by Kathryn Fox
“Got it! Thanks.”
Mary stood to leave. “I suppose you know that Giverny’s funeral is tomorrow. I’ll be going if you’d like a lift.”
Anya did know and was unsure whether to attend. She had no idea whether the Harts would appreciate her being there, or her presence would only upset them more.
“I’ll see how tomorrow turns out. I could be caught up, and I am still on call for the unit.”
Mary glanced over her half-glasses. “If you ever want to talk, you know where to find me. It’s worth remembering that carers need looking after too.”
Anya was already absorbed in the file and flipped to her summary. “Appreciate the coffee,” she managed as Mary closed the door behind her.
Nineteen-year-old Violet Yardley had presented on 30 October. As was Anya’s habit, notes of the conversation were scant, in order to protect the victim. If the assault ever came to court, even a minor difference between what Anya had documented and wording in a police statement could be used by a defense lawyer to discredit the victim.
She checked the address. The suburb wasn’t far. Turning back to her laptop, she pulled up the Whitepages website. The address existed, listed under a W and P Yardley. Anya dialed the number.
A middle-aged woman with what sounded like an Italian accent answered.
“Hello, I’m hoping to contact Violet Yardley.”
The woman readily explained that her daughter was working at a shelter, packing boxes of food. When asked if it was possible to meet Violet there, the mother didn’t hesitate to provide the charity’s address.
It always disturbed Anya how much information people naively gave away over the phone, especially to a female caller. The majority of people still trusted, which was why scams and credit card theft were relatively easy to commit.
The inner-city area had little parking, so Anya hailed a taxi from outside the hospital. Within minutes she was at an old warehouse. A rollerdoor was raised in front of a sign marked Deliveries only. No Parking. Inside, a number of people filled boxes with tins of food and fresh produce that had been piled onto trestle tables.
Violet seemed thinner and more gaunt than before. The eyebrow piercing was gone, but her jumper and long jeans were still black. The young woman looked up and stopped loading a box when she saw her visitor.
“I’m taking a break,” she called to no one in particular, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from her bag on her way toward the open door.
Anya followed her outside. “I don’t know if you remember-”
“How am I supposed to forget?” She lit a match and struggled to light the cigarette in the breeze. Anya cupped her hands to shelter the small flame.
The young woman nodded in gratitude and inhaled. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“That’s understandable. I hope you don’t mind, but I rang your home and a lady told me you were here.”
Crossing one arm across her waist, she supported her smoking arm. “My mother thinks I should bring more friends home, so she would have been happy that anyone phoned for me.”
Anya smiled. “Mums care. It’s their job. Which partly explains why I’m here. You didn’t come back to the unit and I wanted to see that you were okay.”
Violet exhaled out the side of her mouth and watched the traffic. “What can I say? Life goes on.”
A table-top truck pulled up, beeping as it reversed into the warehouse doorway.
“That’s the leftover veg from the co-op,” Violet said, stubbing out the remains of her cigarette on a metal bin by the entrance. “We do food parcels for the homeless and pensioners around here who can’t afford to pay exploitative supermarket prices.”
“Before you go…” Anya managed. “Please understand this is all still confidential, but there’s an important reason I’m asking-were the men responsible for what happened to you that night named Harbourn?”
The young woman folded her arms and bit her bottom lip.
“I never told you that.” Violet searched Anya’s face for an answer. “How did you know?”
Anya felt a rush of hope. They could have another case to answer for. “Because you’re not the only one they’ve done this to.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, my life’s moved on.”
Anya handed over a card, which the woman reluctantly took and stuck in the back of her jeans.
“I know this isn’t easy, but it’s not too late to give a police statement if you decide you want to. The samples I took that night are still in the unit if you change your mind.
“Give me one good reason.”
“One of the girls they raped is now dead. The police think they could have killed her.”
Violet’s eyes flared. “That’s bullshit. I chose to go to their house. We all got drunk that night. They might have taken turns with me after Ricky and I had sex, but that was it. There’s no way the Harbourns are killers. God, Rick was the nicest guy I’ve ever known.”
The young woman pushed past the volunteers unpacking the truck and quickly disappeared inside.
In disbelief, Anya walked back to the nearest intersection.
Almost a year and a half later, a woman who had been raped by a number of men could defend one of them as a nice man. Violet Yardley sounded as if she blamed herself for the assaults, never mind the unforgivable betrayal by her boyfriend. The woman was in complete denial.
If she stayed that way, there was little anyone could do to ensure her attackers didn’t rape again.
11
After vacillating over whether or not to go, at the last minute Anya decided to attend Giverny’s funeral. The afternoon service went longer than expected, with four hundred people spilling out of the church and its grounds. Old school friends paid their respects along with former teachers, extended family and community members.
Eulogies were accompanied by slideshows of Giverny as a smiling baby, a gap-toothed face in school uniform, with the bag almost as big as she was. Like other mourners, Anya struggled to fight back tears. As a mother, she could not help share the parents’ grief, if only in the smallest of ways. Once the funeral was over, her life would go on pretty much unchanged. The Harts’ lives were irrevocably changed, for the worse.
