by Jenny Spence
But I can neither relax, rest nor muster the enthusiasm to watch a DVD. My brain’s still working: thinking, speculating. What if it was number three? Is there any way I could be the target of a killer?
I think of the questions Senior Sergeant Something asked me last night, looking for some sort of reason. There’s nothing in my personal life, which has been pretty uneventful lately. None of my friends have been in any trouble that I know of. As for work – I mentally tick off the jobs I’ve been doing the last few months, but they all seem pretty bland. I did a couple of tenders for Derek and I know he has rivals for some of that work, but knocking me off isn’t going to improve their chances. There were those procedure documents I edited for the Family Court – that place has got a bit of exposure to nutters – but again, nothing I did could possibly have offended or threatened anyone.
My arm is throbbing. I browse through the DVDs and consider “Inception”. Carlos, typically perverse, hated it. We had a long argument about virtual worlds and the nature of dreams, and I suggested that to him the whole world was virtual, since he views it at one remove, like Plato’s cave dwellers.
I pace around the room thinking about Carlos. Carlos is a wild card, and the police are going to find out about him. If they’re looking for a stalker he’s certainly a candidate, and if they find out how weird he is they’ll be rubbing their hands. How can I make them see that he’d never do anything to harm me?
Anyway, Carlos knows more about my life than I do. Regardless of what Carol said about taking it easy, I have to go and see him. Maybe there’s something lurking in the corners of my life that I haven’t thought of, something I’ve brushed past without noticing, and he can help me find it. Hell, maybe he’s already investigating this, one jump ahead of the police.
7
Out of respect for Carlos, I ask the taxi driver to drop me off at the shopping centre a couple of blocks from his apartment. It’s one of his rules not to give his address to a taxi company because it creates an electronic record of his whereabouts. I’ve no idea why this should matter to him.
It’s hard to avoid breaking another Carlos rule about not arriving without warning because I just can’t think what to say in an email. This is way outside the usual parameters of our encounters, which are always dictated by work, but I know he’ll be able to see me approaching and I’m confident he’ll let me in whatever he’s doing.
Nevertheless, the door doesn’t open as I approach, and when I ring the bell there’s no response though my silent image is probably appearing from different angles on half a dozen screens. I wave my arms pointlessly.
Even Carlos has to go the bathroom I think; but I saw a button for his intercom in there once, so he could buzz me and tell me to wait. So that’s not it. I pull my mobile out and dial his number. It rings for a while, then goes to voicemail.
I’m close to tears. This would be typical Carlos behaviour if anyone else came calling, especially uninvited. He doesn’t let people in, he doesn’t answer his phone. But this is me.
Carlos never goes out. Carlos sleeps, but he has alarms to tell him when his perimeter has been breached. Does Carlos get sick? It’s possible, given his lifestyle. But Ockham’s Razor tells me not to look for coincidences. Something is wrong.
I go around to the narrow laneway that runs behind the building. Just wide enough for one vehicle, it’s cobbled with bluestone, strewn with rubbish and muddy after the recent rain. It’s not hard to tell which fence belongs to Carlos, because it is higher than the others, with several strands of barbed wire on top. The fence and the wide gate are steel. As I approach I see something odd. The gate opens inwardly, and it’s not quite shut.
I stand there, my heart hammering. The silence is profound, until I gradually become aware of the distant hum of traffic, a mechanical whine of industry a few blocks away and a sort of low static sound which could be coming from inside Carlos’s place.
“Carlos?” I call in a quavering voice. Nothing.
The gate moves a little when I push it, but then there’s something jammed against it. There’s not enough of a gap to see, so I push a little harder. Now the back of the building is visible. The tall glass doors are wide open, and through them I see the shocking sight of Carlos’s sanctuary laid open, raw and exposed, with chairs and monitors overturned, screens flashing random error codes and cables strewn about like entrails.
Then I look down to see what is blocking the gate, and I stagger back into the lane.
Dark blood has seeped over the stone step and mixed with the mud and ooze between the cobblestones. I see my footprint where I’ve stepped in it. On the other side of the gate, and now imprinted on my eyeballs, Carlos lies twisted like the figures from Pompeii, his legs splayed as in flight, his despairing face raised to the sky, one arm reaching out towards me in supplication.
I grope for my phone with shaking hands, every instinct screaming at me to call Miranda and tell her to run, to hide, to find the deepest cave, the place furthest away from here, from me.
It takes several fumbling attempts to dial the number on the card Detective Senior Sergeant Something gave me. A brisk voice answers “Lewis”, and I’m not even sure it’s him.
“I’m . . . This is Elly Cartwright,” I stammer. “From Brunswick.”
“Yes, Elly.” He’s suddenly alert. “What’s wrong?”
My tongue is thick and I have trouble getting everything out. Once I’ve explained where I am, he says: “Okay, Elly, now listen carefully. Go down to the other end of the lane – not the way you came in – and wait at the corner. I’m coming to get you. Stay out of sight, okay? I won’t be long.”
