by Candice Fox
She sat at the back of the classroom in her little bubble of security and read. She dissected frogs and mice, toyed with their rubbery blue and red organs with her scalpel. Sometimes she ignored the class if it was too basic and simply read the textbook.
Mrs Foy told her at the formal that she’d be a great scientist, if she just ‘got out of herself’. With her extraordinary precision and skill in the study of animals, she could make a very accomplished vet. She just needed confidence. Didn’t she know that? Tara stared at the floor, not answering, until the woman gave up on her.
She left the formal at eleven, when it was revealed someone had brought a couple of cases of Cruisers to the back of the hall and teens were sneaking out there to smoke and pash and drink while others distracted the teachers on the dance floor. She watched the group from the basketball courts, watched Mr Tolson berating them for their irresponsibility while Mrs Emmonds looked on.
Tara was headed to the car park to seek out her driver when she ran into Louise Macken and Sam Cruitt pashing against a car.
‘Oh, Nuggy.’ Louise broke away from Sam stiffly, brushed down her hair. ‘Hey, sorry. We didn’t see you there.’
‘Sorry,’ Tara said, backing up to find another way between the cars.
‘Hey, wait.’
‘Louise!’ Sam whined.
‘No wait, Tara.’ Louise, nimble and spritely and pretty Louise, prefect Louise who always did the right thing but never dobbed on anyone for being bad. All the boys loved Louise. She had the seductive naivety of all virgins written plainly on her face. Inexperience and freshness, bits of skin unbroken, never tested. Unviolated lips. ‘Sam, I’ll meet you back at the door.’
Sam trundled off towards the group behind the hall. Tara kept walking. She found herself in the familiar situation of animal being pursued, tried to keep her breathing regular as she headed towards the limo. Greg the driver in the distance, reading a newspaper in the yellow light of the car. She liked Greg. He never spoke.
‘Nuggy,’ Louise said. ‘I wanted to tell you how pretty you look tonight.’
Both their dresses were blue. Louise’s mother had made hers, made some for the popular girls too. Sketched designs cooed over in art class. Tara gathered up her skirts, a dress she’d been forced to hire in secret, the black silk gown her mother had bought her hanging in plastic in her cupboard. Louise’s eyes were wide with determination to say the thing that would absolve her for the years she’d known Tara. For all the silent passages in the school hallways, eyes averted, pleas ignored. For all the stifled giggles and all the sleepover whispers and all the team exercises uncomfortably endured. For that time, in Year Two, when everyone decided that touching Tara meant that you had her germs, and someone had passed them on to Louise and she’d looked at Tara and grimaced.
It was a lot of responsibility. But Louise liked responsibility. She’d always been the one to take charge, and she’d say something to absolve everyone. Absolve the team.
‘Nuggy, you look really –’
Tara was surprised at how small Louise’s neck was in her fingers. She could encircle the whole thing with two hands despite the stubbiness and shortness of her fingers, the thumbs overlapping over the ribbed windpipe slippery with glittery foundation. Tara squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, in long hard pulses, each bringing Louise a little closer to the ground, until the two struggled, twisted, Louise falling back into Tara’s embrace as her arm wound around the girl’s neck. Tara put her hand into the complicated mess of curls and pins and sparkles at the back of Louise’s head and pushed down, pulled up with her arm, felt bones grind in the girl’s neck as the chokehold tightened. This was what it was like to wring the life out of a bird. Tara had always wondered about it. Kind of hoped, one day, to find herself in the position of being responsible for the mercy killing of a bird. How pretty and swift and alive they were. Tara felt Louise’s feet kicking. Didn’t even notice as Greg the driver stepped over them, began clawing at her bare arms, his shouts like a siren in the night.
