Feeding the Demons

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ Dr Firestone finally said. ‘I can’t believe that no one has noticed. And it doesn’t even need magnification to be observed.’ She put the gold-rimmed glass down.

  ‘Believe what?’ Gemma asked. ‘Notice what?’

  Dr Firestone looked her straight in the eye.

  ‘That this blood is already clotting.’ She shook her head. ‘This is basic stuff. Even a non-expert can see this quite clearly.’ She took a close-up photograph of the bloodstains and spots on the left sleeve and shoulder of a man’s jacket and turned it to face Gemma. Gemma’s heart started beating hard.

  ‘Look at this.’ The varnished red nail indicated a series of bloodstains in the form of spots on the fabric. Gemma frowned, concentrating. All she could see were small greyish circles, each with a black spot in the centre.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Gemma, wanting to hear the expert say it, the implication already rising and cheering her racing heart even as she spoke.

  ‘When fresh blood strikes a fabric like this,’ said the doctor, ‘it is absorbed instantaneously. It sinks into the fabric as it falls on it, and in a uniform way because the red cells are still freely moving in suspension in the blood. But once clotting starts, the cells start grouping together—to flocculate—and you get this.’ She tapped the tiny black nuclei in the centre of each bloodstain. ‘The blood is already starting to separate into plasma and blood solids. That’s what makes those black centres. Fresh blood simply doesn’t behave like this.’

  Gemma stared at her. Fresh blood doesn’t behave like this. The words filled her mind so that she had to concentrate on paying attention to the American’s voice.

  ‘I would say,’ said Dr Firestone, ‘from my experience, that this blood has been forming clots for at least twenty minutes—maybe as long as an hour. It was clotted blood your mother coughed up, which proved she must have been attacked before your father arrived.’

  A thrilling sense of excitement caused Gemma to press her lips together, frightened she’d unprofessionally laugh out loud or start to sob. My father, my father, she heard herself say silently somewhere deep within. What you have always said is the truth. Someone else had done this to your wife at least twenty minutes before you found her. You are my good father after all. My good father in his Glebe garden flat. All she could hear now was the beating of her own blood in her ears.

  Dr Firestone was sorting through the photographs with her red varnished nails, pushing them around like pieces in a game, placing them in different groups on the table. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at Angie and Gemma. ‘And you say your father was convicted on the evidence of these bloodstains?’ she asked in her American drawl.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘The police witnesses said the bloodstaining could not have occurred in any other way than during the attack.’

  ‘You see,’ said the doctor, leaning back in her seat but keeping her eyes on the pictures, and taking a sip of her glass of ice, ‘already I can see that there were at least two, possibly three separate events that caused blood to be laid down. That is, three different times when bleeding occurred. These stains here,’ she indicated a fan-shaped mark on the wall, ‘are consistent with the first arterial splatter, the first blows. The heart pumps very strongly, especially when there is fear and terror involved.’ Her eyes behind the glasses looked straight at Gemma. ‘When there is an injury to an artery, blood spurts in much the same way as when you turn the hose on. But in systolic squirts, not in a steady stream.’ She pointed to the fan-shaped stains against the wall and found more pictures of them among one of the piles into which she’d separated the prints.

  ‘This is the first event in which bleeding occurred. There are two others that I can see, making three in all. Most of the specialised knowledge of blood dynamics has happened only in the last ten or fifteen years, well after these photographs were taken and conclusions drawn from them. Investigators feel they can comment on evidence like this simply because it’s so visible and familiar. But without specialised training, they should never give testimony. No one should. This is a highly refined area of expertise. Back home, I’ve had country police officers tell me absurd things about bloodstain interpretation. They’d never dream of attempting to interpret other specialist evidence like DNA or ballistics. But because they’re in and out of bloodstained premises all the time, familiarity makes them think they can interpret easily.’

  ‘So,’ said Gemma when she remembered to breathe and could speak again, ‘what you’re saying suggests that my father was telling the truth.’

