Feeding the Demons

by Gabrielle Lord

  Garry Copeland shrugged. ‘It still looks bad for the police,’ he said.

  ‘The police’ve been looking bad since Ned Kelly,’ Angie said. ‘Come on, Gems. Let’s get out looking for that Corolla. Folllow me, OK?’

  They left Garry Copeland with the Perraults and Bruno standing just inside the motel entrance. As Angie started her car the radio spoke.

  ‘We’ve found the car. Out near Port Botany. Marine Drive.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ said Angie, checking the exact location and swinging the door shut as she accelerated away, Gemma right behind her.

  •

  The yellow Corolla could hardly be seen for all the cars and people around it. On the verge near a tall cyclone fence beyond which huge lights from the port blazed, bright as midday, Gemma spotted its canary colour, the area around it already surrounded by the blue and white checked plastic tape. Across a flat concrete desert through the fence, the shapes of cranes and huge containers cast long, black shadows. There wasn’t much traffic at this hour, but any car that passed by slowed down to see what was happening.

  The Crime Scene detectives were on the job. One with his back to them was bent over at the opened driver’s door, putting samples into bags and containers with pale rubber-covered hands. Gemma could see past him and as she came up behind the stooping policeman, she knew that the boy slumped forward over the wheel was already dead.

  ‘Shot,’ said the Crime Scene man, straightening up. ‘Young fella by the name of Brett Collins. The doctor just left.’ He moved to one side and Gemma could see the dark red hole in the boy’s temple, the line of blood that ran down his tender young face, pooling in the little concavity formed by his lips squashed against the steering wheel.

  Gemma walked around to the passenger side. On the seat was a little leather bag, square and with a leather strap. The initials ‘AP’ were engraved on a tiny gold shield. The bag was slightly opened and a used handkerchief, a comb and some coins had spilled out onto the seat.

  ‘She was taken here,’ said Gemma. ‘My bet is they stopped the car somehow, and then threatened the boyfriend with the gun if she didn’t do as she was told.’

  ‘They must have been watching the house,’ said Angie.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Gemma. ‘Spinner. The white Toyota.’ She grabbed her mobile and rang Spinner’s number. ‘What white Toyota?’ Gemma heard Angie ask as Spinner’s sleepy voice answered.

  ‘Spinner, sorry about the hour. That white Toyota. The one you saw last night at the motel. Tell me again what you thought.’

  ‘What white Toyota?’ Angie’s voice, more insistent this time.

  Gemma strained to hear Spinner. ‘I thought it was someone in the business,’ he said, through the faint interference. ‘Tinted windows, the wheelbarrow on the back. All the builders were long gone. What’s he still doing here at this hour, I asked myself?’

  You are very good at what you do, Spinner, Gemma thought. I should tell you more often. ‘Tell me what else you noticed about it,’ she said instead.

  ‘There were little side curtains on the window behind the driver’s and passenger seats. He was leaning back in the seat, just like we do on a long follow.’

  ‘Did you get the registration number?’ Gemma asked, and waited while Spinner logged onto his laptop. He read it out to her and she wrote it down. Gemma signed off and turned to Angie, who was bristling too close to her. ‘Angie, it might be that the killer was in Hallam Street street last night. In a vehicle reported by one of my operators. A white Toyota, registration KHI 311, with a wheelbarrow on the back. Side curtains, tinted windows.’

  Angie wasted no time. She took the details, organised a registration check and put the description of the vehicle out. She called and ordered some hapless junior officer to do the death message and make the formal announcement. ‘Now tell me everything your operative said,’ demanded Angie.

  ‘Spinner felt that the driver of the Toyota was in the business,’ said Gemma. ‘In our—I mean, my business.’

  ‘Security?’ said Angie. She only paused a second, taking it in. ‘I’ll need to get Hallam Avenue checked to see if anyone saw a white Toyota ute last night. See if anybody saw the driver. Any possible description.’

  There are hundreds of security firms in Sydney alone, Gemma thought, some large, some small operations. It would be a hopeless task trying to track some lone operative. Or ex-operative.