A white coffin covered in purple irises and cornflowers lay beneath the screen. Bevan Hart sat with his wife in the front row, both wore large dark sunglasses to obscure their misery.
Anya had hoped to slip in the back without being noticed, but a newspaper photographer recognized her and his flash alerted security guards who quickly removed him.
Bevan Hart moved across and invited her to sit with the family, given that, he explained, she had tried so hard to save his daughter’s life and had been so kind throughout her ordeal.
Anya felt like a fraud, wishing there was something else she could have done to revive the teenager. It was her job to help victims like Giverny, nothing more.
Recorded songs filled the church, ones written to thaw the hardest heart. “Amazing” prompted more tears in the crowd, as did “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Eric Clapton’s tragic tribute to his late son, “Tears in Heaven,” concluded the service.
Mary waited in the floral garden. Around the perimeter, Anya noticed a number of detectives, including Kate Farrer and Liz Gould taking note of who had attended. People who had been outside were being funneled through a side entrance to sign a visitors’ book. Those who had been seated signed another at the exit.
Immediate family were the only ones going on to the cemetery, so Mary and Anya waited to pay their respects to Bevan and his wife. A woman who shared Val Hart’s prominent nose and small chin thanked them for coming.
“My brother-in-law and sister speak highly of you,” she said, “and all you did for our Giverny. Thank you for everything you did, right up until the last.”
Anya noticed Mary nodding self-consciously.
“We’re so sorry for your terrible loss,” was all the counselor could manage.
The relative took Any
a’s elbow. “Is it true that the rape case against those animals has been dropped?”
Anya wasn’t in a position to comment, but said, “The prosecutor and police want justice for Giverny. I can promise you.”
“We’ll be praying that happens,” the woman said before moving on to hug a bereft teenage girl.
Afterward, Anya needed some solitude, so she retreated to her home office, grateful that Elaine was now on an extended holiday after managing the office alone in Anya’s absence. Peeling off first her jacket, then pantyhose, she hit play on the answering machine and flopped on the lounge.
Dan Brody had already left three messages. Each one sounded more urgent and asked her to call him the moment she got back. She groaned and sat up, flipped open her mobile phone, wondering why he hadn’t called on that. The black screen confirmed the battery was flat-again. She plugged it into the charger. Usually, Brody’s secretary called if there were cases to consult on.
She dialed his mobile number. He picked up on the second ring.
“Dan, it’s Anya returning your-”
“Thank God. Can you come right over? It’s an emergency.”
For once, the lawyer’s voice was quiet and almost unsure. She checked her watch. With traffic, she wouldn’t get to his office before seven. Despite the hour, she was loathe to refuse work from the busy defense lawyer. He had already kept her in enough private consultancy work to keep her business afloat, cope with the mortgage and pay child support for Ben. Ever since a colleague in his law firm had tried to ruin her professional reputation Brody had, as if to compensate, increased the workload his firm sent her way. The effect had been to make her a more desirable expert witness for other firms and an expansion of her consultancy work.
“Is this a new case?”
“I can’t explain over the phone, but I’m at home. I’ll leave the verandah light on.”
Anya hesitated. She had expected him to be calling from his office. After taking down the details of his address, she agreed reluctantly to go. As she was pulling the pantyhose back on, her fingernail ripped through the nylon. Bare legs with the skirt would have to do. Before heading out the door, she collected the examination bag and checked the downstairs window locks.
An hour later, she turned into the exclusive Hunters Hill street, highly curious about what sort of emergency Dan Brody had that couldn’t wait until office hours.
She didn’t usually do house calls to lawyers, and it wasn’t about to become a habit. One of his high-profile friends had to be in trouble. But what required a forensic physician in an emergency?
Brody’s reluctance to explain over the phone had been uncharacteristic, as was his distress, both of which surprised her. If she were being honest, the call had been slightly unnerving. She wasn’t completely sure why.
Brody’s street had mansions set back amidst lush, well-lit gardens. As she drove up the hill it was obvious that each home outdid the last in landscaped glory-and value. Either this part of the city managed a lot of rainfall, or water restrictions weren’t imposed or followed. She stopped at the top of the hill outside a red-brick home with wraparound verandahs. Double-checking the address confirmed this was Brody’s house.
She pulled the handbrake hard and stepped out of the car. The fragrant smell of damp grass in the night air made her sneeze. Floodlights showcased late-flowering wisteria over a large arbor, immaculate lawns and topiary hedges.
She pushed open the gate and entered, following a stone path toward an ornamental pond adorned with statues of cherubs. Foot-long goldfish swam beneath waterlilies, while a jacaranda tree provided glimpses of shadow from the bright flood lights.
Closer glance at the water feature made her uncomfortable. The inviting scene was a potential tragedy. The surface should have been covered with metal grating, preventing little faces from becoming submerged. It probably had never occurred to Brody because he didn’t have kids, but even a toddler could access the gardens, with potentially devastating results. She made a mental note to mention it at an opportune moment.