I feel a stab of fear at that, and the wait at the end of the lane seems interminable, though it’s actually less than five minutes before I hear the distant wail of sirens and Detective Senior Sergeant Lewis pulls up in a dark green Subaru, flanked by police cars spilling out officers dressed in that combat gear they wear these days.
“Can you point out the place? Down there, with the wire on top? Okay, just wait here with Constable Tong.”
“Tell them not to push the gate,” I say. “Tell them he’s . . . he’s . . .”
But Lewis is already running down the lane with a couple of young cops.
“Don’t worry,” says Constable Tong, patting my shoulder. “They know what to do.” Middle-aged, she radiates inner peace and reminds me of my mother. I want her to put her arms around me and let me cry and cry.
We watch them milling around the gate and peering through the crack. Lewis is giving orders to the uniforms, and talking on a mobile phone. A couple of minutes later he’s back by my side.
“This is going to take a while,” he says. “How about you and I go get some coffee and you can tell me what’s been happening here.”
I glance back. “What are they going to . . . ?”
“They’re waiting on some equipment. We’ll come back.”
We drive to a hole-in-the-wall café behind the market, and I slump down in the seat while he goes in to order. My arm is hurting and my eyes feel scratchy, like I haven’t slept for days.
Standing at the counter, Lewis reminds me of someone, maybe Liam Neeson? He’s taller than the people around him, and has an easy grace. The barista seems to know him, and even a couple of the other customers are exchanging friendly remarks. I wonder how he could get to me so quickly? Does he cruise the city with a train of police cars, looking for trouble?
“So, talk to me,” he says once he gets back into the driver seat and hands me my coffee.
“Before I say anything, I want police protection for my daughter.”
“Huh? Where’d that come from?”
Suddenly I think I’m going to cry. I start shaking all over again.
“Hey!” He gently takes the coffee from me and puts it in the holder between the seats. Then he takes my hand and holds it in both his. He has long fingers.
“Hey, c’mon, it’s okay, we’ll take care of it. Where did you say
your daughter was again?”
I pull myself together. “She’s a student teacher doing an internship at Augusta Creek, down in Gippsland. It’s only a small town. She’ll be there for a couple of weeks.”
“Look, if you’re worried, it’s probably the best place for her. I’ll have a word with the local cops. Any strangers in town, they’ll stick out like the proverbial. Anyway, how’s she involved in this?”
“She’s not! I’m not!” I reach for my coffee. “Nothing makes any sense, but I’m starting to feel like Typhoid Mary. I just feel like . . . I don’t want anyone I know coming anywhere near me.”
“We’ll sort this out,” he says. “Help us do our job. For a start, tell me what’s going on here. Who is that, behind the gate?”
“His name is Carlos Fitzwilliam, or at least that’s the name he goes by. He’s got a brilliant mind, a bit crazy I guess, and he’s sort of re-invented himself. He and I sometimes work on projects together. This is his place.”
“Does he live there alone? What about family?”
“He’s single. The way he tells it, he’s got no family at all. He grew up in institutions and foster homes, hence the name.”
Carlos always seemed bitter on the subject of the families who took him in, though I suspect he would have been a difficult child.
“The name?”
“He had a surname from his main foster parents, but he’s rejected that. All he knows about his birth parents is that his father was called William – hence the name Fitzwilliam.”
Lewis looks blank.
“It means ‘son of’,” I say. “Fitz, I mean. You know, Fitzjames, Fitzgerald and so on.”
“Fitzroy?”
“That’s a special one. It means ‘illegitimate son of the king’.”
“Is there a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
“Highly unlikely. He’s a loner, to put it mildly.”
“So,” he says. “You were there because . . . ?”
“I just wanted to see Carlos before you people got to him,” I explain. “He’s kind of dysfunctional.”
“And why would we get to him?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t. I don’t know. But you were asking those questions last night, if there was anything like a stalker. Carlos wasn’t like that, really, but he was a very obsessive person. I . . . I sort of get uncomfortable about things he knows about me,” I say hesitantly. “People go on about Asperger’s, they like to label everything. But he wasn’t Asperger’s, he was just . . . Carlos. Amazing brain, but probably what you’d call a sociopath, definitely agoraphobic – did you study psychology at the police academy?”
“Sort of,” he says and grins.
“We do computer work,” I say, trying to keep my explanation as simple as possible. To give Lewis credit, his eyes don’t glaze over. “Carlos writes – wrote – computer programs, but not in the office because he insists on working from his own place. He’s kind of freelance anyway, but he does nearly everything through the company I work for, Soft Serve Solutions. He’s not the sort of person to go out looking for clients. Anyway, he’s so good at what he does, my boss Derek wouldn’t care if he wanted to work in a submarine, or in Antarctica.”
“And you work with him, writing these programs?” asks Lewis.
“No, I kind of write the instructions that tell people like you and me how to use the programs. You know, like user manuals.”
“That stuff?” he snorts. “I thought it was all written by robots, or monkeys.”
“I know most of it reads that way,” I say, “but there are a few lone voices in the wilderness, like mine, trying to get a hearing.”
“They must pay you a lot.”
