The Practice Baby

by LM Ardor

  ‘We’re here. There’s no one around. You can sit up,’ Dee said as gently as she could.

  ‘He was watching today when I came for my appointment.’

  ‘You’re safe. No one can see us without us seeing them. Tell me who? What is it you’re scared of?’

  Leah moved her head up to the level of the window. She was edgy, a nocturnal bush creature ready to bolt, faun-like trembling arms and legs, her skin and hair a uniform pale beige.

  ‘What about that car?’ Leah asked, looking to their right.

  ‘It was there when we arrived. There’s no one in it; probably a jogger.’

  Did Leah have a history of mental health problems? Dee wasn’t her doctor so had no background to judge her present state. The girl had appeared stable when she’d come to the surgery with Tom. Her current behaviour seemed odd but it was less than a week since Tom’s death.

  ‘You don’t look well. Can I drive you home? Who are you staying with?’

  Dee bit back any other questions. She’d get a better picture of the girl’s mental state if she let her talk.

  ‘I’m scared. There was a man watching the front door of the surgery …’

  ‘That’s why you didn’t come?’

  ‘Yes, he must think I know what Tom found out.’

  Who knew about Leah’s appointment? Dee pulled herself up. She was assuming that what Leah said had actually happened; participating in the paranoia wasn’t going to help.

  ‘Leah, who would know to watch for you there?’ As Dee said the words the memory of all the calls wanting to know where Leah was came back to her.

  Dee had told Adam and Craig about Leah’s appointment, not Glen, not the insurance company. Still, if any of them had spoken to Tania she might have let the information slip. As could Craig, if he thought it would give him information to make him look good.

  ‘He was in a car, all dressed in black with sunglasses on.’

  It was summer in the inner city. Hats and sunglasses were not unusual. Black was the colour of choice for local hipsters. How could Leah identify anyone in a car from a distance, with an obscured face? Dee bit back her questions, said nothing. If she disputed any part of the story, Leah would withdraw and she’d never get through to her.

  ‘You know Tom didn’t die of natural causes.’ Leah said it as a statement rather than a question.

  ‘The coroner will find out what happened. We have to wait for the hearing.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Leah said, then muttered so Dee only just heard, ‘he could get me by then.’

  Dee was torn. She needed to tell Leah about the danger she was in because of the insurance but it was hard to add to her distress. The danger was real though, Dee reminded herself. Tom was dead, and it wasn’t asthma. Leah needed to know.

  ‘Did you know Tom took out life insurance a few weeks ago?’

  ‘Sure, you know him, always a plan for everything.’

  ‘You know you get half the money?’

  ‘I don’t want money, I want Tom,’ Leah spat back at Dee.

  Dee tried not to respond to the anger. She wished there was some way to comfort the girl Tom had loved.

  ‘I know but have you thought that if someone harmed Tom, it could be for the insurance?’

  ‘It was the professor who Tom was worried about.’

  Dee decided to let that go. She wanted Leah to listen. Any challenge would just drive her to defend her suspicions.

  ‘Leah, there’s something you should know. It’s important; can you listen to me for a minute?’

  Leah, eyes down, sniffed and nodded.

  ‘There’s a rule with insurance, if something happens to you within thirty days of Tom’s death, all the money, including your half, would go to Charlie. Do you understand what that means?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Skye wouldn’t hurt Tom, she loved him. She was always on the phone, he was always over there visiting Charlie. It makes no sense.’

  Leah started to sob. Dee found a mini packet of tissues in her handbag and gave it to her. She wanted to put her arms around Leah, to tell her it would be okay, but she knew the first would be rejected and the second a dangerous lie.

  ‘There’s Skye’s boyfriend; he could have an interest in Skye getting money …’ Dee left the idea in the air between them.

  Leah looked up, visibly engaged for the first time. ‘Tom said Glen was too stoned to get out of his own way.’

