All These Perfect Strangers

by Aoife Clifford

  I’ll keep writing in the diary but I don’t want to do this any more.

  Chapter 18

  ‘How did she die?’ I asked Dale.

  He sat there, a slight frown on his face, but not surprised. When you’re a policeman, you probably have people asking that sort of question all the time.

  Leiza’s death was the only thing being talked about at college. Officially, all anybody knew was that it was suspicious and the police were investigating. Not even the residential assistants had been told more, Toby said to me over breakfast. We sat across from each other, food untouched. That morning alone, the day after her body had been found, I had heard three different stories about what had happened, each one worse than the last.

  To get away I decided to do some study before my Torts lecture. I was getting behind in all my subjects, and at least in the silent area of the library, I could escape the conversations. So, when the first person I saw was someone who would actually know what really happened, I was in two minds if I should say hello. A bear of a man hunched over a small wooden table, tapping a pen on its surface, while pressing rewind and fast forward on a cassette deck in front of him. Dale. He had been missing lectures so I hadn’t seen him since that night at the bar.

  He took off his headphones in disgust and popped the deck. As he pulled it out, a long ribbon of tape dribbled from the cassette. He gave a grunt and looked up.

  ‘That’s had it,’ I said.

  ‘Got six more hours to listen after this one,’ he said. ‘I need some coffee.’

  While Dale chatted to the guy behind the counter, I sat on the decking outside. The sky was an almost-white blue. You could taste winter coming. The coffee shop, a demountable building next to the car park, was quiet. Before 10 a.m. was the student equivalent of dawn and most of the tables were empty. A stripy-shirted stockbroker of the future was demonstrating to his fellow striped-shirts how he managed to get airborne in Daddy’s Porsche. Two lecturers were having breakfast while slagging off an article they hadn’t written and a table of girls were discussing the front page of the newspaper. I could read the headline: CAMPUS MURDER.

  ‘I heard parts of her body were sliced off,’ a dark-haired girl said.

  ‘It doesn’t say that in the article.’

  ‘No, it’s true. And there was a mark on her forehead, a cross or something.’

  ‘A ritual kind of thing?’

  ‘The Death Rider’s cross,’ said the first girl, and there were nods of agreement from the others.

  ‘Or it could be that psycho Screwdriver Man who ripped off that girl’s ear,’ said another girl. ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about him?’

  Their conversation was a mixture of horror and voyeurism. I wondered what would happen if I leant over and told them I knew that dead girl. Would they feel embarrassed? Probably ask me if I knew more about what had happened.

  ‘I don’t care who it was,’ said one with her back to me. ‘I’m never walking around campus by myself again.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘I mean, it could have been any of us.’

  I didn’t know if that was right. None of it felt random to me. It felt very personal. Terrible things happening, getting closer. I slumped in my chair.

  ‘Forgot to ask how you wanted it, so got them strong and black,’ said Dale, walking up to me, balancing two mugs. ‘In my job you learn not to risk milk.’

  ‘Let’s move,’ I said.

  The girls fell silent and stared at us as we walked by, and once we passed there was furious whispering again. ‘He’s a policeman,’ I heard one say. ‘Wonder if he was there. If he saw her body?’

  We sat out on a bench between the tennis courts and the soccer oval, tall gum trees surrounding us. Sipping the coffee, I almost choked.

  ‘Copper’s special,’ said Dale.

  ‘How much sugar?’

  ‘Enough to get you through a night shift or, alternatively, six hours of law tapes. You look like you needed it.’

  He smacked his lips together as a joke. And that’s when I asked him how Leiza had died. I hadn’t meant to but I couldn’t go on listening to the possible, the probable and the absolutely wrong. Better to know the truth.

  ‘You knew her well.’ It wasn’t a question, more of a statement.

  ‘Well enough,’ I said.

  ‘Could tell by your face. These types of deaths leave their own kind of mark.’

  I took a cautious sip, grateful we were sitting side by side. If he could really read faces, he might work out that a lot of the damage had actually been done by Rachel’s death.

  Dale blew on his coffee. ‘Too hot,’ he said. ‘Usually put a bit of cold water in so you can drink it straight away.’

