She saw Clive smile slightly at this, but he continued to breathe evenly. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘this skull bowl is growing, becoming bigger and bigger until it is a huge cauldron. It is so big it can take anything you want to put in it. What can we do to feed this demon?’
His voice was soft and slow. ‘I’ve never fed a demon before,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what they like to eat.’
‘If they’re not fed, they’ll eat human minds and hearts. That’s why it’s essential that we feed them well.’
He lay silently for a moment. ‘We can put a whole loaf of bread in the cauldron,’ he said. ‘And a whole tub of butter and a jar of jam.’
‘He needs more than that,’ she said. ‘He’s been famished all your life so his appetite is ravenous. He’s like a genie in a bottle.’
Clive’s breath became quicker. ‘Let’s give him all the loaves of bread in the world,’ he said. ‘And all the butter.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Kit. ‘Anything else?’
Clive was warming to the exercise. ‘Let’s give him all the silos of wheat in the world.’
‘Tip them all into the cauldron,’ said Kit. She could see the change in his energy. His face was pinker and the cells more filled. ‘Pour in all the wheat.’
‘And all the milk in the world,’ he added. ‘And all the cows.’ He stopped. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Is it all right to do that to the cows? I like cows.’
‘All cows,’ she said. ‘All the cows are going into the cauldron.’
‘And all the sheep. And every chicken in the world.’ He paused again. ‘And all the pigs. This demon is very powerful. He wants more than just food.’
‘Give him what he wants,’ said Kit. ‘For the first time in his existence let him feel what it’s like to get what he wants. To be satisfied. Let him have satisfaction. No guilt, no shame. Just feed him.’
‘In goes my wife. In goes my mother. And my girlfriend. All the buildings in the world are going into the cauldron,’ said Clive. ‘And all the volcanoes, all the great mountains of the world. All the oceans. All the ships, the cars, the rivers, the aircraft. All the military installations. Rockets. Bombs. And let’s give him the moon,’ he added. ‘And the stars and the sun. All the galaxies. Yes,’ he added, ‘even the ones we don’t know about. In they go into the cauldron.’
‘You’ve got almost everything in there now.’
‘I think all the people should go in, too.’
‘Good,’ said Kit. She took a deep breath.
‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘Something else that should go in.’ She saw a frown line his forehead. ‘I want the whole world to go in.’
‘Into the pot with the whole world,’ she said.
‘There are still the galaxies,’ he said, ‘and deep space.’
‘In they go,’ she said.
‘And now me,’ Clive said in a barely audible voice. ‘That’s everything now.’
His breathing was slow and steady and there was a long silence which Kit finally broke. ‘The cauldron is completely filled,’ she said. ‘You could invite this demon of hate to sit down comfortably and take up a demon spoon and eat and eat and eat until he’s so full he just drops off like a leech.’
There was a long pause. Kit sat, watching the movements on the man’s face. He was somewhere a long way away in his mind, feeding the demon.
‘Yes,’ he said faintly. ‘He’s feeding. He’s cramming everything into his mouth. It’s huge. The size of the Harbour Bridge. He is so starved. He’s eating everything, getting bigger and fatter. Now he’s even huge enough to contain God.’
Kit saw one tear roll down his face. It was more, she thought, than the normal lacrimation of a trance state. His breathing was fuller and richer. His chest and even his belly moved. She noticed a subtle change in his body energy and his upper chest seemed to relax while his legs looked more as if they belonged to him.
After a while, Clive opened his eyes and looked around. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well, well.’ He closed his eyes again for a while. The barest smile touched his lips as he opened his eyes again. ‘The room seems different,’ he said. ‘It feels like it’s changed.’
Kit waited, sitting up.
Finally he smiled at her. His face was younger and softer. ‘That was a very interesting experience,’ he finally said. ‘I felt something happen in me. I can’t explain it.’
‘You don’t have to,’ said Kit. ‘Just have it.’ She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘When you feel steady enough,’ she said, ‘it’ll be time to go. I’ll look out and see if my next client has arrived.’
