Death Delights, page 35
part #1 of Jack McCain Series
As the number rang out, I noticed that our father was looking around, awkward and ill at ease. ‘Take him home, Charlie,’ I said, putting down the phone and together with Charlie, I helped him out of the chair he was sitting in.
‘Don’t forget your tobacco,’ I said, picking it up and shoving it in his pocket. He turned to me as if he were about to say something and I could see there were tears in his eyes. We stood in silence together for a moment and then I patted his arm. I noticed the little folder of paper matches lying near the ash-filled saucer. I picked them up, too.
‘Don’t forget your matches,’ I said to him.
When they had gone, I tidied away a few of the last things left out on the sideboard and there it was, the small, folded square of paper. Iona’s prayer. I picked it up and read it. As I read it my mood changed I became angrier and angrier. Although she wasn’t the murderer she was guilty as hell. Complicity is horrible. I slipped the prayer into my wallet and was putting it back into my pocket when my mobile rang and it was Bob. I prayed that it was about Greg, and that he’d been found safe and sound.
‘No,’ he said gently, ‘it’s not about your son.’
My heart rate went down and I listened to what he was saying. ‘We’ve turned up something. A bloodstained Tyvek suit.’ I pulled my mind away from my son and tried to make sense of what Bob was telling me.
‘Where does that fit in?’ I asked.
‘In a bin at Centennial Park actually,’ said Bob. ‘It’s on its way to Jane right now.’
The disposable Tyvek spacesuits that we wear in the labs are used for lots of different purposes. A light polyester one-piece overall, designed to fit all shapes and sizes, the spacesuits are often worn by crime scene examiners these days, where they serve to protect the investigator against contamination from his surroundings. I remembered the tall figure with the long blonde hair who had stepped out of the car as I waited near the Coogee fishermen’s club.
‘Do you remember when “Rosie” stepped out of the car at Coogee?’ I said to Bob. ‘Wearing the trademark red jacket and what had looked like floppy white trousers?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘A spacesuit. Then it can be dumped. Most of the blood would fall on the killer’s lower body. This one will have Carmody all over it.’
‘And maybe some of “Rosie”, too,’ I said.
•
On the drive to Annandale, a few things started falling into place. The shopping I’d seen Iona doing, the weird mix of vegetarian and meat, health foods and sugary biscuits. My unconscious mind had tried to present this observation to me on a couple of occasions, and I now understood why the eggs in the frypan had stirred something in my mind. Eggs implied bacon, and bacon was one of the things I’d noticed in her shopping trolley the day I contrived our chance encounter. Iona had been shopping for two people. Ring me, Michael had written on the post-it note and stuck it to the front door of her house. What could I conjecture from that? That she already knew his phone number indicated intimacy. But he didn’t have a key to her place. Or maybe he did, and had left the note on the way out after realising she wasn’t around. Was the library, which at first I’d thought to be the secret flesh-eating retreat of a spurious vegetarian, really the larder of another person altogether? Michael the meat-eater. The phrase kept playing through my mind.
Why does someone do the shopping for another person, I was asking myself as I slammed the car door shut and started to walk up the overgrown driveway, lifting rose canes out of my way. Usually, because they’re married to them, I told myself, but in this case, Iona’s ex-husband was in West Africa. A person is shopped for because they can’t do it themselves, because of illness, incompetence or some other problem.
But then I recalled the strong sense I’d had of decay when I’d first stood in front of the house. Though I hadn’t grasped the connection at the time, Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ had come into my head—a tale of madness, involving a brother and sister and their decrepit mansion. With my understandable over-sensitivity concerning relationships between brothers and sisters, I’d been right on the money with this one. I knew I’d have to tell Charlie that, and maybe he’d make a footnote somewhere on his next journal publication, but I’d been distracted away from the truth I’d unconsciously picked up on day one. Iona had a brother, Julian, the young man in the photograph.