  He scratched his nose and then rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Night shift,’ he said. ‘Should be asleep but I’ve missed too many lectures.’

  I wondered if he was ignoring my question, and if I should pretend that I never asked it and we could talk about essays being due or how exams were only around the corner. But after a pause he said, ‘She was knocked unconscious by a blow to her head. Then she was cut with a sharp implement, probably a . . .’

  ‘Screwdriver,’ I finished. The one detail all the different versions had in common.

  He nodded.

  ‘But it was the bikers, wasn’t it? The Death Riders must be the ones who killed her.’

  Dale grimaced. ‘Where’s the evidence? And why would they? Something like this is bad for business. They’ve been pretty smart, flying under the radar mostly, until now.’

  ‘But who then? Screwdriver Man?’

  A slight shake of his head. ‘Up to now, I had my doubts that this Screwdriver Man even existed. I thought it was kind of like the university equivalent of the Boogie Man, a convenient scapegoat.’

  ‘What about all those attacks? What about Alice?’

  ‘I’m not saying they didn’t happen. I just don’t think one person did all of them. Outside of the balaclava and the screwdriver, nothing else was the same. He was big. He was small. Spoke with an accent. Had no accent. And the attacks themselves, they weren’t that serious. I had them chalked up to the Death Riders’ turf war, to be honest.’

  I started to speak but he interrupted. ‘I know, I know, Alice was badly injured. But I’ve read the report. There was only one cut and she remembers him watching her and then letting her run off. Now, that’s completely different to what happened last night.’ Dale gave a sigh and stopped talking.

  ‘How did Leiza die?’ I asked.

  ‘It would have been quick. She was unconscious.’

  I knew by the way his voice changed that he was lying. I was getting the bereaved parents’ version of events, breaking the ugly truth into smaller, more palatable parts to be digested over time. He was being the policeman who rings your doorbell and gives you the bad news, censored. In that moment, I realised I didn’t want to know the answer to my question. Some things were too awful to imagine.

  ‘How do you cope with your job?’ I asked.

  ‘It has its moments,’ he said. ‘Murders like this take a layer of skin off. You don’t forget them, that’s for sure.’

  ‘But you sleep OK?’ I had been thinking of my own lack of sleep, but looking at him I realised there were smudges of grey underneath Dale’s eyes and even his moustache seemed to droop with fatigue. As he drank his coffee I noticed he was no longer wearing his wedding ring. I wondered what that meant, but now didn’t seem the time to ask.

  He gave a grim laugh. ‘Should be asleep now. Look, most deaths are car accidents, drunks fighting, sometimes a domestic. Not nice, but you can understand them. They don’t make you question human nature. This one does.’ He took another long drink from his coffee. ‘But don’t worry. They’ll get whoever did this.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Her family for starters. They will make sure the investigation gets all the resources it needs.’

  Though n
one of us had known while she was alive, it had turned out that Leiza’s grandfather, dead for some years, had been a prominent politician. Duncan Parnell was a name on plaques everywhere. My own town had the D. J. Parnell Oval where the local footy team played. It was hard to see how that was relevant but the news reports seemed to think it was.

  ‘They’ll be turning over every stone and seeing what crawls out. You’ll be interviewed.’

  A stomach-clenching moment, but not one of real surprise. I had guessed that everyone who had been at the bar would be interviewed.

  ‘I won’t be that helpful,’ I said. ‘I mean, I was at the rally, but so were about half the university. It’s not like I saw anything.’

  ‘No, not Leiza Parnell, I mean the first girl. They are opening an investigation into her death as well.’

  In the clear sky above us a dart of black plummeted to the ground, only to swoop up at the last minute, and a magpie landed safely on a branch above our heads. It looked around, beady-eyed and judgmental. Saw us. There was a moment of stillness as it tried to work out if we were friend or foe.

  ‘Rachel?’ My voice sounded so faint that I had to reassure myself I was actually talking aloud. ‘But that was an accident.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Dale shrugged as though he wasn’t making any judgment. ‘A bit late getting started, obviously. Now they’ve got two girls who knew each other and who are dead within a couple of weeks of each other. There was a Rohypnol tablet found on the second girl’s body. The first girl had it in her system. Maybe that’s a coincidence, or maybe we are dealing with two murders and maybe they’re connected.’