  ‘The patterns I see here certainly back up his version of events. If you look here, you’ll see for yourself once you know what to look for. See these stains on the wall.’ She pointed to one of the photographs and Gemma leaned over to see the bloodstains on the wall whose fanned-out shapes had earlier reminded her of palm trees leaves. ‘You can quite easily see that there has been some overlapping. For that to happen, the first stains must have started drying out before the next layer was laid down. This means at least two events have caused that bleeding. And probably a third.’

  ‘The actual attack,’ said Gemma excitedly, ‘and then when my father moved her again half an hour later. And then the ambulance officers.’

  ‘That explanation would be consistent with these stains,’ said Dr Firestone. ‘It looks like arterial spurting in both cases. After the attack, as the victim—’ She hurried on. ‘—as your mother lay unconscious on the floor, the blood could have started clotting and then been disturbed when she was moved, causing it to flow through the clotting and spurt again. I can see evidence of a third event. Possibly when she was being stretchered by the paramedics as you’ve suggested.’

  Gemma’s heart was racing. Her mother and father filled her mind, the one bleeding terribly, the other innocent. She covered her mouth with a hand as fierce feelings spun her mind around.

  ‘If you let me have copies of these pictures,’ said Dr Firestone, ‘I can do a full report when I get home to my records. We can discuss my fee later. It won’t be prohibitive. This is the sort of case I really like to get my teeth into. Too many people are convicted by ignorance.’

  ‘I want to reopen my father’s case,’ said Gemma. ‘Your opinion will support our application. I’ll courier copies over to you tomorrow,’ she promised. She had to stand up, unable any longer to contain the powerful feelings that surged through her. She wanted to be alone, to go to the gym, to run from Tamarama to Bondi, to shout, to jump up and down and say, ‘He didn’t do it. My father is innocent. He always said he didn’t do it and he didn’t. I am not the child of my mother’s murderer. I am not tainted. I am good, good, good and so is he!’

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Angie, and Gemma realised that tears were running down her face.

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I’m very all right. This is wonderful news.’

  Dr Firestone gathered up the photographs and passed them to Gemma. ‘It must come as a great relief,’ she said. ‘To know that your father’s account is supported by these pictures. Physical evidence doesn’t lie. It can’t perjure itself. The only thing that can go wrong is human failure to interpret it.’

  Dr Firestone pressed them to stay for coffee, which they could now smell deliciously perking in the white kitchen, but Gemma wanted to go to Kit’s and Angie looked at her watch, thinking of Dreamboat. Gemma pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.

  On the way down in the lift, Angie put an arm around her friend. ‘Take it easy, eh?’ she said. ‘Be careful driving home.’

  But Gemma didn’t drive home; she went straight to her sister’s place. Kit let her in and Gemma could see she’d been crying.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked as they sat down at the kitchen table.

  ‘Gerald was here a while ago. It was difficult. And then it was even more difficult in the silence after he left. I’m
glad you came, Gemfish.’

  ‘I’ll put on the kettle,’ said Gemma and she did, then turned to face her sister. ‘I’ve just come from one of the world’s most renowned experts on bloodstain interpretation. I showed her the photographs of our mother’s crime scene. She said that the stains support our father’s account of what happened that night. She’s taken copies and will fax me a detailed report.’

  Behind her, the kettle started to make the white noise of pre-boiling. Kit stared. Her eyes, freshly washed with tears, looked enormous in the clear light of the kitchen.

  ‘Our father was telling the truth,’ Gemma finally said. ‘All the time he was telling the truth and he’s spent thirty years—wasted thirty years of his life—in a stinking prison for a terrible thing that someone else did. Steve said he’d give a copy of the statement to the Scan expert.’ She stopped. ‘I’ll have to follow that through now,’ she said and Kit didn’t notice the sadness in her voice.