  ‘No one knows what happened to Tom. It wouldn’t hurt to be careful, be with other people till thirty days are up.’

  ‘It was the professor. I know, Tom knew.’ Leah’s voice was strident. She looked at Dee and went on more calmly. ‘He had lots of information from GenSafe’s accounts but he had other research too. A lot of bad things happened to people close to the professor.’

  Dee sighed; let her talk, get out what she had to tell.

  ‘There was something going on with the patients and payments into an overseas bank account. Tom got the names and checked them out.’

  It was better not to know the details of how, Dee thought.

  ‘You know Shirley and Ben? They lived near us. Tom helped them set up their wi-fi. He knew their passwords. He checked out stuff from their computers.’

  Dee vaguely remembered the couple from some years ago. She had referred them to GenSafe. They’d been trying to conceive for years. Leah must have inside information from Tom if she knew their story.

  Lights illuminated the car’s back window, the shadows of their two heads flashed across the windscreen. Leah stopped talking and bent down out of sight again. The car passed. Her hands were shaking. When she sat up, Dee saw the throb of her heart in the tender skin at the base of her throat. Leah shook her head and went on.

  ‘They weren’t infertile. They just wanted to have a baby who was intelligent. They even got to pick the hair colour and height. That man practically told us we could design whatever baby we wanted if we had enough money. Tom thought it was wrong. And there were other people. Tom doesn’t …’ Leah paused and corrected herself, ‘He didn’t have the medical part of the records but, of the names he looked up, ten couples sent large amounts to the same offshore account. He traced it and it ended up in an account with connections in China.’

  ‘China’s a big place. Did he say more than that?’

  ‘Yes but I didn’t understand most of it. It was something medical. He kept on about the crisper, saying that must be the key.’

  This was all too much. Dee held up a hand for Leah to stop.

  ‘Leah, it’s hard to think straight when you’re grieving. Everything gets on top of you. Why don’t I drive you home? Have you got someone to be with? Can we get you in to see your own doctor tomorrow?’

  ‘Do you think Tom died of asthma?’

  ‘That’s what the police think,’ Dee said. She decided not to mention the talk of sedatives. That would only feed Leah’s paranoia. The knowledge that Dee had talked to the police and had her concerns dismissed wouldn’t help either.

  ‘What do you think?’ Leah was insistent.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. There’s nothing we can do. We have to wait for the police and the coroner.’ Dee paused, and tried to soften her tone. ‘But, just in case, you need to keep safe.’

  Leah went on quickly, ‘You know someone used Tom’s computer after he was gone?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The backup drive wasn’t in the right place when we were at his flat with the police. When he finished at night he always sat it on top of the keyboard so he knew it had been done.’

  Dee sighed. Of course that mattered but who except those who knew Tom would take notice of where a hard drive was put. None of this would be useful as evidence. And he may have been working and not backed up when he got sick … No, Dee stopped herself, he didn’t simply ‘get sick’.

  ‘Once the autopsy result is through the police will have a proper look. They’ll make a report and the case will go to the coroner. You’ll
need to give a statement.’

  ‘No way.’ Leah shook her head violently. She looked terrified.

  Dee let it go, decided to wait till the girl was calmer.

  Leah lifted her head and rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  ‘He was onto something else too. He went to Orange and when he came back he made me stay away. He said it was better if I didn’t know what was happening. He said it was too dangerous to know.’

  Dee couldn’t be sure if Leah knew what had happened, or if she did, if her account was accurate. She was mostly calm and talked without making excuses, without any need to defend herself.

  ‘Tom would never leave his desk out of order. You know him … there’s no way he’d leave his backup laying around.’

  That was true but Craig Mason wouldn’t see the significance of any of this. He’d dismissed Dee’s suspicions. The police wouldn’t be any help to Leah until the autopsy report proved Tom’s death wasn’t due to an innocent physical cause.

  Dee wrote her mobile and home numbers on a card and gave it to Leah. The girl put the card into her bag. She looked down at her hands, not quite ready to say something that was on her mind. Dee waited.