  ‘There’s nothing more I can do here,’ Angie said. ‘I’ll have to make some inquiries about Clive Mindell’s background. Your sister might know what sort of work he’s done. Where we start looking for him. Then I’ve got to face the music in the morning. Somewhere in all that I’ve got to get some sleep.’

  Gemma touched her friend’s arm. ‘You can’t protect someone who won’t cooperate,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your fault that Amy sneaked out.’

  ‘I just hope the boss sees it that way.’

  Gemma walked with Angie to her car and watched while she climbed in. Angie looked up at her, her hand on the handle of the open car door. ‘This is my first really big case. I so want to get it right.’

  Gemma nodded. ‘Let’s grab a few hours’ sleep,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back to the office with you and curl up on your floor. Make you a cup of coffee in the morning.’

  On the way to the police centre, she couldn’t stop herself driving past Steve’s flat again, but this time she stopped outside. She found a pen in the glovebox and a spare manila envelope from the pack that she had on hand in the car for ditties. ‘Dear Steve’, she wrote. ‘I’m so sorry about my behaviour. You were quite right to react the way you did. I just want to tell you that you are very important to me and that I have come to love you very much over the last few years. Please forgive me. You deserve better.’ She wrote his name and address on the envelope and got out of the car and pushed it into his letterbox. Maybe it would get to him. Maybe not.

  Twenty-Five

  Later in the morning Gemma sat in Angie’s office, staring at Angie’s photos of her cat, Sabrina, pinned onto a grey locker near the wall. Her heart ached for her own Taxi. She’d had a shower in the Women’s bathroom, and when she got back the day shift was arriving. Gemma had to wait in her friend’s office while Angie took it on the chin in a nearby glassed-in area. Gemma couldn’t hear any words—just the occasional muffled roar. It reminded her of lions at Taronga Park, the sound which came floating across the water to Aunt Merle’s place as their keepers attended to them at 4 am. And it wasn’t difficult to work out what had been said from Angie’s white face and demeanour as she came out and closed the door behind her. She looked as if she were about to cry, but jumped instead when Senior Constable Sheila Stanton suddenly appeared. ‘That white Toyota you wanted checked.’

  Angie turned expectantly.

  ‘We drew a blank. We went to the address on the rego but the guy there said he’d sold the vehicle weeks ago. Reckoned he sent in the transfer. I’ve got the RTA chasing it up right now.’ She shrugged, seeing Angie’s disappointment. ‘We’ll keep on it, and we’ve got everyone looking out for that vehicle.’

  They were interrupted by Ian who followed Angie into her office. ‘Sign this for me? Jack at the Institute made me promise to see you got this in person as soon as possible.’

  Angie took the packet from the Institute of Forensic Medicine and ripped it open. The colour came back into her cheeks and her eyes widened. ‘Holy shit!’ she said, striding round the back of her desk, her face flushed with triumph. ‘Got him!’ Gemma, alerted by the energy in her friend’s voice, felt a surge herself. ‘Those pink panties we found in Clive Mindell’s car,’ Angie was saying. ‘They belonged to—or at least were worn by—Bianca Perrault. They got a DNA match. We’ve got physical evidence now that links him to Bianca. We’ve got him!’ She raced straight back into the boss’s office.

  Gemma felt
as if she’d been kicked by a horse. Clive Mindell, Kit’s client. Kit had been so wrong. I’ve been so wrong. There weren’t two killers. It was Clive all the time. Angie came back into her office area and tossed the test results in front of Gemma on the desk. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘All the time. My guts told me it was him. Her panties in his car. How’s he going to explain that?’ Angie was suddenly furious. All the pent-up frustration from the carpeting she’d just been given spilled out of her. ‘I had him!’ she said. ‘I had the mongrel right here! If your bloody sister had just said a few words—a few measly words that I could’ve used for the Bail Magistrate, he’d be under lock and key! I had him in my hands and then he slips away—because of bloody Kit. Now he’s gone missing and I’ll tell you why. Because he’s grabbed Amy Perrault!’