  It wasn’t just sleeping tablets any more. Now they had a name, a step closer already.

  ‘Rohypnol?’ I said.

  ‘Prescription sleeping tablet,’ Dale said. ‘Strong, addictive. Not widely used. Some suggestion that in the US it’s used as a date-rape drug. Pressure is on for the manufacturer to add a dye to it so it can’t be used like that. Still, haven’t seen much evidence of it being used here.’

  ’Couldn’t it just have belonged to Leiza?’

  ‘She wasn’t prescribed it. Haven’t found any in her room. It’s possible the first girl could have taken it herself. Mixed with cocaine, that’s a lethal combination, but still she might have done it for the buzz.’ He sighed as he put the empty cup down on the bench beside him. ‘But there was no Rohypnol in her bag. Practically everything else you could think of, but not that. Ever heard any talk of girls getting their drinks spiked here?’

  It was the way he said this so casually – a little too casually – that made me wonder why Dale was telling me this. Maybe he wasn’t my friend. He was a cop after all, not to be trusted. He must be part of the investigation, maybe he was wearing a wire, waiting for me to say something incriminating. I was a suspect, of course I was. I found Rachel and I was at the bar at the time Leiza was killed. I didn’t have an alibi for the whole time. Did the police think it was me? I stared at his clothing: a tracksuit and a t-shirt, like he had been working out in the gym first. Could you hide recording equipment under that?

  But Dale wasn’t looking at me. He was watching a couple of boys who had started kicking a soccer ball on the oval. One began to bounce the ball against his knee and then his head before gently tapping it over to his friend.

  ‘Before now I wouldn’t say that we’ve seen any evidence of it being widely used. Campus doctors don’t prescribe it. Women’s Health Centre hasn’t dealt with anything out of the norm. Nor the drug clinic. Doesn’t make sense.’

  He stood up, interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms behind his head. I heard muscles and joints pop and creak beneath his t-shirt stretched tight across his frame. There were no square-shaped bulges, no unexplained lumps, just the start of a tyre of flesh around his middle. ‘Anyway, that’s all for the A-Team who are getting imported in. Them and the Drug Squad.’

  ‘So, you’re not investigating?’

  ‘No, a murder investigation’s much too important for us local yokels.’

  ‘How do you know all that stuff then?’ I asked.

  ‘Everyone knows it. Already on the radio. Be in tomorrow’s paper. That Joe McCardle is a bloody leech, but he’s a good journalist and he’s got his teeth into this one. No better gossips than cops.’ His arms dropped to his sides. ‘Still, one crisis at a time. Better go try and fix the bloody tape.’

  And then I remembered that I had run into him. He didn’t know I was going to come along. He was catching up on lectures, as I should be. I had asked him questions about Leiza’s death. He was telling me what I had asked for, even giving me a heads-up about being interviewed. He was looking out for me. Protecting me.

  ‘I can’t face the library. I’ll see you at Torts,’ I said, almost wanting to apologise. I felt a surge of relief but my legs still felt weak.

  ‘Yep. Take care of yourself, Pen.’ The half-salute goodbye and Dale was gone. The magpie was spooked by his leaving and took off from the branch. It jumped into the air, an act of faith, and then, wings beating fast, the displaced air audible, it began to move higher, heading to the trees on the far side of the oval.

  I sat there for a long time, thinking about my Rohypnol. I had been prescribed them a couple of weeks before Tracey’s committal and a month before my hearing. I had to stand up in court and blame everything on her. Then I would get a slap on the wrist as an accessory. That was the deal. It was Bob who had organised for me to see Frank, partly because it would look good for my case, but mostly because I was falling apart.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, you’re a bloody doctor. Do something,’ Mum had said. ‘She’s a basket case.’ And he had prescribed these little tablets with his serious face on as he gave me warnings about the potential for an overdose.

