Bloodborn (22 page)

Anya left Dan a message telling him she
was visiting his father that afternoon. She arrived at the nursing home with a bunch of flowers and a tin of store-bought shortbread. If she knew how, she would have baked them for the older gentleman.

William Brody sat in a wheelchair next to his bed, facing side on to the door. He appeared to be listening to The “Conversation Show,” in which authors were interviewed about their fascinating lives and books.

Anya had just been listening in her car and was enthralled by the story of a doctor who had dedicated her life to operating on victims of militia rape in Africa. The Australian-born surgeon spent ten hours a day repairing extensive gynecological injuries. She described systematic sexual attacks that intentionally mutilated whole villages of women. Those who survived suffered shocking long-term injuries, which often rendered them incontinent of urine and feces and no longer able to have children.

She thought again about Giverny Hart’s attack and the support she had been given by the unit, counselors and her loving parents. That was more than any of these African victims received. Sophie had no womb, and was now suffering bowel complications, all due to the initial rape and attack.

Sexual violence against women seemed, sadly, to be universal.

In the villages, the rape victims’ own families refused to have the women back home. Not only had they been defiled, but they were no longer socially acceptable due to the incontinence. The surgeon had bought a special van to take these women to receive medical care. No bus company or taxi driver would even carry them.

The announcer was declaring, “You don’t just perform surgical miracles, you restore lives with no local financial, political or social support. And all the while you risk being attacked yourself for the work you do.”

Judging by the intensity on Mr. Brody’s face, he felt the same admiration as Anya did for that doctor.

As a phone number was given for donations, he turned his head and noticed his visitor. His eyes brightened when he recognized her.

“I was just listening to that too. What an incredible woman.”

William Brody nodded. He still radiated dignity, despite being in a dressing-gown and slippers. His good hand flattened what little hair he had on his head.

She placed the flowers next to her. Anya hoped they could have a conversation this time, so pulled out an A4 sized whiteboard with marker and eraser attached. Just like the ones Ben’s class used at school.

The show was finishing and Anya sat on the made bed before she spoke.

“It’s hard to imagine how people can be so depraved,” she said.

He gestured for the whiteboard and began to write.

MONEY
+
POWER.

“True. Together they often incite corruption. But the sort of depravity that leads to groups of men raping and maiming women for economics…” She shook her head.

“Would you like a biscuit,” she asked, and opened the lid of the tin, offering the scribe a piece of shortbread. He didn’t need encouragement. The pen dropped to his lap and he held the piece of shortbread to his nose, closing his eyes as if smelling an expensive cigar. Instead of chewing it, he seemed to roll it around in his mouth, making it last as long as possible.

She realized that even the simple pleasure of eating what he wanted when he wanted it was no longer in his control.

“I know the key to your heart.”

His cheeks glowed and he reached over to squeeze Anya’s hand. He then collected the pen from his lap and wrote again.

HOW IS DAN?

“Assume he’s working hard, haven’t seen him much.”

The conversation stalled when a nurse entered the room and fussed over the flowers. She scurried off to find a vase and disappeared as quickly as she had appeared.

Anya noticed a chess set on his bedside cabinet. “Do you play?”

As with the shortbread, his eyes told her he didn’t have to be asked twice.

She wheeled over the bedside table and began to set up the pieces. The senior Brody might be more comfortable with the distraction of a game. She knew she would be.

YOU BELIEVE ABOUT ECONOMICS?

Anya looked across the table. This man’s physical disabilities belied his brain function. The whiteboard was already a hit.

“Women are the ones who tend the fields, bring back food and water. By attacking or killing them, there’s no one left to do the job, so the militia cuts off the villagers’ food and source of income—they starve them out.”

INDEFENSIBLE.

“That’s not what a defense lawyer is supposed to say.” Dan Brody had mentioned that his father had chosen a career in legal aid. His son had opted for the prestige and remuneration of private practice.

RETIRED. NO MORE MITIGATION.

William rested the pen on the board and began the game by moving a pawn. Anya responded and they settled down to a series of safe moves.

“Do you mind if I ask you about what happened when Therese’s first baby was born? We need to know whether or not she took a breath.”

The elder gentleman moved another chess piece before writing,
STILLBORN. MIDWIFE TRIED. I TRIED. NO BREATH OR HEARTBEAT.

“You were there with Therese. That must have been awful to go through. Were her parents in any way supportive?”

He shook his head.

DISOWNED HER.

“That must have been so difficult. Did Therese suffer in the labor?”