Up the stairs, Anya took in the harbor view and drank in the fresh breeze from the verandah. She straightened her shirt, checked her hair in the glass adjacent to the front door and knocked.
A few moments later, Dan Brody opened the door. He towered over her, even taller than his six foot four with him standing inside, one step up.
“Thanks for coming.” He ushered her into the house and locked the door behind her with the chain bolt.
Anya began to feel uneasy. “What’s going on?” she said, moving back toward the door.
“I just don’t want anyone walking in on us.”
“You’re beginning to scare me.” She looked around for signs of anyone else in the house. “Unbolt the door and we can talk.”
The lawyer put two open hands out in front of him. “I’m so sorry. That was thoughtless. I just meant that I wanted to talk to you privately and in complete confidence. There’s someone else with a key and I don’t want to be interrupted.”
Someone with a key? His latest society girlfriend, no doubt. Before Anya had left for overseas, she and Dan had shared a celebratory meal when a case of Dan’s ended with the acquittal of a homeless man accused of murder. Anya’s evidence had been instrumental in the verdict. That night, Dan had been attentive and sweet, but two months were a long time in his fast-paced world.
“Fine.”
Usually immaculate, Dan’s untucked shirt and jeans were creased, as if they had been pulled straight from the laundry basket. A crepe bandage barely hung on a bruised ankle and foot.
“Does this have anything to do with the first-aid attempt on your foot?”
“Yes, sort of. I stepped on some floorboards and went right through them. Wasn’t easy getting a size fourteen out of that hole.” He glanced down at his attempt to cover the injury, then reached out to open a pair of sliding wooden doors.
Anya followed and took in the room as he hobbled along. Most amazing was the room’s centerpiece-a walnut grand piano, flawlessly polished.
All the wall space was occupied by bookshelves stacked with hardcovers and leather-bound books. It was Anya’s idea of a dream room, only hers would have a set of drums taking pride of place next to the piano.
“I didn’t know you were that much of a reader.”
“I’m not,” he said, sitting on a brown leather lounge near a marble fireplace. “This was my parents’ home until recently.”
Anya knew that Dan’s mother had died and that his father was in a nursing home following a stroke, but very little else about his parents.
“My mother was a voracious reader. Anything from philosophy and religion to world affairs. It always surprised me that crime fiction was her true guilty pleasure. She was also an accomplished writer and artist.”
“Your father?”
“A couple of weeks after Mum died, Dad had a massive stroke. We tried to keep him at home but he needed twenty-four-hour nursing and the house and garden aren’t wheelchair friendly. To be honest, I think he found it hard to be here without Mum.”
He flicked something minute off the arm of the lounge.
“Anyway, we moved him into a nursing home but he had another stroke and lost all speech. I didn’t like the care he was getting so I moved him a couple of weeks ago.”
Anya felt more comfortable now they were discussing his family. She had not met Therese Brody, but had heard wonderful things about her philanthropy and work with indigenous literacy projects; she had obviously been an intelligent woman with a strong social conscience.
“Has he settled in?”
“I believe so. Where are my manners-can I get you a coffee?”
“No thanks. I am curious, though, what you wanted to see me about. Please don’t say it’s just to check your ankle.”
Despite the warmth of the room and seeing Brody in a new, almost refined light in his home, she didn’t feel the visit was meant to be social, particularly if he had a new girlfriend. Anot
her woman arriving home and getting the wrong idea was the last thing she wanted tonight.
Dan sat straight and ran both hands down the thighs of his jeans. “Maybe I should just show you.”
He limped out of the room and returned with a faded wooden box, not much bigger than average shoe size. He held the object with almost outstretched arms, as if frightened of the contents. After looking around, he opted to place it on the carpeted floor, then stepped away and sat on the stool with his back to the piano.
“This is what I called you about. I didn’t know what else to do. I mean, I got one hell of a shock when I found it a few hours ago.”
“Don’t tell me it’s a live rat.”
“Trust me, it isn’t alive. The lid was sealed tight. I had to pry it open.”
Anya didn’t like dead rats any more than live ones, but she slid off the lounge and onto the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Brody stand and move further away. Whatever was inside really had him spooked.
She tentatively wiped some dust off the lid with the back of her hand and revealed a detailed marquetry design. “This is beautiful craftsmanship,” she said, but her host was staring out the window. She couldn’t imagine what was inside that could be so disturbing. Undoing the clasp, she flipped open the lid and lifted what felt like wax-paper wrapping. She quickly sat back on her haunches, unable to believe her eyes.
“Where did you find it?”
Brody didn’t move. “Under the floorboards in what was my parents’ bedroom. I was rearranging the walk-in wardrobe when part of the old floor gave way. When I eventually yanked my ankle out, the box was right there.”
Anya studied the tiny dead form, curled up inside the small chamber. The miniature body lay in a fetal position, knees resting against the chin. There was no doubt. This was a fossilized human baby.
The pair remained in silence for a few moments.
“I could do with that coffee now,” Anya said, returning the lid and closing the latch. “After I wash my hands.”
“Of course.”