  She ran out with the test result and Gemma tried to make sense of it, put it all together. The bulletin would be going out right now, over all the police airwaves. A statewide search would be underway within hours. Clive Mindell’s face as well as the face of the missing Amy Perrault would stare out from the evening newspapers as the man ‘wanted by the police in connection with the murder of Bianca Perrault and the disappearance of her younger sister’. Something occurred to Gemma. If Clive Mindell knew that everyone was looking for him and Amy, he’d dig in even deeper, hide even harder. If Amy were still alive, this could sign her death warrant.

  ‘Angie, wait!’ She ran outside after her friend, but it was too late. Angie had already dispatched the bulletin to the media unit. Gemma was aware of the huge distance separating them. Angie was a serving cop, getting on with business, connecting with all the appropriate units of the police service, responding to the murder–abduction with all the force at her command. And all Gemma could do was stand helplessly and watch as the police machine geared itself up and into action. She’d been completely wrong, none of her assistance on this case had been helpful and she’d never felt more like an ex-cop in her life. The old agitation was rising in her belly, undermining her. She wanted to go downstairs to a basement club, a dive, where the smoky atmosphere was filled with the whisky voice of a club chanteuse, where strangers sat around tables in dim pools of light and drank too much. Where she could approach a man without a name and dance with him, hot and close, until they were naked back at a motel and she was grinding up against his weight, losing her mind and its pain in the best way she knew.

  •

  She drove to Glebe and parked opposite her father’s flat, sitting in the car a while, wondering what she was doing there. Finally, she got out and walked around the side of the old mansion, to the garden flat at the back. She knocked on the door and a neat, balding man with a lean face and sharp eyes opened it.

  ‘You must be one of Archie’s daughters,’ he said. ‘I’m Paul Lestrange, your father’s flatmate. Come in.’ The solicitor who’d overreached himself, she thought.

  Gemma stepped inside, looking around at the kitchen with its bachelor notes: bottles and jars in neat rows on the table, the absence of curtains or blinds on the window, the row of small tools hanging next to the kitchen utensils. ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea,’ he said, with a quick gesture of his long fingers. ‘Would you like one?’

  Gemma nodded. ‘Dad’s not in,’ she said, more a statement than a question.

  ‘He’s gone out. He’s given me some of his papers to read. Your father was a very eminent man. A friend of mine went to him for years. She said he was the leader in his field.’

  ‘Did she get better?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Paul. The sharp eyes clouded and Gemma saw that he was older than she’d first assumed. He poured her a tea and she took it from him. She sipped it.

  ‘Do you think something’s worrying my father,’ she asked ‘or frightening him?’

  ‘That’s a funny question,’ he said after a while. ‘But it did seem odd that he was all gung-ho about clearing his name and then suddenly changed. He’s talking now of writing his memoirs, but as a text. A personal yet academic account of his studies in narcotherapy. He’s boning up on the new wave of drugs that weren’t available in the ’sixties. He’s all fired up about that now.’ Paul Lestrange indicated the piles of folders and cartons of material visible through the kitchen door across the hallway, stacking the walls of her father’s bedroom. Gemma could see from here that her father’s desk was covered with piles of notes and sheaves of printed matter.

  She walked over and stood at the door, aware that Paul Lestrange was busying himself in the kitchen behind her. Suddenly, she was assailed by the memory of her father swinging out of the dark timber door of his study at Killara, towering over her, terrifying her. She brought her attention back to the present. She cupped the mug in her hand, looking around the room. It was neat and orderly but crammed with his records and papers. The little bunch of flowers Kit had brought him were already dried out and Gemma noticed that he’d failed to put them in water, just propped them in a pen and pencil jar. Feeling as if she were walking on forbidden ground, Gemma went to her father’s desk. Incomprehensible tracts from pharmaceutical companies about the action of various drugs made up the top layer, mixed in with his almost illegible handwritten notes concerning multiple dosages. It was the name that drew her attention because she already knew it. ‘Arik Kreutzvalt’ she saw, heading a folder.