SO MUCH PAIN. SO QUICK. NO TIME FOR HOSPITAL. DID WHAT WE COULD. 1 BRAVE LADY.

Anya captured one of William’s knights.

“I’m assuming that nobody else but the midwife knew about the baby, or there would have been questions.”

FEW KNEW. WE TOLD THEM WE LOST THE BABY. STILLBORNS NEVER REGISTERED.

Now the story made sense. Therese had become pregnant and hidden herself away, after being disowned by her family. It was a different time, with no acknowledgment of loss from miscarriage or stillbirth. People carried on as if nothing had happened.

GOOD WOMAN. NOT HER FAULT. FATHER MADE HER GO OUT WITH HIM. 1 TIME.

They played chess for a few more minutes before Anya spoke again.

“You said before that the father was still alive but he didn’t know about the baby.”

THERESE MADE ME PROMISE.

Dan had mentioned that his maternal grandfather had been a judge. So the baby’s father had known the family, and presumably had social status on par with theirs.

It couldn’t have been easy. “You must have really loved her to stand by a pregnancy to another man and take any flak for a shotgun wedding.” She wondered if William had been her choice or her only option.

I ALWAYS LOVED HER. NO REGRETS.

“Did you know the man responsible?”

MONEY
+
POWER.

“Okay, anything you didn’t like about him?” she joked, moving a castle. “Check.”

ONE-EYED.

“There are a lot of people who are biased and opinionated.” She studied his face and then realized what he meant.

Instead of counterattacking on the board, her opponent took a while to write.

INDEFENSIBLE.

Anya stared into the man’s face, trying to read him. He lowered his head, avoiding her gaze, and scrawled over the word, obliterating it with black pen.

Anya remembered him scribbling over another word when she’d visited him before. Slowly, things were falling into place. She grabbed his hand to make him stop and felt the spasm in his fist.

Suddenly it made sense. The secrecy, the protective husband.

She locked eyes with the old man. “Did this man rape Therese that night?”

The silence answered her question. Her mother always said that the words people refused to speak said more about them than the ones they actually spoke.

Therese Brody had not been responsible for the pregnancy. The man her father had forced her to go out with had raped her on their one outing. As a result, she had been ostracized and left without support. Apart from a young man who loved her unconditionally.

William Brody was one of the most honorable men she had ever met.

The man who raped his wife had got away with it and continued to live without prosecution. Anya knew they could confirm his identity from the fetal DNA, but only if they knew who they were looking for.

“Why did you place the baby in the box, in your home?”

He hesitated, then turned back to the whiteboard.

CHARLOTTE ANNE BRODY.

OURS.

THERESE WOULD NOT LET HER BE BURIED IN GARDEN.

Anya understood. If they’d gone to the hospital, a stillborn child would have been put into either a mass unmarked grave, or thrown out with hospital waste. It was as if the system wanted mothers to forget these children. And there wouldn’t have been counseling for the mother either.

NO CATHOLIC BURIAL THOSE DAYS.

She nodded. If Charlotte had not been baptized, the Church would have refused to bury her. So much for compassion and valuing life. It must have been so painful for Therese—having been raped, she was rejected by her family for shaming them with a premarital pregnancy, then delivered her daughter, whom she’d grown to love, stillborn. No wonder she kept the baby’s remains close by.

It was the only way for her to grieve and gain closure.

The man who loved her had kept the secret, until now.

William handed back the pen. The game and the discussion were finished.

But not for Anya. She had to know. Therese’s parents’ ambitious marriage plans for their daughter, the baby’s tumor behind the eye, William striking out the word “Judge” before. “Was the man who raped Therese Judge Philip Pascoe?”

William’s hand began to spasm, and he arched his neck in distress.

“I’m sorry. I guessed. Charlotte had a retinoblastoma and was so unlucky to have died that early. It’s a rare form of tumor, often inherited and associated with unusual cancers if sufferers are lucky enough to survive into adulthood.

“Pascoe lost an eye as a child and has had a rare form of bone cancer recently. It all adds up. His age fits, the ruthless ambition for the bench, his attitudes to women. Dan said you disliked each other from years ago.”

Anya wondered how she would explain it to Dan. Not only had his mother been raped, she had delivered a stillborn child conceived as a result. The man who raped Therese was still alive and had yet to answer for it. Money and power, William said.

Suddenly she realized she had nothing to explain. Dan had been standing in the doorway all along.

Anya chased Dan to his car, refusing to
be left behind. She had to make him see reason before he did something foolish so she climbed in the passenger seat. Despite all her efforts he didn’t speak on the way. There could only be one place they were headed.