As I stepped onto the chequerboard tiles of the veranda, I found that the front door was exactly as I’d left it the previous day, closed but not locked. I opened it cautiously and stepped inside. I tried to sense whether there was anyone else here, but the dimness was ambiguous and the slight sounds I could hear might have been the house cooling at the end of a hot day. I crept up the hallway, pulling a pair of disposable gloves out of my pocket, putting them on, treading carefully with silent footfall, creeping through the deserted rooms, heavy with the scent of cedar and smell of damp. In the front parlour, where I’d eaten cucumber sandwiches, I saw that the newspaper with my startled face was still lying on the table, next to a take-away food container. And there was something else. I walked to the table and picked up an envelope which was addressed to Iona and underlined with a flourish. I didn’t have to send this one to Sarah. Even I could see it was the same expensive linen-based paper, the same French sepia ink and the same hand that had written the ‘Rosie letters’. The investigator in me wanted to seal it up immediately; the man wanted to rip it open. I stood there a moment until the professional won the day: I couldn’t afford any more complications. I slipped the stiff envelope into my pocket. Then I tiptoed up the staircase, step by step, hardly looking at the blue monkey painting, straining my attention ahead, trying to pick up the slightest movement in the air that would convey another presence. At the top of the landing I paused, before creeping to Iona’s bedroom and softly pushing the door open.
It was exactly as I’d remembered it, the long curtains, now dark as evening closed in, the portrait in the oval frame, the bed where we’d made love. I withdrew and made my way down the hallway, past the other two bedrooms until I came to the door with the crystal knob. I couldn’t help thinking of Bluebeard’s castle and I prayed that Bluebeard wasn’t home and armed with a knife, waiting for me. Slowly and cautiously, I opened it and stood a second, waiting. I saw the grille door behind was also slightly ajar. It made a sound as I pushed it, and I froze, waiting, too scared to move until I was certain I was quite alone. When I felt sure there was no one else in the place, I crept forward, into the library.
The big old texts seemed darker and heavier now, crammed into their shelves, thickening the atmosphere of the library. The long table that ran down the centre was covered in dust, except for one large hand print at the far end. I walked over to it and without touching it, placed my own hand over it. It revealed a hand a good deal bigger than mine. Iona Seymour was a strong tall woman. Julian could be of considerable size now. Suddenly spooked, I swung around, but there was nothing behind me, just the two doors opening out onto the dark corridor and the aged books lining the walls on each side of me. I went over to the small cave-like annexe that housed the narrow bed and the fridge, noticing the toiletries on top, a toothbrush and paste, some soap in a container. With the toe of my shoe hooked under the bottom of the door, I opened the fridge. The packets were undisturbed, sitting together as before, frosty red meat under stretched plastic wrap. I squatted and opened the horizontal door of the small freezer compartment.
It was almost filled up by four plastic take-away food trays. I juggled one out. It bore a label with the date 14.11.99 on its lid. There it was again, the sickening, impossible connection to my sister Rosie’s birthday and the day Warren Gumley had died. A shiver went right through me, despite the warm summer night. I pulled out the one next to it, dated 17.11.99. Nesbitt’s death day. I pulled out the other two containers. Only one of them was dated, and it was the date of the Centennial Park murder. I realised that there they all were, Gumley, Nesbitt, and Carmody, yet Kapit’s relics had no date on them. I lay the containers on the floor in front of me. My blood ran cold and it wasn’t because of the slight chill falling from the small fridge. That fourth container was supposed to be me and I shuddered as I picked it up. I couldn’t readily discern what was inside it, because of the frosted nature of the plastic, but I didn’t have to open it to know what it contained.
I rang Bob and told him where I was.
‘I was just about to ring you,’ Bob said. And what he went on to tell me momentarily distracted me from the plastic containers. ‘A woman called Pam Dobronski phoned someone she knows here, and there’s a message for you to call her.’