“I wish. But the other thing about Carlos,” I continue, “is . . . was . . . he was kind of the eye of the city, and he seemed to be watching me a lot of the time. CCTV, looking into my accounts, that sort of thing.”
Now he’s interested.
“After last night, I thought he might know something . . . or he might have seen something.”
“You should have left it to us to talk to him. We’re the professionals.”
“No, you don’t understand. I haven’t explained Carlos properly. He was a recluse. He wouldn’t have let you in, and he would have got into a panic if you’d tried to force your way in. You’ve seen his place from the back. The front is impenetrable, and it’s all guarded and monitored. Apart from me and Derek I don’t know of anyone who could get in there to see him face-to-face.”
“Evidently someone did,” he says, but his phone must have started vibrating just then, because he stops speaking and pulls it out.
“Lewis,” he says, his voice curt.
He listens for a minute then starts the engine and we go back to the lane behind Carlos’s place. I shrink at the thought of that mound by the gate, but they’ve got the front door open. Through the gaping back of the building, I can see some sort of vehicle like a fire truck squeezed into the alley, and the whole place is swarming with people in white overalls and bootees.
“Sorry, but you’ll have to put these on,” says Lewis, handing me the same overalls and bootees.
Kitted out, we move warily through the building. The devastation is not as great as it looked when I first saw it. Most of the surfaces are smudged with black, but that’s the fingerprint people. Some of the computers have been prised open and their innards strewn about, as I saw before, but the other electronic equipment is untouched.
“It’s a bit messed up,” he says. “What do you think? Has he been robbed?”
“Well, they haven’t touched his sound stuff and it’s worth a lot more than the computers,” I say. “There might be a laptop missing – he must have had one – but I’m not sure. But mostly they’ve ripped parts out of the main computers.”
“Parts?”
“Well, I’m not an expert, but I think it might be the hard disks.”
I peer into the open computer cases. There’s definitely something missing from each one, but I can see other peripherals, like the RAM modules, still more or less in place. I point one of these out to Lewis.
“See this?” I say. “Every computer has a bunch of these, and you just have to pull them out.” I’m about to demonstrate, but he raises a warning hand.
“Better not touch anything,” he says.
“Oh, okay. Anyway, these little bits of RAM are very portable and worth quite a bit, but they haven’t been stolen.”
“But you think the hard disks were? Are they valuable?”
“Not especially. It’s what’s on them that counts.”
“And what would that be?”
“Well, everything,” I say. “The inside of Carlos’s head. The stuff he was trying to protect with all this security.”
Lewis makes a call to Derek because I don’t trust myself to speak, and Derek agrees that some of the guys from the office would have a better idea than me of what’s been done to the computers. An hour or so later, Luke and Steve Li arrive, wide-eyed. A small dark woman dressed in a sharply tailored suit brings them in an unmarked police car and ushers them inside. The ambulance has been and gone and I’m leaning on Lewis’s car, drinking what feels like my tenth cup of coffee.
After a few minutes I wander inside and catch Luke’s eye. He’s ghostly in the same white jumpsuit and gloves as the rest of us.
“You’re right, Elly,” he says. “All the hard disks have gone. Steve’s trying to get some history off that box over there, because it’s still running, somehow.”
Steve looks up briefly then bows his head over a computer in the corner, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Would that be useful?” I ask.
“Probably not. It just might give us an idea of what he’s been working on.”
In the kitchen, the coffee cups and plates Carlos and I used yesterday are still sitting in the sink, alongside several empty Coke cans. There’s also a clean plate with a knife and fork neatly crossed on top.
On the fl
oor just inside the front door there’s a red and white carton labelled Pizza-licious. Luke flips it open.
“That’s funny,” he says.
Lewis comes over with the woman who brought Luke and Steve.
“Elly, this is Detective Senior Sergeant Webster.”
Webster shakes my hand, but her eyes are unfriendly.
“Lewis says you’re familiar with this place? When were you last here?”
“Yesterday.”
Suddenly they’re both very interested. There’s a kind of stillness around us, and I realise that some of the techs working nearby have stopped and are listening in.
“Yesterday?” says Lewis.
I remember Carlos lying by the gate, that arm like a branch of a fallen tree reaching out towards me.
Is that rigor mortis?
8
Now we’re at the police headquarters in St Kilda Road, in an interview room. Lewis and Webster are sitting opposite me. If they play the good cop, bad cop routine, I know who’ll be who.
Lewis says: “Would you please describe your visit to Carlos yesterday?”
“Sure.” I scan my memory, then start. “I got there at about 11.45. Carlos opened the door because he was expecting me and he could see me on his security cameras . . .”
They let me tell the whole story, their faces expressionless.
“And how was Carlos when you left him?” asks Lewis.
“Normal.” I squint into the past, trying to remember if there was anything out of the ordinary. “He was thinking about having lunch.”
“And it was 12.45 pm when you left?” says Lewis.
“Or thereabouts.”
“Can anyone verify that?” asks Webster.
“Well, I got back to the office at about one, and it’s a fifteen-minute walk.”
“And where did you spend the afternoon?” says Webster.
“In the office. I left at about five, and you know what happened after that.”