  She opened it. There was the north Sydney address she’d remembered from Philip Hawker’s notes. She glanced at the notes under his date of birth in 1947. ‘Presents with severe depression, almost total absence of affect punctuated with rage attacks,’ she read. ‘Fixation with mother, castration complex. Schizophrenic episodes of delusion. Fantasises the murder of the mother . . .’ Gemma closed the folder, feeling guilty about reading this old account of another human being’s wretchedness. Tears welled up in her eyes. Some ancient heavy grief burdened her and with it the desire to pick up a stranger evaporated. She turned away and went back to the kitchen. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ she said. ‘I’d better go.’

  Paul Lestrange took the cup from her hand. ‘I’ve been on the outside for a while,’ he said without any embarrassment. ‘Maybe you don’t understand how it is.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘When you first come out, it’s huge. The adjustment, I mean,’ said Lestrange. ‘You swing from one extreme to another. Big mood swings, I remember. It’s like being born again, except this time you’re an old man, and not a child. It’s very tricky. Very uncomfortable. Your father was away for thirty years. He’s bound to seem, well, unstable for a while. Changeable. Maybe even seem capricious. Don’t take it personally.’

  ‘But I do,’ said Gemma. ‘I do take it personally that he’s no longer concerned about proving his innocence.’

  ‘He’s served his time. It’s all over. Can’t you just put it behind you?’

  ‘I’m still serving my time,’ she said, her voice just a fraction away from wobbling. ‘Either I’m the daughter of a vicious killer or I’m not. That’s what people who know me must think. I’ve got an expert who is willing to give evidence that the bloodstain pattern interpretation that put my father away is completely wrong and that the stains actually support his story. I want that made public. I want people to know that. I want the papers to print that with just the same amount of publicity as they gave to my father’s disgrace. My sentence won’t be over until they do. Then, maybe I can think of putting it behind me.’ She remembered her grandmother hiding the newspapers, suddenly switching off the radio or the television as soon as the case was mentioned. She brought her mind back to this moment and felt the defiance in her gaze.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ He was awkward now, not knowing where to put his long fingers. ‘I’ve forgotten how to talk to women. That’s another thing that gets lost.’ Finally he tucked his fingers in his belt. Gemma walked towards the door. ‘I’ll tell your father you dropped in,’ he said.
/>   •

  She just made it to the car before crying. She sat with the windows wound up and the radio turned up loud. ‘Suicide blonde, suicide blonde,’ the singer screamed while Gemma sobbed and sobbed as the traffic moved around her. When she’d calmed down she drove round to Kit’s but couldn’t make herself heard at the front door, so she walked around the lane at the back and pushed the back gate of the garden open. She looked through the new grilles of the kitchen window and saw her sister sitting at the kitchen table, with several pens lying around, copying something from one book to another.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  Kit almost jumped out of her seat. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’ She came to the back door and let Gemma in. ‘I just heard the news. I’m rewriting my notes on Clive Mindell. It’s completely illegal but some things are worse than others,’ she said. Gemma noticed she was using different pens for the entries.

  ‘I’m terrified the police will be here any minute with a warrant,’ her sister was saying. ‘I can’t help convict him with his own honesty and frankness. It’s unthinkable.’

  ‘But, Kit. Think what he did. Some things are worse than others.’ Kit didn’t answer for a few minutes, but finished copying the last session. She threw down the pen, stood up and took a large cooking pot from under the stove, threw the original exercise book of notes into it, and went outside with a box of matches. Gemma followed her out. The garden looked neat, and sweet peas were starting to climb a lattice next to the pond.

  ‘I still don’t believe he’s the one they’re looking for,’ Kit said as the book started to burn, sending up thin transparent daylight flames. ‘I don’t know how he came to have those panties. Perhaps he did just souvenir them. He is drawn to violence. But so is the entire reading and cinema-going population of the West.’ When the fire had died down, Kit took the remaining bits of burnt paper and crushed them up, throwing them in the pond. ‘There. Now they can subpoena all they like.’