‘Nice bit of synchronicity,’ he said. ‘It happens.’ He turned his head away for a few moments, busying himself with finishing his drink. When he turned my way again, I was surprised to see that he was gazing intently into my eyes.
‘A body in uniform motion,’ he said, ‘will remain in uniform motion until it is acted upon by a force.’
I wondered why he was quoting the first law of motion at me and asked him. My brother was silent a while.
‘What’s it going to take to make you see—’ he finally started to say but I quickly interrupted him.
‘If you’re going to give me advice about how I should be running my life,’ I said, ‘or tell me that I should see a counsellor or something like that, just don’t.’
I could feel things stirring in my guts, old, heartbroken things, and I wanted to be out of there. Charlie shrugged, put his cup down and, seeing that I was already walking towards the door, he came with me. I felt his arm gently around my shoulder.
‘
Okay,’ he said, ‘It was just a suggestion.’ I dismissed it with an impatient wave. ‘And just be aware that you’ve ended up living at the back of a big house now, just like him.’
There was nothing I could say to this so I thanked him and hurried to my car.
‘Hey!’ I heard Charlie calling out after me as I climbed in. I stopped and turned, wondering what he wanted. As soon as I saw him, my heart sank. He was hurrying over, carrying the carton that I’d seen by the door. Our mother’s stuff. ‘Don’t forget this.’
‘Charlie, I don’t need another carton of paper.’ Especially this one, I thought.
‘You’re the oldest. You must.’ He was stowing it on the back seat as he spoke. ‘Besides,’ he added, slamming the door, ‘you’ve got to do something.’ He came round and stood at my window. ‘Can’t you see what you’re doing? You’re hurting everyone around you. I’ve never been a fan of Genevieve, but I’ve got to tell you I don’t blame her for having an affair. And I see why Jacinta had to run away. And it wasn’t just because her mother’s impossible either.’ I stood there, stunned by what he was saying. ‘Either let go of Rosie absolutely—do something…I don’t know…bury a photograph or something. Finish it. Say goodbye and walk away—
or
devote your life to tracking the truth. Go back over the records. Reopen the case. Do it! Because the way you’re living now is like you’re already a ghost, too. Is that how you want to live?’
As I drove away I realised Charlie was the second person in a matter of days to tell me that I had to ‘do something’ about the past. I wanted to yell at him, and at Genevieve, too: ‘What is this something I’m supposed to do—dig up the past and all its anguish? Reopen old wounds? Will it change the fact that our mother was a crazy alcoholic? That our father was the way he was? Can it change the events of that night in November ’75 when Rosie disappeared? Will it bring back Jacinta? I took a corner too fast and realised I had to concentrate. I came up through the gears and settled into driving home. The past is a country I had no desire to revisit. And yet, somehow I understood what my brother was telling me. There’s an old saying a police sergeant once used with us: ‘Piss, or get off the pot.’ Charlie was right. One way or another, I had to make a decision about Rosie—either reopen the case and throw myself into it one hundred per cent, or forever let her go.
The drive south to Canberra next day gave me plenty of thinking time. When I got to Forensic Services, I gave the bagged anonymous letter to Sarah Witticombe, our in-house document examiner. Nothing misses Sarah’s clear eyes.
‘I’ll do a full report for you,’ she said, standing near the door of her bright examination room, her white coat spotless, her skin polished. ‘I can tell you what sort of paper it was written on, what sort of laser jet printer printed it, where the envelope came from.’ She turned the letter over carefully in her gloved fingers. ‘I can’t tell from looking if it’s a “sticky” or a “licky” stamp, but we might get some saliva from that. Looks like a press-seal envelope.’ She sounded dejected. ‘But we still might get something trapped in the adhesive.’
I thanked her and walked down the hall, confident that soon I’d know where it had been posted, and that Sarah would pass it on to be tested for any DNA material she might find. Eventually she would tell me every possible fact about that letter and its envelope. Except what I really wanted to know: the name of the person who wrote it. Until I had the culprit and we could say ‘perfect match’, which we never do anyway, all I could do would be to file her report.
•
In the afternoon I drove over to Alix’s townhouse, pressing the doorbell, taking in the familiar scents of
eucalyptus nicholii
and its spicy fragrance, hearing the bees in the bottlebrush. When the door opened, I was about to say something flirtatious until I saw the stranger behind the mesh screen. ‘I’m a friend of—’ I began, but was rudely interrupted.
‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘Alix deserves better than that.’ A plump young woman with her hair wrapped up in a towel and a brilliant silky robe tightly held together scowled at me.
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, puzzled at her animosity. ‘I’ve been trying to ring but there’s been no answer.’
‘And there won’t be,’ said the young woman, wrapping her dressing gown tighter around herself. I smelled soap, powder and perfume. ‘She’s had to move in with someone else. She couldn’t keep up with the rent here because she lost her job.’ She scowled harder at me as if somehow I’d sacked the girl myself.
‘Do you have her new address?’ I asked.
