Malicious Intent (24 page)

‘I was going to leave this at the door, but since you’re here . . .’ He handed over the envelope. ‘It’s the info you asked about.’

Kate stood with her arm firmly around Ben’s shoulders.

‘Thanks. Vaughan, this is a friend of mine, Kate Farrer. And my son, Benjamin.’

Kate didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘We’ve already met.

Hunter, here, testified that a stalker wasn’t fit to stand trial. The guy spent a few months in a cushy mental hospital. The day he was released, he walked up to the woman he’d stalked and . . .’

She looked down at Ben. ‘Let’s just say they’re still trying to rebuild her face. Pity the same can’t be said for her brother.

Yeah, we’ve met.’

‘I felt horrifed about what happened, but I still stand by the original diagnosis,’ he said with a hint of sadness. ‘Unfortunately, the system isn’t perfect.’

‘That’ll be a big comfort to the victim’s family. I’ll let them know when I see them next month.’

‘I understand you’re angry about what happened. I’m still happy to talk to the family if they’d like.’ Vaughan knelt down, turning his attention to the young boy. ‘Wow. Nice to meet you, Benjamin. You are so tall. What are you, four years old?’

The pair shook hands.

‘I’m free.’ Ben proclaimed, holding up three fingers.

‘I’m off.’ Kate remained unimpressed. ‘Have fun, see you next time, Benny boy.’

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She nodded at Anya and stepped toward her car. ‘I’ll let you know what we come up with.’

Vaughan stood again. ‘I apologize if I upset your friend. She seems to have left in a hurry.’

Anya believed that in Kate’s world, everything felt personal.

She obviously blamed him for something he couldn’t have predicted or prevented. Apart from work, Kate’s world was becoming increasingly small, and Anya couldn’t allow hers to do the same. ‘She just isn’t one for drawn-out good-byes.’

Ben tugged at his mother’s shirtsleeve. ‘Is he coming with us?’

‘Somehow, I don’t think Vaughan would want to spend a day at the Easter Show.’

‘Hey, that is such a fun place.’ He knelt down again. ‘Did you know there are rides and lots of fun games to play? They even have a petting zoo and cows, sheep, horses, and my favorite, alpacas.’

‘I love alpacas. They have big eyes. I like them and giraffes.’

‘They do have great eyes. A patient of mine has a cattle farm and has his prizewinning bulls at the Show.’

Ben grinned. ‘Wow! They’re huge, but not as high as the biggest slide in the whole world. Mummy doesn’t like that, so I can’t go on it.’ He whispered, presumably so as not to embarrass his mother, ‘She’s scared, but I’m not.’

Ben had forgotten his usual shyness with strangers. Like mother, like son with this man.

‘I love slides. They’re my favorite ride.’

Even for a psychiatrist, Vaughan adapted well to his audience. If Anya closed her eyes, she would swear the two were the same age.

‘Mum, please can this man come with us? He could show us the bulls.’

Anya felt her ears heat up.

‘Plleeaase, Mummy?’

‘I’d love to come if your mum will have me.’

‘This was going to be our day together, Ben,’ she stammered.

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‘I know, but we’re going to the museum to see the dinosaurs tomorrow. Pleaaaaasse?’

Anya felt outnumbered by a small boy. Scientists denied the possibility, but every parent knew the reality. She wondered how anyone with more than one child coped. ‘Okay. We’ll need to go in our car. It’s got the booster seat.’

‘Just let me lock mine and we’ll be off,’ Vaughan said.

Ben couldn’t contain his excitement at having two people to play with, and Anya knew he’d beg Vaughan to go on the giant slide. Every child came out of the womb with skills of manipulation. Ben seemed to have a master’s degree in the field.

When they arrived at Homebush, Anya insisted that Ben sit in the stroller until they were inside the grounds, despite her son’s protests.

‘He’s a really good kid,’ Vaughan said. ‘Incredibly bright and obviously very attached to you.’

Anya didn’t know what to say so said nothing. She felt uncomfortable talking about how much Ben loved her, as though talking about it might dilute or devalue it in some way.

Inside the gates, they strolled around the showground, heading first for the showbag pavilion.