  ‘Tom said if anything happened I could trust you. And that you had all the information if anything went wrong.’

  ‘Yes, you can trust me, but I’m not sure I have any information. Do you know what he meant?’

  Leah didn’t answer.

  Another car pulled into a parking bay two away from them. Leah slipped back down the seat.

  ‘Can we go? Can you drop me at a train?’

  ‘Where can I find you? Have you got somewhere safe to stay?’ Dee backed out of the space.

  ‘It’s better if no one knows where I am. I’ll call you.’

  ‘That’s good. And make sure you’re not alone. It’s only a few weeks.’

  *

  At Railway Square, a huge junction of cars and buses near Sydney’s major train station, Leah opened the door and jumped out.

  Dee called after her. ‘Be careful, remember, until January 8th or 9th.’

  Leah didn’t look back. She ducked between cars and was out of sight in seconds.

  The passenger seat was empty but something had been left behind. The car was filled with it. An invisible pressure, a weight pressed down on her shoulders. A duty towards Tom, to find justice for him, and to protect the prickly, difficult Leah, who didn’t even like Dee. ‘Well, thanks Leah,’ Dee muttered. Who else would sort this out?

  The traffic in front of her was gone. A bus loomed behind her. Dee put her foot on the accelerator, moved forward and swung left on Quay Street. This was familiar territory. Darling Drive was nearly deserted and led her past Darling Harbour to her normal route home.

  It didn’t feel normal anymore.

  15.

  It was quiet at home; the children were at Rob’s. She microwaved a bowl of leftovers, ate without tasting and sat on the lounge in the dark with a big glass of red. Her eyes adjusted so she could see the bush outside. The full moon rose huge and yellow over Middle Harbour. The angophora trunks and walkway around the north-east of the house glowed silver. Fairy daylight, she used to call it when the kids were little—would she see Puck and Titania if she watched carefully?

  The Glasshouse was famous. All the walls were glass and the house was circled by silvery weathered wooden decks with low stainless steel railings. The walls slid open to make a seamless transition between inside and out. Elegant cream and grey gum trunks seemed part of the living space. Rob had designed all with homage to Danish modern; low wine-dark leather couches and curved teak. The house had made Rob’s name as one of the leading young architects in Sydney. They all still cleared out for the Architects Association of Australia’s annual open day.

  Castlecrag was on a hilly promontory surrounded by Middle Harbour. It was famous for the estate of sandstone houses built by Walter Burley Griffin in the thirties. The streets had names like The Bulwark, The Rampart or The High Tor. Tasteful and expensive houses were nestled in bush and glimpsed the harbour through gums and twisted orange-trunked angophoras.

  The Glasshouse backed up a slope with only bush behind. A small wooden bridge connected it to the street about a metre and a half below. Sweet-smelling leaf litter and strips of bark covered the ground on the slopes around them. White flannel flowers and red waratahs glowed bright in season.

  After Rob moved out with his student lover, Dee had installed curtains for privacy in the bedrooms and had the walls of the bathrooms made opaque. For a period, when Rob first left, she felt insecure, anxious that bogeymen could be in the bush watching. She tried movement sensors outside the house but they were set off all night by possums, wallabies and other nocturnal creatures. The bush was surprisingly busy after dark. She disabled the sensor lights after only a few days of being startled awake by them all through the night.

  In warm weather everything was open and airy, although when it was too cold to open the walls the ventilation was inadequate. Dee loved the seamless transition from inside to outside but Rob didn’t believe in flyscreens, so the space was seamless to flies, beetles, mosquitoes, and the odd funnel-web spider as well. Cleaning the acres of glass was never-ending. Now she had cleaners. How did working women manage without cleaners? Life would be so easy if she could have a wife.

  It was a wonderful house. The kids had their friends and schools nearby. She was lucky. She should be grateful. So why did she feel as though steely tendrils of Rob’s perfectionism had paralysed her brain?