•
Gemma had forgotten until she arrived home that Taxi was still missing. The sudden pang caused her to go on another search for him, calling him from the front of the flats, peering down the scrubby incline in front, wondering if he’d climbed down onto the rocks to do a spot of fishing. She left a note under Mrs Ratbag’s door asking if she’d seen him, and posted a picture of him and her phone number on the upstairs verandah that formed a communal area for the two upstairs units. Everyone seemed to be out when she knocked. She went downstairs again, worried about her missing cat. To take her mind off him, she went through her accounting system, but it only made her miss him more. He should be here, driving her mad, jumping up on the desk, treading on the keyboard, forcing the computer to do weird things until she banished him. She filed away Noel’s and Spinner’s most recent field reports and tidied up, needing this routine work to settle her down. She rang Noel, and talked about setting up electronic surveillance at the Cross Weld Construction warehouse and offices.
She took out Philip Hawker’s notebooks again. They were unofficial lists of names and dates, of interviews and only the name ‘Dr Rowena Wylde’ meant anything to her. She struggled to make sense of the untidy, hurried writing. According to his notes, Philip Hawker had visited Rowena Wylde twice. He had also visited an Arik Kreutzvalt at North Sydney, the first time four days after the murder of her mother, the second a week later. ‘20.9.67 4.45pm. Routine house call’, she read. ‘States Chisholm made call because subject is on heavy medication—not able to drive to the rooms. Stayed about twenty minutes. K states he and AC talked about his condition.’ Under this was scrawled in another pen but in the same hand, ‘AC’s only house call in records that week. Check criminal record’. This was underlined heavily. She wondered briefly whether the ambiguous note in Philip Hawker’s youthful hand meant that Kreutzvalt had a criminal record, or was a reminder for the note taker to check out whether or not he did.
Gemma lifted her head and stared at the wall. This was one of her father’s patients, someone to whom he’d paid a house call on the day of the university dinner. The day of her mother’s death. She opened the drawer and pulled out her father’s statement, made to the police the night her mother died, skimming it until nearly halfway down. ‘At about two-thirty . . .’, she read, ‘went to the bank but because there was a long queue, did not get money out then. Made a brief house call to a patient’. Was Arik Kreutzvalt that patient? ‘After that, I left and drove straight to the house.’
She found Philip Hawker’s number and phoned him, but there was no answer and no answering machine. She rang Angie. Her heart was sad about her missing cat. Nothing that I love stays, she thought, thinking of the disconnections of her life. I’m getting introspective like Kit. What Beatrix Potter tale should I read? she wondered as she made her way up to the car. ‘The tale of a bad lost cat,’ she thought, but no such tale existed. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be something from Beatrix Potter that demonstrated her tale. It would be more like something from the Brothers Grimm. The oppressive feeling she had, of missing something about the effigy killer, would not leave her alone. She reviewed the crime scenes in her mind and was still trying to make sense of the incongruities when she realised she’d driven the who
le way to the police centre on automatic.
•
‘This is how she was,’ said Angie, talking as the crime scene video ran silently on, glancing at her watch. ‘She’s gone to the morgue for the autopsy. Her mother’s there with her. I left her sitting beside the body with one of the bereavement counsellors, stroking her daughter’s hair. Some kind soul down there had cleaned the body up and put dressings over the worst of the wounds. I’ve also got some close-up photos.’
Gemma picked up the newly developed pictures, then turned her attention back to the crime scene video. She saw a rolled-up fabric bundle lying partly hidden alongside a fallen tree trunk.
‘That’s what we saw first,’ said Angie, looking over her shoulder. ‘The bushwalkers had pulled some of the timber away, wanting to get at some dry wood for the barbecue area.’
Gemma sifted through the prints until she found one of the body, free now of the enclosing doona. Bianca lay with her knees drawn slightly up and both hands under her chin, still wearing what looked like the top of shortie pyjamas. But the savage wounds were clear to see, concentrated around the front of the neck and the upper chest. ‘Not much blood,’ she said.