Anya had looked up the bags’ prices and contents on the Internet and planned to buy a library book-bag stuffed with kids’ books. Instead, Ben begged for a Superheroes bag, which was double the amount she had intended to spend. A little boy suddenly forgot his passion to read and became just another boy wanting to be Batman. How could she refuse him that?

He saw a cowboy-themed bag with a gun and begged for that too.

‘What are my rules about guns?’

‘We’re not allowed to have them in your house. But I can take it to Daddy’s place.’

‘No, Ben. I won’t get you a gun and I don’t want your father getting you one either. You know how I feel about them.’

‘But Mum . . .’

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‘It’s the Superheroes one or nothing.’

‘Okay.’

Why was it that children made you feel mean when you were doing something nice in the first place? Another mother repeated the conversation with a boy dressed like Spider-Man.

‘Thanks, Mum!’ Ben said, clutching his new prize in his stroller.

Vaughan disappeared and reappeared with a showbag.

‘My treat. Something educational and fun.’

It was a bag full of
Star Wars
books, stickers and pull-out face masks.

‘Wow, thanks, Mr. Hunter.’

Anya tried to protest but had to let it go. She’d make sure she paid Vaughan back later.

They moved on to the animal enclosures. Vaughan kindly took some photos of mother and son next to large bulls with blue ribbons worn proudly around their necks. Anya and Ben rode the merry-go-round three times to old Abba hits. After that, he refused to return to the stroller. Three-year-olds liked to walk – everywhere.

As they passed one ride, Ben stopped and almost dislocated Anya’s shoulder in his excitement. They looked up at a two-story slippery-dip. Anya held her breath.

‘Mummy, look, you slide down on those magic carpets.’

Vaughan didn’t help. ‘That is the best fun. How about I take you and we give your mum a break?’

‘Yipppeeeeee!’

The look on her son’s face made it impossible to refuse.

Anya stood where she could see the slide and promised to get an action photo for the scrapbook. She tried to stay calm and relaxed as Vaughan took her child’s hand. For a moment the pair disappeared into the queue until she caught sight of them again, climbing the stairs.

Having a child was like having your heart outside your chest, permanently. She now understood some of what her own parents had gone through. Sometimes, though, she had to 192

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learn to let Ben be and not smother him. That was the most difficult part.

After a few minutes, the two went behind the slide, presumably where the carpet pieces lay. The queue climbing the stairs slowed. She took the lens cap off the camera and waited for the pair to reappear.

Showmen selling ‘genuine quality jewelry’ for twenty dollars and vegetable peelers spoke through headset microphones, competing with balloon sellers and clowns hawking necklaces that glowed in the dark. All that was missing was the kewpie doll on a cane she’d always wanted from the Launceston Show.

The sun appeared from behind a cloud and she peeled off her jacket, stepping in chewing gum in the process.

‘Shit,’ she said, holding the camera up as she heard Ben’s voice.

‘Mummy!’

She looked up and snapped two photos of him speeding down the slide, Vaughan sitting behind, legs apart to accommodate his co-slider. They looked like a blur in real life, so she didn’t hold out much hope for the shots.

Ben came running out of the side exit with red cheeks and

‘windtunnel’ hair. He took off his polar fleece jacket, put it in the stroller and took Anya’s hand.

‘This is so much fun, Mum. I was really brave.’

‘You didn’t look scared at all.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You did really well.’ Vaughan stopped on Ben’s other side, short of breath and wheezy.

‘Are you all right?’ Anya asked, concerned. ‘You look hypoxic.’

‘Just a bit of asthma.’ Vaughan pulled a Ventolin puffer from his hip pocket, shook it and inhaled two doses. ‘I’ll be right in a moment. Must be the animal hair all around.’

His color improved.

‘We could sit, if you like, and have some lunch,’ Anya suggested.

They joined a queue for hot food, and Vaughan’s breathing quickly returned to normal.

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‘He’s a real talker, your son. Even asked me if I knew what a parasaurolophus eats.’

Anya laughed. She’d been quizzed on just about every topic. After ordering a kebab, hot chips, chicken nuggets and Vaughan’s battered hot dog, they sat and ate at a picnic table in front of the cold drinks stand.

Fried food could be marketed as a sedative, Anya believed.

Ben gorged himself and climbed back into the stroller, too tired to walk anymore and dodge the hordes of legs roaming around.