  ‘But the evidence,’ Kit was saying. ‘The impact splatter. That’s what they all said, the experts.’

  Gemma shook her head. ‘Dr Firestone said that she could read three separate events where bleeding had occurred. Three, Kit. It’s not just a case of one impact splatter stain.’

  Now the kettle was whistling shrilly and Gemma turned it off, opening cupboards, getting out the instant coffee, the sugar, the milk. It felt as if their roles were suddenly reversed, that she was the competent, older, wiser sister, with Kit the younger and more naive.

  ‘Don’t you see, Kit? It’s what our father always said. That he got blood on him when he cradled her in his arms. That was the second pattern Dr Firestone could see. She even mentioned a third that may relate to when our mother was stretchered.’

  Kit still stared. The colour had drained from her face. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘A most dreadful injustice has happened,’ said Gemma. ‘That’s what’s happened. And we must do everything in our power to clear our father’s name.’ She stood up. ‘And to sue for compensation.’

  Kit leaned over the sink as the enormity of this new information started to become clear to her. ‘But for thirty years, I’ve believed that he did it. I’ve hated him for it.’ She straightened up and looked at her younger sister. ‘This is too much for me to take in just at the moment.’

  ‘I’m going for compensation,’ said Gemma. ‘How could you calculate a leading psychiatrist’s earning capacity? And more importantly, how do you possibly recompense a man for half of his lifetime? What amount of money could make up for that? Five million dollars? Ten million dollars? A hundred million?’ Gemma picked her coffee up then put it straight down again, unable to drink it.

  ‘It was interesting,’ she said after a pause, ‘to look through the notes made by the original investigating detective, Philip Hawker. He must have been quite a thorough man. He interviewed one of our father’s patients. A fellow called Arik Kreutzvalt.’

  Kit frowned then blinked. ‘I think I can even remember that name.’ She turned away, thinking. ‘I think he came to the house once,’ she said, again looking at Gemma. ‘And I think there was some drama about it.’

  ‘There might have been,’ said Gemma. ‘Because our father even made a house call to him the day of our mother’s death.’ She stood up. ‘Hell,’ she said. ‘It’s all so long ago now. Let’s come back to the present. Hey, Kit. Let’s ring him,’ she said. ‘Let’s tell him the good news. We’ll tell him that we’re going to do whatever it takes to get him pardoned. Recompensed. Whatever. We’ll write a book called Justice Nightmares. Come on, let’s ring him.’

  But Kit shook her head. ‘Not just now, Gemma. I need some time to digest this. Let it percolate in me for a while. Can we leave it till tomorrow morning?’

  Gemma sipped her coffee. ‘What’s another night after thirty years?’ she laughed.

  Kit turned and looked at her, leaning against the counter, her arms folded. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘the awful thing for me is that I still don’t really want to see him. Innocent and all. I remember too much.’

  •

  After Gemma had gone home, Kit was too agitated to sleep. She sat outside in the garden for a while, but couldn’t settle. The moon was bright so she opened the gate in the back wall and stepped down onto the pathway that led around to Gordon’s Bay, smelling the salt from the dim surf rolling in beneath her. In the moonlight, she could see the outlines of the fishing boats drawn up on racks above the tiny beach as she walked a little way along the path to where it became timber decking. She wasn’t entirely comfortable about this moonlit ramble, thinking of the intruder of the other night and the fact that this pathway used to be a well-known beat before it was subsumed by the more domestic traffic of couples, kids and dogs.

  She leaned over the railings of the walkway, watching the endless pulsing of the Pacific against the edge of Australia. Out at sea, the long, dark shape of a container ship lit with lights slid along the horizon, discernible because of the molten effect of moonlight on water. It seemed that her whole world had gone through a hundred and eighty degree turn. The darkness of a solar eclipse had now given way to the brilliance of the noonday sun. Her father was transformed from murderer to victim, all because of some thirty-year-old photographs and the experienced eyes of an expert in the behaviour of liquid and drying blood. How am I going to approach him now? she wondered. What can I possibly say?