She didn’t move. I could see her that she was thinking overtime, trying to decide what to do. Finally she disappeared out of sight, returning with a piece of paper. The scowl was still there, too. ‘Here’s the phone number,’ she said. ‘I suppose you can have that.’
‘We are…’ I started to say then changed it to, ‘We were quite close friends. I’ve lost touch with her because I’ve moved, too.’
The young woman’s scowl eased a little. ‘I thought you were just being a typical male.’
‘And what’s that?’ I couldn’t resist asking.
Without another word, she opened the screen door just enough to give me the piece of paper in her hand. Inside the house, the phone rang. The scowler glared at me again then closed both doors vigorously. As soon as I was in the car I tried the number. It rang out.
•
Friday morning found me back in North Sydney in the enclosed area surrounding FM Radio 2LSM at about ten to eleven, listening to Iona Seymour’s program. I was parked in an area about the size of two tennis courts, shaded by a couple of big Moreton Bay figs. To me, what Iona Seymour was playing sounded a bit like merry-go-round music, punctuated as it was by the high-pitched song of the fig birds nearby. But every now and then, the harpsichord would fade out and the burgundy voice would point up something of interest before allowing the music to demonstrate.
One of the things I enjoy doing is matching people to vehicles and once her program was finished, I watched the people in the carpark coming and going, getting out of their cars, or getting into them. There was always the chance that she’d stay on and do some work at the station, but I had nothing to race back to. Nesbitt and Gumley were dead and there was nothing doing on Frank Carmody until his release. I surveyed the cars once again, trying to match the voice with the means of transport. I tossed out the black Saab, two BMWs, several Japanese cars, a large utility and a sprinkling of Commodores. I wondered what my blue station wagon said about me as I got out of it and walked around, tossing up between a fifteen-year-old dark blue Merc 280 and a white Jag. I adopted the air of an expert, walking around the Merc in what I hoped looked like an admiring manner, leaning close to examine the interior. I was right—on the passenger seat I spotted several envelopes and could read her name and an address in Annandale quite clearly. I didn’t have to make a note of it. Something told me I would never forget it. Then I looked up. A woman had come through the automatic doors of the radio station and was walking down the steps towards the carpark. Quickly and casually I walked back to my car. I couldn’t explain the surge of excitement that pulsed through my body when I saw her. I knew immediately that she was Iona Seymour.
I remembered it from stake-outs, this current that hums between the hunted and the hunter. People could come and go and even though I couldn’t see them properly, I’d know they weren’t the target. Then along would come another figure and I’d suddenly sit up straight, sensing, yes, this is the one. I can’t explain it, but after many years, a cop develops extra senses around this sort of thing. Quite possibly there’s something in quantum physics to account for it and that notion would certainly delight Charlie. Does the target’s nervous intention meet up with the investigator’s determination and does this create some quark-spinning turn-around where the observer becomes the observed? Even though I’d never give Charlie the satisfaction of saying so, I think about these possibilities more than he gives me credit for.
Inside my car I made myself as invisible as possible and watched the woman who was walking towards the old Merc, a briefcase in her hand, frowning despite the sunglasses. She was tall, with an athletic build, dark hair, pale face and red jacket, just as I’d imagined. Then something happened. Just as she stooped slightly to put her key in the lock, she raised her head to look over the top of her car and our eyes met. I dropped my gaze and turned a page of the newspaper I was pretending to read.
By the time I dared peer over the top of page, she was reversing the Mercedes, and driving out of the carpark. I noted the rego number and started to follow her. I couldn’t let her go just now. She had claimed to know something about my daughter, and I was determined to speak to her.
The big old Merc was easy to follow, even in Friday’s heavy traffic. We drove from North Sydney back into the city and she took the Macquarie Street exit. In Macquarie Street she slowed down and I could see she was looking for somewhere to park. Someone ahead of her vacated a spot and I overtook her as she backed in. I looked around for somewhere myself but couldn’t find anything and made a highly illegal U-turn, coming back to pass her. She was sitting with her hands over her face, slumped over the wheel. I imagined I could see the sobs shaking her shoulders. A car pulled out ahead of me and I darted into the vacant spot, causing the car on my back bumper to lean on the horn. I made a mollifying sign to him and while I straightened up, I could see the red jacket getting out of the Merc in my rear vision mirror. She started to walk south towards College Street. I desperately scratched around looking for small change for the meter and by the time I’d found it, she had walked past the barracks and was now waiting to cross the road to St Mary’s. I sprinted down the street just in time to see her mount the stairs on the western side of the cathedral and vanish through the heavy doors.
I crossed the road, raced up the steps and pushed open the doors, peering around in the dim interior. For a moment, I couldn’t see a thing and I wondered why it is that the house of our God is always so dark.
