sigh of contentment. A vase full of apple-gum leaves scented her big front room, while from the kitchen came the aroma of vegetable soup simmering in the Crock-Pot. She grew beans, spinach, sorrel, carrots, zucchinis, lettuce, and herbs in her garden. On her roof there were solar panels. “What’s the use of whining about environmental degradation?” she would demand. “You have to do something.”
It was almost sundown. This was the hour when she and John would sit together on the veranda for a drink, while above them the sky turned from the color of washed denim to gold, then orange, and swans honked on the lake. “Oh, my darling, I miss you!” she said aloud, raising her glass of mineral water to the canvas chair where his long legs should have been stretched out toward her.
It was her first marriage but his third, and this fact sometimes overwhelmed Sonja with a sense of injustice. She felt the other wives had stolen something from him, cheating her of what she should have enjoyed.
She was still sitting there, sipping her drink, wondering what he might be doing at this minute in Bangkok—shopping for silk, she hoped—when three white Land Cruisers went tearing along the road toward the airfield. In the second vehicle she recognized Joe Miller, the director of security.
The vehicles went past the airstrip and bumped onto open land, heading for the perimeter fence.
At various points in the fence there were gates big enough for a water tanker, in case of bush fires. The Land Cruisers drove toward a gate that was up to the left and behind a hillock. They disappeared behind the hill, reappearing a few minutes later on the other side of the fence. They lurched from side to side as they crossed the dry watercourse. Sonja went inside and dialed Joe’s car phone. From her living room she could see the convoy slowing down.
“Miller,” he answered. The Land Cruisers had stopped about twenty meters from the lake.
“What are you doing over there?” she asked.
“Talk to you later, dear.”
“Joe, please don’t condescend—” He had cut her off.
Sonja fumed. Is it because you can’t bear the thought of having a woman as your equal? Is it because I won’t agree to your ridiculous security surveys of the staff? She felt breathless with irritation. It was the second time people had been nasty to her that afternoon. First, Diana Pembridge had given her the brush-off when they met in Jason’s clinic; now her colleague was being rude. She felt tearful, but tears did not come. Instead, an unbearable restlessness and curiosity about what they were doing over there took hold of her.
Her bicycle was downstairs, on a concrete area underneath the house. The white Land Cruiser that came as a director’s perquisite was parked there too, but Sonja tried to use it as little as possible, biking to and from the administration building, except on rainy days. It would be impossible, she realized, to pedal through the long, dry grass to the spot where they were gathered, over near the mountain; she decided to drive.
When Joe Miller saw the small, determined figure of Sonja Olfson coming toward them, waving to get his attention, he hurried to cut her off. The fewer people on the site, the better for the investigation.
He put a confidential, fatherly arm around her shoulders. “Did you see or hear anything unusual out here last night?” he asked.
She shook her head. “You’re going to be nice to me now, are you?” she answered reproachfully.
“I’m always nice to you.” He began walking her away from the spot where his young officers, a constable from the Kalunga police, and Diana Pembridge were gathered. Then he told her.
Sonja looked at him blankly. “Oh, my God! And John’s away!” she blurted, and stared back toward the house, perched on its own, a kilometer from the nearest habitation. She clapped a hand over her mouth, remembering something.
“You know what Carolyn told me?” she asked in a small voice. “I gave her a lift into town last night. She said she was going for a drink at the Arms to check out the duck-shooting jocks.” Her little pointed face turned pale. “I think I’m going to …”
Joe waited, eyes averted, until the heaving noises stopped. Then he led her back to her Land Cruiser and sent one of the young blokes to sit with her while he returned to the group around the corpse.
What Sonja had just told him was exactly what he would have guessed was the background to Carolyn’s death. He tried to remember the expression she used if anyone asked, “How’re you going, Cas?” She’d toss her scarlet hair and answer, “Whoa!” then add something like: “I put human cells into a pig brain this morning.” She wanted you to agree that life was a game and you could do what you liked. All out of whack, poor kid. He walked thoughtfully around the site; there was nothing he could explain yet, except perhaps that the clothes were too obviously strewn wildly about.
The light was fading, and there was no point searching any longer for a murder weapon. The constable from the Kalunga police had spoken by radio to Homicide in Sydney. They agreed it was best to get the body into a morgue as soon as possible.
Two of the guards laid a stretcher on the ground.
One of them had been taking photographs, the other, under Joe’s direction, making drawings. “Seen enough, boss?” he asked. Joe detected a faint sneer.
“Load her up,” he said. He dragged Carolyn’s red cotton pullover from the fence.
“Goodbye, darling.” The guard smirked, his small eyes flicking at Joe.
• • •
In her study that evening, Diana Pembridge sat staring at the hairs she had taken from Carolyn’s T-shirt, wondering if she was mistaken, if they were ordinary hairs, from a human.
Now that the horror of seeing the corpse had subsided, an aftershock of weariness gripped her, and she want
ed desperately to go to bed. She had been at her desk for an hour already, puzzling about how to get into the Research. Not just inside its fence—that was easy; she could do that with wire cutters—but inside the animal houses. The security system had alarms and cameras, and armed guards patrolled the lab complex.
On the screen in front of her she had keyed in: “Dear Senator Olfson, I have had no acknowledgment that you have received my letter of 28 January. In it I applied to be appointed for 1993/4 to the Ethics Committee of the Exotic Feral Species and Microbiology Research Centre, Kalunga, New South Wales. Please let me know as soon as possible if my application did not reach your office and I will send a duplicate, plus copies of the names and addresses of my references.” She read through what she had written, thinking ruefully that if she had been cunning she would have sucked up to people at the Research, as her cousin, Kerry Larnach, had done, and would not now be trying to wheedle her way inside. She printed the letter and signed it, then dialed the senator’s fax. As the paper slid through, Diana glanced at the hairs again. They were laid out on the tissue in which she had wrapped them for safekeeping. Each was about ten centimeters long and very dark, almost black. She fingered her scalp and then jerked out a hair. Beside the others, the texture of hers was different, even to the naked eye.
At six o’clock next morning, the Kalunga Shire garbage men drove to the campsite by the lake, collected the contents of the forty-four-gallon drums, and took them to the industrial incinerator at the Research, where all Kalunga’s garbage was burned.
Diana remembered the condom and the hair comb later that morning while she was being interviewed by the two Homicide detectives—one jokey, one serious—who had arrived from Sydney on Kalair’s first flight.
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