Fowler asked her to hand the printout over so he could have a look for himself. ‘Christ,’ he exclaimed after a moment of sifting through the wide ribbon of reports. ‘Ralph Hardegan might not have cracked a mention, but read this.’
Stevie left her chair and looked to where his finger pointed, to a day dated two days before the baby’s discovery.
‘Anonymous female,’ she read, ‘called 1345, very distressed, unintelligible, officer could not understand complaint.’ Stevie paused. ‘The same message was repeated the next day. And you mean to tell me your guy didn’t report this to his supervisor?’
Fowler smoothed his hands over the wheat stubble on his head. ‘Shit.’
‘What is it with you Peppermint Grove people—are you The Misfits, The Dirty Dozen or what?’
‘I’ll have the desk sergeant’s head on a platter.’
Stevie puzzled over the problem aloud: ‘But who can this anonymous female be—Mrs Hardegan perhaps? Her speech is pretty unintelligible at times, some might think she has an accent.’
‘Or this could tie in with the theory that Pavel killed his wife to be with someone else. Can another Romanian woman who couldn’t speak English have been feeding the baby? Can she be the one who made the phone call?’
Their speculation was put to a halt by the ringing of the phone. It was a courtesy call from Swan Detectives. A body had just been found in the river at Middle Swan. They knew Fowler had been searching for the missing Pavels—would he be interested in joining them at the scene?
In the station’s ladies room, Stevie changed into spare clothes stored in the boot of her car, then accompanied Fowler in his own car, a silver-green vintage Bentley.
Stevie sank back into the soft leather seat, appreciating the walnut dash, the leg room, the smooth slap of the wipers as they headed into the rainy night.
‘Belongs to my old man,’ Fowler said somewhat self-consciously. ‘He wants me to buy it so it stays in the family. Thinks if I drive it for a while I’ll get to like it. I wouldn’t normally have it at work, didn’t think I’d be going out tonight...’
They said little else on the drive, settled into an uneasy truce, Stevie luxuriating in the car’s opulence, Fowler sitting stiffly behind the wheel. By the time they arrived at the riverbank the rain had weakened to a drizzle but the wind had become a gale, bending the red gums on the riverbank into the shapes of poor distressed souls. This stretch of the river at Middle Swan was familiar to Stevie, close to the hostel where she’d boarded as a high school student.
Powerful lights erected at a parking area near the scene reflected on the choppy water, a moving palette of glaring brightness and sinister shadows.
Low voices, muffled shapes.
A burst of lightning morphed into the flash of a police photographer’s camera.
The wind blew fresh and moist against Stevie’s cheeks. Turning up the collar of her waterproof jacket she followed Fowler to the police vehicles clustered near the river’s edge. His shape was illuminated in the yellow cut of headlights as he walked, his hands deep in the pockets of his Drizabone, shoulder flaps blown by the wind. They picked their way across the slippery grass, the scent of mud and algae stronger with every step. A tree grew on the riverbank, one branch stretching across the choppy water, a swinging rope dangling. They used to play truant at this stretch of the river, Stevie remembered, swinging from the bank, their tanned bodies plopping like sinkers into the brown water.
But the tree hadn’t seemed sinister then.
Next to the four-wheel drives a group of police, in yellow coats with luminous armbands, were gathered around the bundled body. One man left the group to shake Fowler’s hand. Stevie wasn’t introduced to the Swan detective, Joe Burridge. She knew she should be appreciating this feeling of unlicensed distance, the lack of responsibility, but with no procedural guidelines and no fixed role to play in the investigations, she found her emotions heightened, drowning the objectivity on which she usually depended.
The photographer, having finished his task, stepped back to give Fowler some room.
‘Is it her?’ Burridge asked Fowler who squatted down next to the sodden form. Stevie looked for a moment and then averted her eyes.
‘Not decayed enough if you ask me,’ Burridge said.
‘It’s impossible to tell.’ Fowler sighed as he looked at the pale, almost translucent head of the corpse. ‘Longish hair, could be a woman.’
‘Bodies decay a lot slower in cold water than on land; with so many variables at play, it’s almost impossible to tell at this stage how long the body has been in the river.’