Outside the white 1920s Art-deco home, Anya grabbed Dan by the arm. “Think what you’re doing. If you launch in there and do something stupid, you’ll lose everything. He’ll make sure you never practice law again. You’ll be arrested. And for what?”

Dan pulled his arm free, left the car and strode up the pathway to the front door.

“Hurting him isn’t going to bring your mother back, or change what he did to her. Instead, it’ll just destroy your father.”

The lawyer stopped but didn’t turn around. “I need to face him and tell him that I know he raped Mum.”

Two more steps and he was on the doorstep, ringing the bell.

Anya caught up, short of breath, as a woman wearing dark glasses opened the door. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Mrs. Pascoe, my name is Brody. I work with your husband.”

“He’s in the study, please come in.”

She was dressed in a matching blue knit top and pencil skirt, and camel heels, but didn’t appear to be blind, despite the glasses. “I’ll get Philip, please make yourself comfortable.”

Dan paced the room, which overlooked the harbor. Glass from ceiling to floor highlighted one of the most expensive views in the city. Anya moved between him and the foyer, from where she assumed the judge would enter.

He appeared a few minutes later, wearing a business shirt and cardigan with suit pants.

“I don’t need to tell you, Brody, that this visit is totally inappropriate. I could report you to the Law Society and Bar Association for this. And your little doctor friend will be in trouble as well.”

“It has nothing to do with the trial, this is personal,” Dan announced. “It’s about you and my mother.”

Pascoe scoffed. “I barely knew the girl.”

“Then you wouldn’t object to a DNA test.”

The judge smiled. “You’re deluded if you think I’m your father. That’s just wishful thinking. For a while I thought you were different, but you’re a lot like your old man. He never had the guts to make it on his own. So he spent his life sheltering behind legal aid.”

Mrs. Pascoe returned with a tray of canapés and wineglasses and placed them on a side table. “There’s red and white wine or, if you prefer, spirits are in the cabinet.”

Dan seemed unperturbed by the comment about his father. “She had a baby, a little girl, in 1962. The child had a tumor at the back of the eye.”

“Philip, what’s he talking about?” The woman’s voice rose in pitch.

The judge remained standing, but by the way he swayed it was as though the bones in his one good leg were beginning to melt.

Anya explained, hoping to keep Brody calm in the process. “The child had a rare type of inherited tumor called a retinoblastoma.”

Mrs. Pascoe lowered herself into a chair.

“Philip had one as a child, it was a miracle he survived.” She leaned over and touched a faded color photo of a baby propped up against pillows. “Our Erin wasn’t so lucky. The first tumor was diagnosed at three months. Within two weeks there was one in her other eye. The day she turned four months we lost her.” She tugged on her skirt and smoothed it over her lap. “You don’t need to tell me how rare retinoblastomas are. Erin inherited the gene,” her tone turned from sad to bitter, “from her father.”

Pascoe responded, matter-of-fact. “Woman, stop carrying on. I was unaware of the inheritance until after you had the child.” Up close and without his glasses on, the artificial eye was more obvious. When he spoke, it lagged behind, out of sync with the left eye.

Anya turned to his wife. The dark glasses obviously didn’t obscure her vision, and her foundation was thicker than she’d expect, even though the judge’s wife was clearly used to entertaining at a moment’s notice, judging by the way she automatically presented canapés and drinks.

“We didn’t have any more children. I couldn’t go through that again, or put another poor baby through the suffering.”

Dan seemed almost deflated, as if his anger had dissolved into compassion for Pascoe’s wife. He moved to the lounge chair beside her.

“We believe that your husband fathered a baby with my mother. She was stillborn, from the same tumor.”

“That is pure nonsense,” the judge declared, as if he were in control of everyone present. “This is a malignant effort to extort me during a trial. I’ll have your balls on a platter before this night ends.” He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Then just agree to the DNA test and it’ll be settled,” his wife snipped.

He abruptly ended the call.

Mrs. Pascoe turned to Dan. “Who was your mother?”

“Therese Brody, well, she was Therese Robilliard back then.”

“We used to play tennis when we were in our teens. Then she went away and when she came back she was married to William, her mixed doubles partner. There were rumors, of course, about her being ‘in trouble,’ as we used to say, but they didn’t have a child for a few more years. I remember because she was lovely. Unlike the others in the Catholic club, Therese never had a bad word about anyone.”

“What do you want, Brody? Let’s lay it on the table, then you can get out.”

Anya couldn’t believe he could be so dismissive of a child he had just found out was his. He assumed Dan wanted money and that would make him go away, and he could pretend that none of this had happened.