People pressed around me in the gloom, some with cameras round their necks, others wandering, then pausing to look at the intricate stained glass windows and the various shrines and icons. I stood there, wondering if she was really smart and, knowing she was being followed, had taken counter-surveillance steps and was already disappearing out of another door. I felt a disproportionate wave of desolation, but then I saw her tall figure on the left-hand side of the raised and fenced-off sanctuary with its interlocking polished brass shamrocks. A large copy of a Byzantine icon hung there, with a slotted wooden box in front of it. I knew that what was written in faded typescript next to the box was an invitation to post prayers and requests for divine favours within for the Virgin’s heavenly lobbying. I have to admit it’s a beautiful image of the Madonna and Infant known to the faithful as ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Help’ and I remembered it from my very early school days with the Sisters of Show No Mercy.
Iona Seymour was now kneeling in front of this, oblivious to the movements around her as people brushed past and Japanese tourists took flashlight photographs. She seemed to have something in her hand and for a moment, I thought she was about to post a prayer. But instead, she stood up, blessed herself as the devout do, and hurried down past the sanctuary to a roped-off area at the northern end. I followed, trying to stroll casually just like the other tourists. The sign hanging on the red rope informed me that the area set aside was for private devotions only and cameras were forbidden. I had been here before on occasions with Charlie when he was doing his PhD and collecting images of mothers and sons. I saw Iona Seymour seating herself in front of a small chapel. As I drew nearer, I saw that there were two other altars on each side, but only the central one had the winking red sanctuary lamp, symbol of the presence of the mystery.
I sat in one of the pews behind and to one side of the woman. I felt awkward there, although the iconography was familiar from the territory of my childhood. In the stained glass above this private sanctuary, the Blessed Virgin was being crowned in heaven. I was wondering what I was doing there, and was just about to leave when Iona Seymour stood up, genuflected and started walking back the way we’d both come. I bowed my head as if in prayer and waited as she passed by me, feeling the movement of air as she moved, listening to her footsteps echoing on the marble floor. Then I slid out of my pew and followed at a discreet distance. As she approached the entrance we’d both used, she paused and, instead of going towards the heavy doors, she stopped in front of a huge marble statue. I stopped in my tracks when I saw what she was doing. The marble in question is a huge copy of Michelangelo’s
‘Pietà’,
the powerful image of the desolate Virgin holding the dead weight of her son’s corpse across her knees. The whole massive work is supported by a huge block of stone, and it was into a tiny gap between the bottom of the weighty sculpture and the pedestal that formed its base that Iona Seymour, unnoticed by anyone but me, was pushing something small. Then she looked around and hurried away, her tall figure pressing against the heavy doors to open them.
I let her go, turning my attention to whatever it was that she’d hidden at the base of the statue. My breathing, already heightened by the intrigue of following this unknown woman, became even faster. With practised unconcern, I wandered over towards the sculpture, pretending great interest in its polished surfaces. People milled around behind me, and I realised that there was no need for any pantomime. I could just see something sticking out from under the statue where it rested on its sandstone base. Casually, I dropped my hand, took the corner of it with my fingers and quickly drew it out. It was a wedge of folded paper. I palmed it smartly into my pocket. Amphetamines come packed like that, and sometimes small deals of coke, except this packet was narrower than the usual dealers’ folds I’d handled over the years. I walked outside, blinking in the sudden brilliance of Sydney summer sunlight. Indian mynahs screeched on the steps, pecking at rubbish. Bach preludes, drug drops, the pinot noir voice and the hidden eyes of a dark woman swirled around in my mind as I tried to second-guess what she’d hidden under the
Pietà
. Carefully, I moved away from the people walking in and out of the cathedral and out of the breeze to open the folded paper. Almost as soon as I’d done it, I regretted it, feeling ashamed of my intrusion. But I couldn’t stop there. I had seen what was on it and something happened again. In the same way that our eyes had connected over the top of her car, Iona Seymour and I were inexorably drawn together. I had now become intimate with this woman. I knew things about her that I shouldn’t know. That no one should know unless confided in by a trusted friend. I refolded the small square of paper, and tucked it into my inside coat pocket.
I ran down the steps and back to my car. My meter had expired and a parking fine was already tucked behind the windscreen wipers. I swore as I ripped it off my car and shoved it in the glovebox, noticing the large amount. But the strange exhilaration I was feeling soon established itself as the dominant mood and I drove away, feeling something like an adolescent boy when he first falls in love, holding two things in my mind: the contents of the little message in my pocket, and the memory of her address from the envelope on the passenger seat of the dark blue Mercedes.
Number 293 Reiby Street, Annandale, was a dramatic old stone two-storeyed house, hidden under thick Boston ivy and complete with leadlights, a tower and other neo-Gothic follies. The odd architecture, the overgrowth and the air of dereliction, put me in mind of Edgar Allen Poe’s dark tale ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. I could see Iona Seymour’s car parked in front of a tumbledown car shed down the back, at the end of an overgrown driveway. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction that I’d run her to her lair and that I had something very personal of hers in my possession. I put my hand in my pocket to touch the folded paper and the strange sense that the woman was mine grew stronger. Now I had to decide how I was going to approach her and whether it would be in my official capacity, or whether I might be better served by observing her habits and routines for a while and then setting up a ‘spontaneous’ meeting somewhere likely. I’ve learned to defer decisions rather than make them without due consideration, so I decided to sleep on it and drove home.