‘The blood’s somewhere else,’ said Angie. ‘Wherever she was killed.’
‘Where is the other part of the pyjamas?’
Angie shrugged. ‘She only had the top when we found her. We’re continuing to search the area.’
Gemma carefully went through the rest of the photographs, thinking about the conversation she’d had with Kit, how they’d both come to the same conclusion that something big had changed in the world of the killer. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Gemma, looking at her friend.
‘About this?’ said Angie, tapping a photograph with a clear-laquered fingertip. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The stab wounds are so frenzied. We’ve seen that before on your clothes as well.’
‘If it’s the same guy, I mean,’ Gemma added.
‘I’ve got a feeling it is,’ said Angie.
‘And yet this is so methodical,’ said Gemma. ‘This gift wrapping.’ She indicated the layers of plastic and fabric. ‘These pictures are saying something to me.’
Angie nodded and started picking up the photographs and laying them out in sequence, moving from the distant to close-up shots. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’ First, she put down a long shot of the body dump site. Under the haphazard stack of brush and leafy branches, the fabric of the doona could just be seen, looking like a dumped mattress. Next to that, she laid a close-up of the rolled-up doona, and beside that picture another of the garbage-bagged body lying on the doona with the bloodstained fabric now spread out on either side. Then at the end of the row of photos she put down a picture of the ravaged body of Bianca Perrault, now freed from the dark green plastic, lying curled up on the top of the mess that surrounded her. Her beautiful hair still shone in the sun and Gemma could see the fabric of her shorty pyjamas had a pattern of green and red teddy bears.
‘You tell me,’ said Angie. ‘What are these pictures saying?’ She slid off the table top where she’d been sitting and went to a drawer in her office, pulling out a packet of cigarettes.
‘But you’ve stopped smoking,’ said Gemma.
‘Just started again,’ said Angie. ‘I met someone on the weekend. A real dish.’ She shrugged. ‘And I cracked. I just had to have a smoke.’ She waved the unlit cigarette towards the ceiling. ‘I just hope I don’t set the bloody smoke alarms off.’ She lit up with a match and blew the smoke away, dispersing it. ‘I’ve got to get copies of these photos for the rest of the team.’ Angie blew more smoke defiantly out of her mouth. ‘God, I needed that,’ she said. ‘This guy was fantastic in the cot. He was everywhere at the same time. Still don’t know how he did it. It’s months since I did anything wicked.’
‘That’s not wicked,’ said Gemma. ‘This is,’ and she pushed the last photograph in the row along the table towards her friend.
Angie picked it up. ‘What’s got into him?’ she asked, looking at Bianca’s body. ‘What’s happened to him that things are so different this time?’
Gemma studied the pictures again, her eyes moving along the row she’d laid down, each layer unwrapped to reveal the next stage, until instead of a Russian babushka doll the violated human body showed in the middle of the bloody wrappings.
‘Your little friend Bo Bayliss came in after all and sat with Devlin for three hours,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll get you a copy of the face she came up with.’ She hopped off the desk, killed the cigarette in the sink and left the room.
With Angie out of the room for a moment, Gemma picked up a phone. She pulled the piece of paper she’d found at the bottom of Steve’s rubbish out of her pocket, smoothing it until it lay flat on the desk. Deliberately, she dialled the numbers. It rang and rang and she was about to hang up when he answered. Gemma felt a painful, excited sensation about her heart and throat.
‘Hullo?’ he said. For a second, she couldn’t speak.
‘Who is this?’ His voice was harder now, suspicious.
‘It’s me,’ she said, feeling foolish.
‘How did you get this number?’ Typical Steve, she thought, her heart rate soaring. Thinks about security before anything else.
‘I found it,’ she said. Now she saw where this line of questioning might go and felt ashamed of her automatic confiscation of the contents of his wheelie bin.
‘How did you find it?’
‘Aren’t you even going to say hello?’ she asked in a way that she regretted the minute the words were out.
‘Hullo,’ he said flatly. ‘How did you find this number?’