  *

  Dee opened her eyes. She must have dozed off. Snatches of a dream with Leah and Rob and the house came back to her. There was danger. Rob was there but he couldn’t help. He was busy on the toilet. It was important because the toilet had a glass bowl and everyone could see what he produced. Dee was outside the front door. She had to push it hard enough to make a noise, to warn Leah to hide. If she could make a noise with the door she would have solved the mystery of what happened to Tom. The house and Tom and Leah were all part of the same quest. She wondered why she hadn’t seen it before.

  She tried as hard as she could to push the door but her arms and legs were held tight by a sticky web of grey cords. Each movement was pulled back by a strong rubbery recoil.

  She stopped to think. Any movement would draw the attention of the creature who’d built the web. It was a trap. She tried to look around and see what held her and realised her eyes were still closed. She forced them open.

  That woke her up properly this time. She looked around. She was in her own lounge room, slumped on the couch. It was only a dream, but the conviction, the absolute certainty, she’d had in the dream state stayed with her. Something had to be done and she was the one who had to do it. The smooth, soft closure of the door had to be overcome. She had to make a noise, make it real.

  Leah was clearly disturbed, alone in her grief. The fear was palpably real but how much of it was rational?

  What had she said? That people were watching her. That could be true. Even if she was wrong about who it was, it meant she should be careful.

  Detective Constable Craig Mason had done nothing apart from alerting Dee to the potential danger to Leah. Did he expect her to do the work of the police? There was no use talking to him. It was best to wait till the autopsy result and then get the information to Craig.

  Dee sat up; shook her arms and legs. They moved freely. There was no restriction, no web, no tendrils in her brain. Now it was time for bed. Tomorrow, action. That always made her feel better. She would follow up the autopsy then update Marlena about Leah.

  The couple Leah had mentioned hadn’t been in for some time. She had a vague recollection they had moved to the Blue Mountains. She could check their notes, see if there was anything to support Leah’s assertions about designer babies.

  The other person who might be useful was Jock, her client who lived at the bottom of the stairs up to Tom’s flat. He probably wouldn’t talk to the po
lice but Dee could find out what he knew. She’d seen him last week so he was due a visit early next week. She would have Janelle arrange a time. Jock was a one-man neighbourhood watch team. If anyone had clues about what happened to Tom, Jock would.

  Marlena would ensure Craig’s report to the coroner had all the evidence. Then the case would go back to the police for a full investigation.

  Dee slept soundly for the first night in a week.

  16.

  Dee arrived at the office, early for once, to find Jean Louis slumped on the railing at the front door, hands clutched across his chest. His face had the grey mud look that said heart attack. She unlocked the door.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said as she helped him in.

  ‘Morning, Doc, sorry,’ he panted.

  ‘It’s okay, just tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘I woke up with a steamroller pressed on my chest at five o’clock and I wanted to see you.’

  ‘What about an ambulance? Did you think of that?’

  ‘I thought you’d know what to do. You’d know if I should be worried.’

  Dee rolled her eyes. Jean Louis was only fifty-seven but had smoked till he was fifty. He stopped when his younger brother had dropped dead of a heart attack. Dee had done his first ever cholesterol test and discovered the familial cholesterol problem. Since then he saw her regularly and tried as hard as a French chef running his own restaurant could to look after himself. She took his arm and helped him into the first surgery, pulled out the couch from the wall, to make for easier access if he went into cardiac arrest, and helped him up. The defibrillator they’d bought last year was tested monthly but it was many years since Dee had managed an arrest. Her own heart was pounding in her chest but she kept her voice and manner calm.

  A noise from reception meant someone else had arrived.

  ‘Hello, who’s that? Can you come in here?’ Dee called. ‘Bring an aspirin, a glass of water and the ECG trolley.’

  ‘Okay.’ It was Janelle, good—she was not likely to show it if she panicked.