The female voice belonged to the pathologist, Melissa Hurst, who emerged from behind the white coroner’s van acknowledging Stevie and Fowler with a nod of her curly grey head.
‘You’ve already examined the body?’ Fowler asked Hurst.
‘No, only got here a few minutes before you.’
Hurst beckoned him back to the body. The other officers stepped aside. Fowler shone his torch at the slurried face and empty eyes. Decay and aquatic scavengers had eliminated any hope they had of a visual identification. The view from the forehead up told its own story.
‘A shotgun to the head,’ Hurst said. ‘See the peppering of shot on either side of the wound?’
Stevie forced herself to look. The top of the woman’s head was split down the middle, the skin on either side of the wound peeled back, exposing the remnants of waterlogged brain tissue and ripped blood vessels. Fine shotgun pellets formed a smoky rash along the torn sides of the pale skin.
And then something moved.
‘Oh, fuck.’ Fowler turned his head and expelled a sharp breath. Hurst lost no time scissoring her gloved fingers into the cranial cavity. Stevie stepped back, horrified to see the yabby flicking back and forth between the pathologist’s thumb and finger.
‘Bag!’ Hurst snapped and dropped the small crustacean into the hastily proffered bag. ‘Okay put it in with the body bag,’ she told the constable.
‘Like something from fucking Alien,’ Burridge muttered.
As if this was their call, two hovering mortuary attendants took a step closer. Fowler held up his hand. ‘We’re not ready yet.’ He turned back to Hurst. ‘Was the wound inflicted before or after death, doc?’
‘I can’t tell for sure, not until I open her up. Information from bruising would be inconclusive after more than a day or two in the water. How long has Delia Pavel been missing?’
‘Last seen a week ago,’ Fowler said.
Hurst said, ‘Let’s have a look at the rest of her. We’ll have to remove this covering.’
The body was wrapped in a waterlogged doona secured by thin wire ties around the ankles, waist and chest. ‘This’ll be the missing cover off her bed,’ Stevie said under her breath to Fowler. She wondered what had led to the gruesome transformation of something so domestic and banal. Though discoloured by river slime, the small blue flowers on the fabric stood bright under the spotlight’s beam, undoubtedly matching the pillowcases on the Pavels’ bed.
Fowler nodded and took the pliers a constable handed him. ‘Okay, here goes.’ He carefully snipped the lengths of wire wrapped around the torso and ankles. Hurst peeled open the sodden doona. The woman wore jeans that swelled at the belly from the build up of bodily gasses. A long-sleeved T-shirt stretched tight across the distended abdomen. The exposed skin of her neck, hands and bare feet was pale and loose; her fingernails, barely keeping a grip upon her skin, looked like fakes about to come unstuck. Stevie caught a whiff of putrid gas, took a step back and pulled the neck of her jumper over her nose and mouth.
‘Washerwoman’s skin,’ Hurst remarked, pointing to the dimpled flesh on the feet. ‘How was she found?’
‘A couple taking their dog for an evening walk saw what they thought was a log floating near the bank,’ said Joe Burridge. ‘The guy reckoned it might be a danger to small boats and attempted to pull it ashore. Then he realised it was a body—she’d been weighted down
with this.’ He shone his torch on what appeared to be a car axle next to the body. ‘It was tied on with a length of old rope. The river level’s risen over the last few days because of the rain. The body must have been dislodged by the increased water flow and floated free.’
Hurst sighed. ‘There’s not much else I can do here. Let’s get her back to the lab.’
Fowler agreed with the pathologist. ‘We’ve collected some of Delia Pavel’s DNA from the house.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I can use it as a comparison.’
Lights from an approaching vehicle cut through the darkness. The divers had arrived to search the river for more evidence and potentially the body of Jon Pavel.
‘Have you seen enough?’ Fowler asked Stevie.