She couldn’t hold her tongue. “Judge, we came here to—”

“Anya, wait. Let’s see what he has to say.”

The judge hobbled over to a desk bureau and removed a checkbook. “How much do you want?”

“How much are you offering?” Dan asked.

Anya felt nauseated. How could Dan accept money from a man who had raped his mother? At this moment she realized how little she knew him. She stood to leave.

“Sit, Anya.” He sounded like the judge. “We’re not finished yet.”

“You may not be—”

“So your little man-hating friend wants to be paid off as well.”

“Before you sign anything,” Dan said, “how did you come to get my mother pregnant?”

“How the hell do you think? It was years ago, and before contraception. We were young. I barely even remember. In our day we all sowed our oats. From what I hear, you’re rather an expert at that yourself. Do you remember every detail of every woman you’ve ever slept with? At least I recall your mother’s name.”

It sounded as if Therese was privileged to have him remember that much. The arrogance of the man was overwhelming.

“Plenty of girls back then would have given their all to catch someone with money from a good family. And many did.”

The man spoke with no deference to his wife, whom he seemed to forget was in the room. She kept unnervingly silent.

“Did you go out often? I gather your family knew my grandfather, Judge Eugene Robilliard.”

“That’s right. My parents thought it could help my career if I got in with the judge, so I agreed to take your mother out. She used to have your no-hoper father salivating after her, and your grandfather wanted me to break them up.”

“Seems you failed.”

Anya tried to read Dan. One minute she thought he would take a bribe, now she wasn’t so sure.

“You claim I got her pregnant, but we only went out once. The odds aren’t too convincing. And retinoblastoma can occur sporadically.”

“With respect, Mr. Pascoe, may I ask what my mother was like? I always thought she was shy and reserved.”

Pascoe scoffed. “The quiet Catholic ones were always the biggest surprise.”

Dan sat still. Anya suspected he would launch at the judge at any second.

“Go on, I mean, did she make the first move?” Dan smirked. “I must have got my roving eye from somewhere.”

Mrs. Pascoe shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.

Pascoe’s glass eye wandered as he seemed to be remembering. “If you want to know, we had sex in the car and she wanted to go straight home afterward.”

The judge’s wife closed her eyes and covered her face with one hand. “Oh my God, Philip, what did you do?”

The veins in Dan’s neck and forehead were bulging.

Seemingly oblivious, the self-absorbed judge shrugged. “She was dull so I didn’t bother calling her again. The first I’ve heard since is you turning up alleging I fathered her bastard child.”

“You son of a bitch, you raped my mother.” Before Anya could stop him, Dan crossed the floor and punched Pascoe to the floor.

The older man lay moaning, holding his jaw. “That’s assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm. And you were fool enough to do it in front of a witness.”

Anya bent down to help the judge up, who pushed her hand away. What she saw on his face was sheer hatred. She couldn’t help Brody now, he’d gone too far. God, why did he have to hit the judge?

Anya looked up to see Dan panting, as though he were waiting for Pascoe to get up so he could hit him again.

“Get off the floor, Philip, you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Penny? You saw him come at me. Unprovoked. A man with one eye, he could have blinded me with one hit. Call the police. Right now!”

“Philip, I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I saw was you topple over. That prosthesis can be tricky to balance on.”

“Don’t do this, Penny. You’ll regret it.”

The mouse-like woman stood over her husband. “No more than I regret marrying you. You are a bully, no more, no less. Be man enough to admit that you raped Therese.”

Anya stared at Dan in disbelief.

“I’m not admitting anything. His mother didn’t complain at the time.”

Mrs. Pascoe held Dan’s wrist.

“This is the final straw. I’m leaving you.”

“I forbid you to go anywhere!” he bellowed. “They can’t prove anything. It’s a bluff. Get back here now and help me get up.”

She walked, with a new air of confidence, over to the bureau drawer and removed a notepad. “This is my number, Mr. Brody, should you need me to give a statement. I’m sorry about your mother, I really am.”

Anya moved over and had to know. “Why are you doing this?”

“I can’t live like this any more.” Mrs. Pascoe removed the sunglasses and the reason became obvious. She had a blackened eye.

“It’s no consolation, but your mother wasn’t the only one he’s hurt over the years.”

The judge struggled to his feet and Anya stood between him and his wife in case he lashed out. From the way Mrs. Pascoe positioned herself next to Dan, she feared the same.

“You are all going to regret this,” he yelled.

Without warning, a barrage of explosions shattered the large window and sent glass and bodies flying.