  The moment I held them in my hand I felt better. I kept them with me always, in my bag at school, on my bedside table at night. If it all got too much, I would just swallow the lot of them and go to sleep forever. I didn’t need to give evidence if I didn’t want to and knowing that actually gave me the courage to do it. I stood up in the court room and told them Tracey shot the gun, that I had told her not to, begged with her, pleaded, but she wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell someone straight away? If not the police or your mother, what about a favourite teacher?’ asked Tracey’s expensive city barrister, going through the motions in a case he obviously thought was hopeless.

  Tracey and I had been kept apart since we had been arrested. She hadn’t been at school. I had heard rumours she had been kept in detention. Other people claimed that she had been staying with relatives. I hadn’t been game to ask anyone directly.

  I shot a quick glance at Tracey. She had a half-smile on her face at the ridiculous idea of having a favourite teacher. Teachers were the ones who got you into trouble, not out of it. No one went to teachers for help. There were girls who were throwing up their lunch every day in the toilets, getting beaten at home, cheating in tests, and the teachers never heard any of it.

  ‘I was too scared,’ I answered, and the prosecutor gave me an encouraging nod. I expected her barrister to ask, ‘What of?’ but instead he said, ‘Did she explain why she shot him? What did she tell you?’

  Tracey’s face was all I could see as I struggled with what to say. I wanted to yell at her that this was all her fault but at the same time say I was sorry. She didn’t look at me, just stared at her own barrister, folding her arms as she leant forward. I didn’t have the words to describe that night, so I did what I had been told. Tracey said not to tell anyone. Bob said the same thing as well. It was too late to start now.

  ‘Nothing,’ I began.

  ‘Speak up,’ said the magistrate, his eyes almost non-existent in his red fat face.

  ‘She didn’t say anything,’ I said.

  Tracey turned away, her face blank. She was switching off, as if this was a school lesson that wasn’t worth bothering about.

  Giving up.

  · · ·
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  But I wasn’t going to give up. No one could prove that it was my Rohypnol that had ended up on Leiza’s body but I still needed to find out what had happened to my tablets. I knew where to start asking. I needed to talk to the only person who had been in my room the night Rachel had died, the person who I had invited in.

  Chapter 19

  It wasn’t until Sunday that I worked up the courage to go to the second floor of Page Tower and knock on Rogan’s door. Listening, I heard voices, a girl’s soft laugh and Rogan murmuring something in answer to her, and I almost walked away. But then he called out, ‘It’s open,’ so I went in.

  It was Emelia. She had slipped off her shoes and was posing on his bed, skirt artfully rumpled to display her long legs, hair distressed in a come-hither kind of fashion, like she was expecting someone to pop out and photograph her.

  With her usual lack of imagination, she pouted when she saw me.

  Rogan’s face went from smiling to serious. A touch of guilt was there as well or maybe I just wanted to see that.

  ‘Oh . . . hi,’ he said.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’ The ‘alone’ was not said. I hoped it was obvious.

  ‘I’m kind of busy right now.’ He gestured towards Emelia. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  Before I could say no, Emelia got up. She made a production of it, stretching and arching her back. Looking at her watch, she picked up the remote and switched off the television that had been on mute.

  ‘Don’t let me intrude.’ She gave an arch smile.

  ‘No, you don’t have to . . .’ Rogan began, which was the reaction Emelia wanted. She looked pleased with herself.

  ‘Promised the girls I’d take them for a spin.’ Her wrecked Honda had been replaced by a gleaming silver BMW. ‘I’ll see you at dinner, Joshua,’ Emelia practically purred. I could hear the rustle of money in every word. The use of Rogan’s real name was for my benefit, I guessed, that ring of ownership to point out that he had been acquired and was now her property. Nothing more to do with me.

  She stepped past, and for a moment I thought she’d kiss him. He even moved forwards and gave her an awkward peck, looking sheepish. I wondered if they were sleeping with each other. Rachel had told me that Emelia only slept with her last boyfriend twice, on Christmas and his birthday, claiming that sex was for ‘plebs’. I almost had to stifle a smile at the thought. Emelia gave me an appraising look. ‘Bye, Penny,’ she drawled. I moved into the room to let her past.