Pam, I thought, as I pulled out my notepad. Maybe she does know something about Greg. A thrill of hope quickened inside me and I remembered the way Jass had opened her eyes to look straight past me and smile, and how the soft name had wafted from her mouth like the barest breeze.
‘I’ll call her straightaway,’ I told him. Greg, I told my son, I’m right on after you, I promise.
I came back to the matter in hand. ‘Bob,’ I said, ‘send some people to search and secure 293 Reiby Street, Annandale. Julian Bower, brother of Iona Seymour, née Bower, and son of the Reverend Bower, past incumbent of the Anglican rectory at Springbrook, is someone you must pull in if you can find him. Julian Bower would be a couple of years older than me,’ I told Bob. ‘His year of birth should be around the late ’fifties.’ And I told him how I was thinking. ‘I have a letter here in the “Rosie” handwriting addressed to his sister.’
‘And Jane’s got a DNA result.’
‘She faxed me a copy, too.’
‘So we know now that the mutilator murderer is a male,’ said Bob.
I stared at the four plastic containers lying on the floor in front of the fridge with Bob’s words in my ear. Though they’d frosted up even more since being removed from their freezing environment, I could just discern the darker shapes within. I switched the phone to my left hand and prised the lid of the first one open with my right. A slight sound from somewhere startled me and I turned round again, looking out and down the corridor behind me. ‘Hold on, Bob,’ I said. I walked to the grille door and gently closed it, looking down the hall. There was nothing there. The closed grille gate, even without the key, offered some sort of delaying device between me and anyone who might suddenly arrive. I replaced the lid, but not before I’d noted the shrivelled worm of dried meat and two round organs that lay frozen to the bottom of the container. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘he’s male. And I’ve just found his trophy room.’
Sixteen
I replaced the containers exactly as I’d found them and closed the door of the freezer. I palmed the toothbrush into my pocket and left the library. Despite the late sunlight lying on the floors, it was hard not to get spooked as I made my way down the stairs, past the monkey painting and into the hallway outside the parlour. It didn’t give me a comfortable feeling to see the empty plastic take-away container sitting right next to my photograph on the table and I felt very glad that soon this place would be bustling with police activity. I hurried back to my car, aware that my fingertips were icy cold. Even the killer’s hideous handiwork couldn’t eclipse the fear in my mind for the safety of my son.
I couriered the toothbrush to Jane, asking her to fax the result to Florence at the Institute in Canberra. She said she would rush it through for me. A little while later found me at the brothel in Albion Street and after I’d convinced the lass in leopardskin that there was really nothing she could do for me, Pam Dobronski came into the room. ‘You’re a helluva lucky fellow,’ she said, as she plonked herself down in a chair opposite me. ‘I hate cops. But I got thinking after you left. If my Brettie hadn’t got in with the wrong lot, he might’ve had a chance and not be serving seven years now. But his mongrel bastard of a father dragged him down.’ She turned and yelled out the door. ‘Vicky? Bring in a couple of stubbies, will ya, darl?’
I shook my head. ‘Not for me.’
Mrs Dobronski looked at me as if I had a disease as the leopardskin stepped in with two small bottles of beer. ‘Can’t trust a man who doesn’t drink,’ she said.
I remembered a time when I’d thought exactly the same.
‘So,’ I said, ‘what can you tell me, Pam?’
‘Seeing as how he’s dead now,’ she said, ‘he can’t do anything about it.’
‘About what?’
‘Terrible way to die, but,’ she leered. ‘Wouldn’t do much for your sex life.’ Pam found her remark very funny. ‘So there’s no damage done if I tell you that John Kapit was the bloke I collected the rent for, for that unlicensed place—the House of Bondage.’
Bob met me in a squad car and we drove to the House of Bondage, 42 Marian Street, speeding through the evening traffic. I was glad he was driving because my mouth was dry with fear of what I might find, or what I mightn’t find, and my hands were trembling even though I had them gripped together.