Stevie nodded, cold to the bone. Clasping her arms across her chest, she followed Fowler back to the car. She looked back at the decaying mass on the riverbank. Delia Pavel had been a wife and mother of a young child. Stevie wondered what she had done to deserve this. (Image 7.1)
Image 7.1
FRIDAY: CHAPTER EIGHT
An emergency hospital admission and several new patients on her round meant the more independent Mrs Hardegan had been bumped to the end of Skye’s afternoon list. Technically speaking, she barely qualified to be on the list at all, but Skye knew the old woman looked forward to her visits and had promised to keep them going as long as she could. At the recent case review meeting, Skye had emphasised the point that although Mrs Hardegan had improved physically, she still needed to be monitored for signs of depression, a common occurrence in recovering stroke victims.
When dealing with her patients Skye always strove to see the person behind the disabilities. They all had stories to tell which reflected their lives and well-being and consequently influenced their nursing care. But other than the barest biographical details gleaned from her son (at best, disinterested, at worst, sleazy), Mrs Hardegan’s story remained a mystery. According to Ralph, his mother was born in Perth in 1923, served as a naval nurse during the war, was married in 1950 and widowed in 1955, his father dying not long after his birth.
He’d told her that his mother had worked in various hospitals around the state when he was growing up and had attained some senior positions—exactly what, he couldn’t say. When Skye had asked if she had ever been a matron—she seemed the type—Ralph shrugged. He remained indifferent when she questioned him about the crisscross pattern of scars she’d noticed on the old lady’s back.
See-through frail, but her wits as sharp as ever, there was a lot to admire about old Lil, and a helluva lot more to find out if Skye was to give her the emotional support she required. Barely able to talk any kind of sense when they’d first met after the stroke, the old lady had answered Skye’s questions about the scars with strings of neologisms—nonsense words of her own invention, a typical characteristic of many stroke patients with expressive dysphasia. Even though her speech had improved greatly, Skye still couldn’t understand everything the old lady was saying, and encouraged her to practise her speech whenever they were together.
They were chatting away now as Skye placed the weekend’s medications into the plastic pill tray. They’d been discussing Ralph who had gone away on business and left no forwarding phone number.
Busy with her parrot, Mrs Hardegan seemed not the least bit concerned about Skye’s dilemma about who to leave on the contact list. After filling up the seed bowl, she replenished the bird’s water supply, using a jug with a long spout. Skye assessed the way she carried out these tasks, noting how barely a seed or drop of water was spilled. The old lady’s fine-motor skills were improving daily, she noted with satisfaction.
‘Our good boy, our little feathered friend,’ Mrs Hardegan muttered to herself as she put the feeding paraphernalia back in the drawer of a heavy oak sideboard at the far side of the room. ‘We are the same age as the feathered one. We were given him by a sea captain when we were just a boy.’
‘I know, and he’s very beautiful,’ Skye said; she’d never seen anything more endearingly ugly in her life. The old lady seemed a lot fonder of Captain Flint than she had ever been of her son. But Skye could hardly list a parrot as the emergency contact.
‘Is there anyone else we can put on your list, Mrs H?’
‘Liar. Not beautiful, ugly as sin.’ Mrs Hardegan must have noticed the exasperation on Skye’s face and answered her question with a shrug of her bony shoulders before shuffling back to her chair by the window. Still saying nothing, she pointed to the Pavels’ house.
‘I know, it’s a shame they’ve gone,’ Skye said. ‘They could have gone on the list. They were good neighbours to you, weren’t they?’
‘Used to be. Not now.’
‘Well ... no, not now.’ Stevie had rung Skye the previous night and told her about the discovery of the body in the river, which she said more than likely belonged to Delia Pavel. Although Mrs Hardegan hadn’t mentioned it, she couldn’t have missed it; it had been all over the TV news. The news didn’t seem to have affected her. She sat as she usually did, rigid in her chair, hands clasped, buttoned tight as a pair of winter combinations, as Skye’s gran would’ve said. When she was dying in hospital, Gran had said how strange it was to be old and sick on the outside, yet still feel twenty-one on the inside. Mrs Hardegan was very much like her gran, Skye decided.
‘The boy told us all about the snoodle pinkerds. Now we know. We know what happened,’ Mrs Hardegan said in her no nonsense, matter-of-fact tone.