  Even now, with him seeming to have been the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice, I still have no feeling of love for him, she thought. I still remember the atmosphere of that house. I remember creeping round the place, praying that my mother would stay in her room and not say or do anything to antagonise him. Then the terror of hearing his study door slam open against the wall and the crash of his angry feet on the stairs because someone or something had disturbed him in his work. But surely my father has paid a terrible price already for his lack of fathering and husbanding skills?

  A sound in the dark bushes closer to the water spooked her, and she walked quickly back to the gate in the back wall, sliding the bolt behind her, locking the windows and doors of her house, sitting in meditation for a while before going to bed.

  •

  Next morning, Gemma picked her up. They’d chatted on the phone over their separate breakfasts and decided to visit their father together. Kit had gathered a little bunch of flowers from her garden and had an airtight container of scones in a bag. As they drove through the traffic, Kit wondered what she’d say and do when she saw her father. ‘You’d better go in first,’ she said to Gemma, ‘and let him know I’m here, too. It’s possible he may not want to see me.’

  ‘Oh don’t be silly, Kit. Of course he’ll want to see you.’ Gemma turned into Glebe Point Road and made her way down past St John’s Road until she came to the street where their father had his flat. She parked opposite the old house and got out of the car. ‘I’ll wait here,’ said Kit, getting out of the car and leaning against it, the flowers in her hand. ‘You take the scones.’

  Gemma did so, walking down the side of the house, through the waist-high gate that opened onto the back garden and onto the patio. Her father was sitting at a table, writing in a book, the newspaper folded next to him, sunlight shining on his silver hair. He looked up from what he was writing and closed the book, as if caught in the act of doing something naughty, and his face lit with pleasure to see her. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘what a lovely surprise.’ He stood up and came over to her.

  ‘There’s another surprise,’ she said. ‘Kit’s with me. And we have something to tell you.’

  ‘Oh?’ His tone sounded unsure, as if he was expecting bad news. He’s been in a bloody prison so long, Gemma thought as tears pricked her eyes, that he works on the principle that all news is bad news. ‘Just a moment,’ she said, dropping the container of scones on the tabl
e next to him and running back up the side of the house to bring Kit back. When they both returned, their father was sitting waiting.

  Kit hesitated a moment, then stepped forward. She struggled. She couldn’t say ‘Dad’. She couldn’t say ‘Father’. She took a deep breath. ‘I want to apologise to you,’ she said, looking directly into his eyes. ‘It appears I’ve been wrong in my opinion all these years. Gemma had a bloodstain expert look at the crime scene photographs and, according to her, your account of what happened that night is accurate.’

  Their father waited, immobile, sitting like a statue with the morning sun gleaming on his hair and forehead. ‘That’s what I’ve always said,’ he snapped. He was not gracious in victory, Kit couldn’t help but notice.

  ‘That’s what we’ve both come over to tell you,’ Gemma raced on, not noticing her father’s manner. ‘It’s wonderful news. I’m going to apply for a Section 475 inquiry and submit Dr Firestone’s new findings.’

  The shocked stiffness that seemed to freeze their father’s body held him for a few more seconds, then Kit noticed the thaw. ‘Oh that,’ he said uneasily.

  Gemma looked at Kit. ‘What do you mean “that”?’ she asked. It was then that she noticed how he slumped in the chair like an old man.

  ‘We’ve got sufficient grounds here for your case to be re-opened, for you to clear your name,’ Gemma said. ‘Quite apart from that, you’re looking at a possible settlement of millions of dollars. It’s the least the state can do for you. And you said on the phone just how much it would mean to you, that you could—’ Her voice trailed off. It seemed foolish and sad to believe that he’d once said he’d like to leave them money like a good father does. It was foolish of her. She blinked furiously, aware that her eyes had filled.