As I walked in a woman, naked except for garter belt and boots and armed with a huge green dildo, screamed at me, but Bob pushed past with his warrant and we were inside without further opposition. We raced past the bathroom and the memory of little Renee haunted me so that I almost saw her jumping up off the toilet with her black lace pants around her ankles. Now she was dead, and I feared for my son. ‘There’s a real dungeon here,’ she’d said, ‘the original cellar… I could chain you up down there and do what I liked with you. No one would hear you.’ I repeated her words to Bob and we found the staircase and pounded down to the lower level. We kicked open another bathroom, a bedroom and at the end of the small hallway, behind the stairs, we came up against a locked door. I bashed at it with everything I had. Bob joined me and together we kicked and kicked until the hinges gave with a wrench.
‘Greg?’ I called into the darkness. The slice of light from Bob’s torch cut through the musty air to the sandstone wall where manacles and chains lay in a heap on the earthen ground to reveal my son crouched blinking in a corner. Near him was the black and yellow gym bag containing two hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars that I’d left on a dusty table in a derelict house in Newtown.
‘Dad?’ His voice was croaky and I ran to him, trying to pull the manacles off with my bare fingers. I vowed to myself I would never scold him about his crop circles again. I could hear Bob upstairs roaring for keys as I took my shivering son in my arms.
‘It’s okay,’ I whispered as he sobbed against me. ‘It’s okay. It’s all over. I’m here.’
I took Greg to Genevieve’s and left them together. Then I gave Bob a lift back to work on my way to the hospital. I don’t know what mother and son were talking about, but I wouldn’t have liked to be Genevieve, I was thinking. Kapit had tricked Greg into his car by saying that his mother was in hospital and he would drive him straight to her. In my pocket was the sealed envelope I’d taken from the table at Iona’s place and in the boot was the accounts book and the gym bag stacked with money.
‘I almost feel sorry for Genevieve,’ I said to Bob. The traffic was horrendous and every light seemed to be waiting to turn red at our approach but I felt incredibly light. I couldn’t imagine ever having a problem again. I wanted to laugh, except when I thought about Jass, there was nothing to laugh about.
‘You’re going to have to start what the Americans call “dating” again,’ said Bob, glancing at me. To shut him up, I reminded him of his own experience with a singles advertisement, where the only woman who’d sounded half-interesting had turned out to be his ex-wife, Sheila. As we waited at another red light my friend turned to me again.
‘Jack, what the hell are you going to do about the money?’
I considered as I took off. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do what you suggested. Put it away. Sit tight. Think it over.’
I was aware of Bob staring at me and glanced over at him. He was grinning like an idiot.
‘I don’t think you realise what a lucky bastard you are,’ he said.
Now I was grinning as well, so hard I could barely talk. ‘I do, I do,’ I said. ‘Two hundred grand plus, four frozen dicks and the return of my son. All in one day. That’s what I call good policing.’
I didn’t think it could get any better until the hospital called.
•
After I’d dropped Bob off, I drove to St Vincent’s. I didn’t know how I was feeling. Confused, joyful, anxious, apprehensive. I found it hard to wait for the lift and instead raced up the stairs. When I got to the room, I saw that a young doctor and the nurse I’d spoken with before were both with my daughter. Jacinta’s face was lit by the brilliance of her eyes as she turned to smile at me.
‘Dad?’ she whispered, and I was there, half-sitting, half-kneeling on the bed beside her, her hand in mine.
‘Jass,’ I said, ‘you’ve come back.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, still with the same slight smile, ‘I’ve come back.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Some other place. Places.’ She closed her eyes and shivered. The doctor went to the chart at the foot of the bed, made her annotation and said goodnight. ‘Some of them weren’t good places,’ Jacinta whispered. I grabbed her and hugged her, feeling the bones of her ribs and shoulders. She was painfully thin but there was colour in her face and life in her eyes and I thought I’d start crying. I wasn’t sure whether I could trust myself to speak for a moment.