Eden and I had our feet on the boardroom table when Captain James walked in, papers and CCTV images and reports spread around us, little evidence bags of cigarette butts and coins and hair elastics and other park debris making a mountain at the end of the table. We’d become so comfortable in the boardroom that when our boss arrived neither of us acknowledged him with anything more than a casual glance. Workplaces can be like that. Like home. I once took a piss in the upstairs station toilet with the door wide open, I was so comfortable there. A thoughtlessness infects everything. You begin to ignore other people and their belongings. The techs shuffling about. Our owl-faced colleagues in the Homicide Department flinching and shying away from Eden. The occasional collection of troubled-looking teenage boys doing a tour for high school work experience, peering in the glass panelling at the bull pit, dreaming of chasing trench-coated men down rain-soaked alleyways. I’d been put on the spot and asked to talk to a rabble of these youths once as they toured the break room. I declined. I didn’t have anything promising to say to a lot like them. The bullies would find new opportunities to heave around their fragile masculinity on the job, and the bullied would find new ways to feel humiliated and degraded by criminals and their colleagues alike. It wouldn’t be any different to high school. Bigger tank, same fish.
I acknowledged Captain James only when he nudged my chair.
‘Morning, Cap.’
‘Captain’ wasn’t Captain James’ actual police rank, but more of a nickname, an endearing nod to the inspirational and fatherly sort of figure he represented to us. There’s little you can do to make ‘Chief Superintendent’ sound friendly and loving, so we’d abandoned it altogether for Captain. Like most police traditions, it made little logical sense to outsiders.
‘What do you know, Bennett?’
‘Tranquillisers,’ Eden answered for me, shifting the papers she was reading. ‘We’re after tranquillisers. A source confirmed a brand for me, so we’re hunting down a sales list from a major distributor. Should be here within the hour.’
‘I got tranquillised,’ I boasted, looking gleefully at the captain. ‘In the neck. I went down like a bag of shit. Bit my tongue. It was great.’
‘We’ve also got clean CCTV shots of both the killer and the van on their way to news outlets,’ Eden continued. ‘We think the van’s a Mitsubishi Express, 2008 or round about. We’re going back now and looking for the van in the CCTV and some social media shots we’ve been given. I’m getting a team out on vans of that type in the area shortly.’
‘We’ve got two bloody prints on the Lyon body,’ I said. ‘No matches. We’re running them international.’
‘And this, Bennett,’ Captain James said. ‘What do you know about this?’
He slapped a newspaper on top of the paperwork in front of me. I stared, not recognising, for a few seconds, the side of my own head. My open mouth and pointing finger. I appeared to be chastising a very indignant-looking Caroline Eckhart on the steps of the Parramatta headquarters. I read the caption and my voice broke over the words.
‘Get off my wagon, honey.’
‘Get off my wagon, honey?’ Captain James raised his eyebrows at me.
Eden reached over and snatched the paper from me, began to read. I snatched it back.
‘This is not what I said.’ My voice came out higher than I’d anticipated. Like a teenage girl denying she’d kissed another girl’s boyfriend. I cleared my throat. ‘Jesus Christ, these people will print anything.’
‘Well, I don’t know about anything. You must have said something about a wagon,’ Captain James said.
‘I said … I don’t know. Shit. I said she’d jumped on the bandwagon.’
‘What bandwagon?’
‘Homicide Detective Francis Bennett joined lifestyle coach Caroline Eckhart in a heated row on the steps of Parramatta Police Headquarters yesterday morning,’ Eden read. She’d taken the paper back again. ‘Bennett, who is known for spearheading both the Jason Beck and Ca
mden Runaway murder investigations, accused Eckhart of interfering in an official police investigation when the respected public health champion offered her assistance in the Sydney Parks Strangler murders.’
‘Public health champion?’ I scoffed.
‘You didn’t spearhead either of those investigations, before you get ahead of yourself,’ Eden sniffed, ruffled the paper. ‘You had your head in your own arse for at least 80 per cent of the Camden Runaways.’
‘This doesn’t look good for us, Frank.’
‘I know that, Cap. I’m being set up here. This is not me. I didn’t say it like that. I just brushed her off, the same way I would brush off any creep who tried to get their name in the true crime novel that’ll come out of this. Caroline Eckhart is a fucking … she’s standing on a soap box.’
‘Caroline Eckhart released a statement saying she is troubled by the Sydney Metro Homicide Department’s unwillingness to accept public assistance in the case,’ Eden read. ‘Eckhart, a renowned feminist spokesperson, called on the women of Sydney to unite in a –’
‘Oh, for the love of god,’ I wailed. ‘A lifestyle coach, public health champion and feminist spokesperson? What else is she? A fucking brain surgeon?’