She could hear Angie returning, her footsteps in the hall. Then her friend reappeared, carrying a picture. Gemma slumped, ashamed. There was no way she could answer with her friend in earshot.
‘Steve, I—’
But he interrupted her. ‘Gemma, this number is supposed to be secure. I don’t know who you’ve used to get it. But don’t ever ring here again. You should know that I had to leave some of my gear behind with some personal items in it when the drug squad busted my operation. If someone in the Raiders gets hold of that and works out who you are—that you’ve been an associate of mine—you could end up gang-raped by a bunch of outlaw bikies. Not to mention also very dead. For your own safety as well as mine, don’t contact me again.’
‘What sort of personal items? How would they know about me?’ Gemma asked, but the line was already beeping.
Angie held out the FACE computer image and Gemma took it from her, replacing the handset, trying not to show the pain and anger she felt. Associate of mine, he’d said. As if she were some sort of business acquaintance. She stared at the picture Angie passed her, the thin face of the man who’d pulled the knife on platinum-fringed Bo Bayliss as she lay naked on the floor with her clothes neatly laid out like the effigy of a woman. Gemma stared at the man’s blank eyes, lipless mouth, highboned cheeks. There was something familiar about him.
‘God,’ she said, ‘he looks like Spinner!’
‘What personal items?’ Angie queried. ‘And who the hell is Spinner?’
Gemma couldn’t answer; it was too much. Everything just overflowed in her and she felt tears fill her eyes as she put the computer image down on the table and told Angie what had happened that night at her place when Steve found the video. ‘And then he goes and warns me about being traced by the bikies and murdered. He called me “an associate”.’ She wiped her nose and sniffed.
‘But he’s away so much,’ said Angie, her loyal friend. ‘What does he expect you to do? Meditate?’
Gemma blew her nose. ‘I don’t know what he expects me to do, Angie. But he doesn’t want me to go out and pick up men, that’s for sure.’
Angie considered. ‘He’s got a point though, Gemma. Abo
ut you being in danger. Outlaw bikie gangs are not known for their forgiving natures. If they can’t get at him, it is just possible that they might strike at someone close to him. Or they’ll do you both. Execution for betrayal is part of their law.’
‘But I’m not close to him now,’ said Gemma, as a wave of sadness brought more tears to her eyes.
‘Any more men following you?’ asked Angie.
Gemma shook her head. ‘No, no,’ she said to Angie, understanding the implication. ‘Bikies don’t go to gyms. He was just a pest.’ But now she wasn’t so sure. ‘And someone was prowling round Kit’s place the other night. I saw where he’d torn the vines away from the fence.’
‘What is it,’ said Angie, ‘about you two sisters that you both have men following you?’
Two sisters, Imelda Moresby had said. Two killers. Two mistresses. Two stalkers. Two deaths. Thirty years ago, her father’s mistress had suicided and her mother had been murdered. Now two more women had been murdered: Marcia Harding and Bianca Perrault. Was there some link? Gemma felt haunted by these pairings.
‘Bloody men,’ Angie was saying. ‘Bloody mongrel deadshit arsehole bastard dickhead men.’
With an effort, Gemma brought her attention back to the investigation she was involved in, whether she liked it or not. She blew her nose, cursing when her finger poked through the tissue. She recalled Kit’s words and picked up the last poignant photo of Bianca while Angie studied the photos that Gemma had already passed to her. ‘Behaviour changes when reality changes, Kit said,’ Gemma stated, throwing the tissue into a wastepaper bin.
‘Kit should know,’ said Angie, taking the last picture from her. The FACE image on the table staring sightlessly at the ceiling from its vacant eyes brought her full attention back to the job. ‘Consider all the different factors in this picture. We’re being told something here by evidence that doesn’t lie. Only our failure to read it will mislead us.’
The two women sat in silence. The sense of foreboding became acute. ‘I’ve got a terrible feeling,’ said Gemma, staring at the computer-generated face, ‘that there’s something huge about this case staring straight at me. And I can’t see it.’
Feeding the Demons Page 18