Snoodle pinkerds. Skye hadn’t heard her use that term since the early days of the stroke. She wondered what it meant, but was reluctant to bombard the woman with questions that might only lead to more frustration. For that same reason, she didn’t want to raise the distressful topic of Delia Pavel just before the weekend when there wouldn’t be anyone around to keep an eye on her.
On the phone Stevie had mentioned getting together for a meeting with Mrs Hardegan and Luke Fowler on Monday. Hopefully, between the three of them, they’d be able to work out what she was talking about. It surprised Skye that Luke Fowler had agreed to this. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to dealing with him again, and was sure he felt the same. They reminded each other of things they’d both rather forget.
Still poised over the empty emergency contact list, she nibbled the top of her pen and worried about the coming meeting—he’d hardly say or try anything stupid with Stevie standing as a buffer between them, would he? Skye didn’t usually care what anyone said or thought about her, but her ‘holiday job’ was one thing she didn’t care to broadcast, especially to Stevie. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want her friend to find out—it wasn’t like Stevie was ‘conservative country’, like her folks. Even though she knew Stevie was not judgemental, she worried that knowledge of her past might diminish her value in Stevie’s eyes. Their friendship wasn’t worth the risk.
‘Have you any plans for the weekend, Mrs H?’ she asked, putting the pen, Mrs H’s notes and her disturbing thoughts away.
Mrs Hardegan pointed to her cross-stitch, then to the TV.
‘Don’t just point Mrs H; you’ve got to practise your talking. That’s what the speech therapist said, isn’t it?’
‘Tripe, the boy talked utter tripe, getting us to look at all those stupid picture cards. We know what a teapot is, we know a car when we see one, an apple with an aaaaaa —we’re not at kindergarten.’
‘I hope you weren’t rude to her.’
‘No. We just told him to fuck off.’
Skye grinned back. ‘Bet you didn’t.’ She picked up the TV guide and slowly read the weekend TV listings aloud. She could sense the old lady taking it all in, committing her weekend viewing schedule to memory. Mrs H could no longer understand numbers, so Skye had stuck small coloured dots on the TV remote to signify the channels. Next, she took the coloured wool Mrs Hardegan pointed to, and threaded enough needles to last the weekend. The tapestry was a laborious task, something Mrs H had taken up after the stroke when the
screen-printing had proved too messy.
‘I’m going to visit my folks. They live on a farm near Wyalkatchem,’ Skye told her as she finished the threading.
‘Lucky parents to have a boy like you. Better than our cowardly waster.’
‘I don’t think my parents would agree if they knew what I’d been up to a few years ago.’ Skye got up from the footstool. ‘Anyway, I’d better get going if I want to miss the city traffic.’
But she was too late to miss the evening traffic. Skye rang her mother from her car to say she’d be late and not to hold dinner for her. In the evenings the corner store often cooked fresh Asian dishes to go. She’d had them with Mrs Hardegan before and they were always delicious. She’d get a container and eat in the car on the way to the farm.
Heading to the deli, she tried again to make sense of Mrs Hardegan’s words: The boy told me all about the snoodle pinkerds. Now we know, we know what happened. There was something there, she knew it, something she’d failed to grasp. Ralph Hardegan had disappeared, supposedly on business, and the Pavels, or at least one of them, had been murdered. There had to be a connection between the three of them—but what?
She started to call Stevie on her mobile, then decided against it. Monty was having his operation tomorrow and Stevie would probably be sitting with him in the hospital while he went through the last minute preparations for surgery. Even if she did get through on the phone, she doubted her friend would be in the right frame of mind to listen. Never mind, maybe she could work it out for herself while she was up at the farm. God knows there wasn’t much else to think about in that barren, sand-blasted place.
She ordered the nasi goreng, a fully-leaded Coke and a packet of smokes she’d have to hide from her mother. In her head she heard her mother say, ‘Still smoking, and with your asthma as bad as it is? Skye, you must have a death wish.’ She smiled to herself. If her mother knew what else her little girl had been up to since she left home, she’d probably be overjoyed at the insignificance of her one remaining vice.
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