‘Typical of you,’ Eden said. ‘Demanding that she only be one thing. Mother or career woman. Lifestyle coach or feminist. Passive or aggressive. That’s a very 1950s attitude you’ve got there, Francis.’
‘Don’t start fucking with me, Eden. Just don’t.’
‘Did she offer you help?’ Captain James asked.
‘Her idea of help and mine are not the same.’
‘Well look, Frank,’ the old man sighed. ‘We can’t have the people of Sydney thinking we’re chauvinists.’
‘I am not a chauvinist. I have a girlfriend.’
‘Chauvinists have girlfriends.’ Eden flipped down a corner of the paper to frown at me. ‘Why wouldn’t they have girlfriends?’
‘Eden, I’m not a chauvinist. Back me up.’
Eden flipped the corner of the newspaper up again.
‘Frank, have Eden deal with any communication you get from this Eckhart woman or her office from now on.’ Captain James pointed at me. When he pointed, you knew he was being serious. Disappointment was being threatened. The hurt, detached disappointment of the father who’d believed in you. ‘Got it?’
‘She doesn’t have an office,’ I sneered. ‘She’ll have a closet in a gym somewhere that reeks of rubber and ball sweat.’
‘She probably just works from her kitchen,’ Eden said. ‘Where she belongs.’
I tried to answer, but Gina from reception was rushing past and stopped to swing in the doorway.
‘Bennett, phone.’
She tossed me a cordless receiver, which I barely caught.
‘Female Oppression Enterprises. Frank speaking.’
‘It’s Anthony.’
‘Tone! What can we do you for?’
‘I wondered if you’d like to come over and pick up your murderer,’ he said. The smugness in his tone was dripping, even over the phone. ‘We don’t have the space for him here.’
I didn’t realise that Eden’s strange reputation for being terrifying for no obvious reason had reached all the way across the bridge to the North Sydney Metro Homicide Department, but from the look on Anthony’s face as we entered, I realised it had. People had always been more scared of Eric than Eden, but since her brother’s death, Eden still seemed able to command that wary, cornered-dog look from people, the quick scooting into empty offices away from her, the clearing of the tea room whenever she entered. No one but me knows what it is about Eden that’s so frightening. Anthony shook my hand as we entered the bull pit. His palm was clammy.
‘Frank.’
‘Anthony, Eden Archer, my partner. Eden, Anthony Charters.’
‘Hi,’ Eden said. Shook hands. Anthony grunted in return, his eyes on my shoes, stuffed his hands in his pockets like a little kid reluctant to concede an apology.
‘Those were some big words on the phone, young man.’ I followed Tony as he turned across the loud, sunny bull pit towards Interrogation Row. ‘You’re pretty confident you’ve got my guy?’
‘I’m confident it’s him,’ Tony said, rubbing his bald head. ‘But I didn’t get him. Come in here and meet the mother. She’ll tell you what happened.’
‘The mother?’ Eden said.
Tony opened the door on a woman in the largest of the interrogation rooms, the ones we used for scumbags with multiple lawyers or child offenders with parents in tow. She was sitting at the steel table with her hands around a Styrofoam cup of coffee, a curvy woman with a golden tan, sun lines from smiles and ocean glare, a mother who’d spent decades chasing children in the outdoors. Long brown hair in a high ponytail fell shiny and light over one shoulder, combed back from a deep widow’s peak. I knew the face: Ivana’s mother.
Beside her, a stocky pitbullish thing, chocolate brown and black-snouted. A studded collar with a big name tag. Nitro. The dog sniffed as I entered, got up on its back legs and pawed at the air in my general direction as though inviting me to dance, revealing a smooth pink belly of tiny nubbed nipples. Dogs like me, for some reason. I’ve never owned one. On the table in front of Ivana’s mother lay a shining Drummond five-iron golf club, slightly bent. Eden picked up the club and gripped either end, looked at me for explanation. I sat down.
‘Charmaine here nabbed the killer.’ Anthony smiled, puffed his chest out.