As she was putting the rubbish in the bin, a handbag bumped Anya’s back. She turned to see a woman with fine red hair, white skin and freckles, wrestling with rubbish on a tray.

The woman, who would have been about Miriam’s age now, had similar features, minus the chubby face lost to maturity.

‘Sorry,’ the woman said.

Anya couldn’t help staring and was about to speak when another woman, with curly red hair, appeared. Their body language intimated a closeness that came with living together, the kind shared by siblings.

It wasn’t Miriam.

Back at the table, Vaughan rose. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘For a moment I thought . . .’ Anya pushed the stroller and they walked toward the agricultural displays.

‘When you said Bob Reynolds was your father,’ Vaughan said, ‘I remembered going to a meeting where he spoke about psychological issues for parents of murder victims. He talked about having had two daughters, one of whom was abducted as a toddler. It must have been difficult growing up with that.’

‘I’m told what I go through is “normal,” whatever that means, but even though my brain says she’s gone forever, sometimes I look into a crowd and . . . well, emotion takes over.’

‘How did your family cope?’

Normally guarded, Anya didn’t feel the question as an intrusion.

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‘Mum struggled. She wouldn’t let my brother or me go anywhere without her or Dad.’ Anya found herself talking freely about her family, something she hadn’t done since Damien moved to England.

‘She even changed her surgery hours so she could drop us off and pick us up from school. Every patient knew that if they needed to be seen they had to wait for school hours. That wasn’t too restrictive, but it got embarrassing as a teenager going on house calls with Mum. We could choose to have her come to parties and sit outside all night, or stay home. More often than not, it was easier not to go.’

‘What happened when you left school?’

‘I got as far away as possible. I applied for medicine at Newcastle University and got in. Within weeks I’d met Marty. He dropped out of medicine at the end of first year, flirted with engineering and then did nursing. He should have finished medicine because he was always trying to prove himself. Anyway, we got married at the end of second year.’

Entering the pavilion, they joined the crowds meandering among stalls selling fresh produce, pumpkins, honeys, macadamia nuts, juices, aloe vera products and homemade jam. Anya’s thoughts flashed to poor Debbie Finch.

‘You married your first boyfriend?’

‘I think in many ways he provided an escape. No one in Newcastle knew me. By then I’d changed my name to Crichton, my grandmother’s maiden name, and started with a clean slate. You probably can’t imagine what small-town gossip is like if you haven’t lived there. Everyone had a theory about what happened to Miriam and who took her.’

‘Where did you work after Newcastle?’

‘I trained in pathology here in Sydney. After that, we moved to England. Marty was working as a nurse in intensive care for a while but ran into problems. It’s complicated, but by the time we came back to Australia, we’d been living apart for months and the marriage was over.’

‘How did your parents take it?’

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‘Not well, the marriage or the divorce, but my father understands now, I think.’

Ben roused and closed his eyes again.

‘Sorry, here I am babbling on. Guess you’re good at your job, being so easy to talk to.’

‘You’re easy to listen to. Hey, let’s have some grown-up fun while Ben snoozes. You up for sideshow alley?’

‘You’re kidding? What do you want to play?’

‘Let’s start with some video games and work our way up.’

They jostled their way to the area filled with teenagers trying to impress one another, and losing a fair bit of money in the process. Vaughan bowled over the skittles but didn’t fare well at the Ping-Pong ball in the laughing clown’s mouth. He challenged Anya to a game of target shooting.

‘No thanks, I’ll pass.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like guns.’

‘Come on, it’s just a game,’ he goaded, pushing her arm with his elbow. ‘They’re not real.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t like guns.’ She stood, force of habit, with a leg touching the stroller. She’d automatically know if it moved.

‘Guns don’t have emotion. They only do what they’re positioned to. People are the problem.’

‘Encouraging, coming from a psychiatrist,’ she said, smelling popcorn as a couple walked by with a large tub. ‘How gullible do you think I am? Aren’t the sights on these things rigged anyway?’

‘You just have to get your eye in. That’s half the challenge.’

He paid the large Tongan man working the stand enough for two players and handed Anya a rifle tied to the bench. ‘You just aim and squeeze the trigger. Besides, we’re all capable of the same things. It doesn’t mean we have to demonstrate those capabilities.’