‘I’m Charmaine Lyon.’ The woman reached out and took my hand. Her skin was warm and soft. I squeezed it. ‘Ivana’s mum.’
‘I know.’ I licked my lips. ‘Charmaine, I’m so sorry we haven’t met. I’m Detective Inspector Frank Bennett and this is Detective Inspector Eden Archer. We were scheduled to meet you the morning Minerva Hall was found. You’ve met our secondary–’
‘You don’t have to apologise.’ She held up a hand. ‘I preferred that you guys were out there trying to find the killer rather than sitting around talking to the families.’
I breathed out. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
‘So am I.’
‘We all are,’ Eden said stiffly. ‘So let’s add the mother, the dog and the golf club together and get this story moving, shall we?’
‘It’s a little bit Agatha Christie, isn’t it?’ Anthony laughed nervously, glanced at Eden. ‘When you, uh, when you put it like that.’
‘I found my daughter’s killer,’ Charmaine said, giving a loud high sniff. ‘And I whacked him.’
‘She knocked him out cold. Cracked his skull,’ Tony said. ‘What do you call that? A hole in one?’
‘What are you?’ Eden squinted at Anthony. ‘The comic relief?’
‘How do you know you’ve got our killer?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been at Sydney Harbour National Park two nights now. All night,’ Charmaine said. ‘I knew it was where he’d strike next. It’s Sydney’s next biggest park after Centennial and the Domain. See?’ She unfolded a large battered map and spread it out before us on the table. Eden was tapping the five-iron on my chair. More of her weird nerves. Eden had always been compassionless but rarely stiff like this, fidgety, short-tempered. I’d wondered after we left Bood’s if she’d been touchy because she couldn’t find a way around taking me to meet one of her serial-killer friends (which I assumed was pretty nerve-racking). But she was still off-kilter. It was strange.
Charmaine pointed out the park, a big solid patch of green curving like gnarled fingers around the mouth of Sydney Harbour, some of it off Mosman, some off Balgowlah Heights and the biggest chunk right off Manly. Probably frequented by cool, beachy business types. Weekend dads and yummy mummies with blogs they ran from home. Joggers, hundreds of them, to hunt between the tall pines.
‘I started just by wandering around after Ivana was found,’ Charmaine said. ‘I just … I couldn’t stand by at home with everyone crying and consoling each other and making fucking phone calls. The journalists. Fuck. I wa
nted to do something. So I took a shot at it and I went out there. Walking around and around the paths was too obvious. I started taking cover. Watching. Watching. Watching. I saw some pretty sick stuff up there. Especially in the early morning.’
‘You lay out there all night?’ I couldn’t believe this woman. She looked like she ought to be running a bake sale. When I looked at the club in Eden’s hands I saw blood in the grooves of the titanium. Her daughter’s body wasn’t even cold and here she was sniper-stalking possible suspects in a national park in the dead of the night, like something out of a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. I was half-convinced the whole thing was some joke Tony was playing on me, but the admiration in his eyes as he looked upon Charmaine made me doubt it. I’d seen families of victims do some odd stuff over the years. Some of them pick up and go straight back to work the next day like nothing ever happened. Make their sandwiches and put them in their lunch boxes and run for the bus. I suppose something like that is denial. Maybe Charmaine was in the denial stage. Maybe she thought if she caught the killer she’d put things right again. Bring Ivana back from wherever in the universe she was.
‘What’d you see?’
‘Oh, there were guys rooting in the public toilets.’ Charmaine curled her lip. ‘People dumping rubbish. Drug deals. One guy trapping possums and taking them away in his truck. I don’t know why. You name it, mate, they were doing it out there. Place is a friggen circus at night.’
‘You were by yourself?’
‘I had the dog.’ Charmaine nudged the animal with her knee and it jumped up again, barked at me, wet eyes searching mine. I must have smelt like food. I usually do.
‘Alright, so –’ I released a chest full of air, shook my head. ‘Jesus. Alright. So you get the idea you might lie in wait for the killer. You decide you’ll do it at Sydney Harbour National Park. You go trekking around in the middle of the night spying on creepy-crawlies in the bushes. And then … what? You reckon you found our killer?’
