Death Delights (14 page)

The man nodded.

‘I never answer the door,’ he said. ‘I think you’d better leave now. I’ve got nothing to say to any of you people.’

‘I’m a scientist, not a cop, Mr Carter—’ I started.

The man stood up. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t you Mr Carter me. I used to have some respect for the law. For the police and the government of this country. Not any more. My little girl was killed and the animal that did it ends up spending less time in gaol than the poor bastard down the road who knocked off a few service stations. I lost my daughter, I lost my marriage. I’ve got nothing. That’s all I’ve got to say to you. To anyone. Except that I’m glad someone with more guts than I’ve got has done the right thing by society and killed that scumbag. It’s not murder, it’s execution.’ He walked towards the screen door. ‘So now get off my property.’ With that, he threw his cigarette butt over the railing, went inside and slammed the door.

I went over to where he had thrown the butt and gently crushed the hot end with my shoe, carefully picking it up on a leaf, and slipping it into an envelope. Peter Carter had just given me everything I needed from him.

•

Next day I left a note for Greg saying I’d be away all day, and left before sunrise, with my anonymous letter and the cigarette butt, arriving in Canberra before nine. When I arrived at Forensic Services, the people I met in the corridors just nodded to me, or ignored me, or did whatever they usually did when we passed each other or met in the central kitchen area. Only Florence frowned at me. Despite her wild hair and denim skirt, there was something in the expression of her mouth that always reminded me of the woman in
American
Gothic
, that painting of the Puritan farm couple. Today, her bushy hair was clipped into two semicircular wings looping each side of her face, fastened in a chignon.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, her intense blue eyes sharp and watchful. Then she apologised and tried to explain that she didn’t mean to sound unwelcoming, but she thought I was on leave.

‘I am,’ I said, ‘but I’m involved in a Sydney case. So here I am with a few items to search.’

She still seemed uneasy, pulling at her hair where it had come out of its comb. Florence’s hair is a rusty colour, with salt and pepper grey. ‘Florence,’ I said, ‘would you mind testing this cigarette butt? I want to eliminate someone.’

‘Or implicate them,’ she offered. ‘Are you in a hurry?’ I shook my head. ‘I’ll get it done as soon as I can,’ she said. ‘Just for you.’ Then she actually snatched the packaged butt out of my hands and ducked away. I watched her solid figure vanish into the corridor near the lab.

I put Frank Carmody’s bloodstained clothes in the huge walk-in two-way fridge and prepared myself for the Search Room. Gloved and space-suited, I covered the surface of the search table with sheets of white paper. I teased out Carmody’s shirt and trousers, turning them over, carefully examining them through the big overhead microscope under the bright lighting. The trousers were drenched with dried blood and I saw straightaway I wouldn’t get much off them. But the shirt was clean apart from two large blood splashes. Two buttons were missing, and one of the buttonholes was pulled and stretched, possibly damaged by someone grabbing the shirt violently at the front. Looking down the microscope, I saw where the fibres of the fabric had been bunched up in a way that supported my suspicions. Then I found a prize, caught around the first remaining button on the pale green material. A long blonde hair that I gently removed with tweezers and slipped into a small plastic packet. I continued shaking out the dead man’s clothes until I was satisfied that anything caught in the fabric had fallen off onto the paper beneath. I looked again at the shirt. Under the microscope, I could see creases on the upper parts of each sleeve. I imagined someone grabbing Carmody, pinning his arms, leaving something of himself behind after that deadly embrace. However, there’s no telling with the collecting of potential DNA samples. Some people are great ‘shedders’. Others don’t seem to spread themselves around much. I ‘posted’ the clothes through the hatch into the Biology Lab next door for the next stage in the process.

It didn’t take me long to mount the various fibres and particles I’d retrieved from the surface of the paper and give them to a couple of the younger blokes to take to the examination rooms. With great care, I handed the long blonde hair over in its bag. I couldn’t help thinking of the twenty-six-year-old nightclub dancer. Maybe she was starting to materialise. Bob would be amused, I thought.

A change of suit and gloves saw me in the Biology Lab, taking tiny samples from the creased areas of both sleeves. I placed these in the small plastic containers, shaped like tiny amphorae, to be screened for any DNA material that just might be there.

The screening process told me that there was DNA material on the shirt front and also on the sleeves. Of course there would be: a human being had worn the shirt. A profile generated from Carmody’s lifeless body would eliminate him from the search. What we needed to find was a trace left by the killer. Deoxyribonucleic acid, the genetic material that makes each one of us the individual that we are, is a highly complex chemical chain found in the nucleus of cells. I once explained it to Greg by asking him to imagine that everyone in the world was each given three billion different coloured beads with which to make a necklace. And then to imagine the chances of two people arranging the beads in exactly the same sequence. A person’s DNA is their genetic blueprint and it shows up in almost every cell, the exception being red blood cells, which lose their nuclei during production. DNA is remarkably durable if it is protected from sunlight. Grains of wheat found buried with Egyptian mummies have been successfully sprouted, the genetic material safely stored in those dark places for thousands of years, just waiting for the right conditions to germinate. DNA has been extracted from the tiny bodies of dead lice found on the same mummies. The extraction process moves through complex stages where everything that is not the protein we’re after is stripped away. Then, positively charged ions, which can cause DNA degradation at high temperatures, are mopped up by a suspension of tiny beads, kept moving by means of magnetic ‘fleas’, so named because they jump around. Once we’ve extricated the DNA from everything else around it, what we have is the biological equivalent of fingerprinting. And just as crims have attempted to alter their fingerprints with acid or surgery and failed, they’ve also tried to obliterate body fluid traces after their crimes with bleach or vinegar. But criminals as a rule are not patient, meticulous, discerning people. Good scientists are. And we only need a few cells. Theoretically, one cell would do the trick. By means of a ‘biological amplifier’ we can detect the tiny traces of nucleic matter, ‘printing’ and ‘reprinting’ them, over and over, until we have enough to extract for a profile. The first amplification test tells us whether we’re dealing with a male or female, and there are nine others. These combined tests give results that print out in a graph. Once I’d run the tests, known as the ‘amps’, I’d know whether or not someone other than Frank Carmody had creased that shirt up around the sleeves. There was nothing more I could do here, so I left and drove back to Sydney.

•

I went to the address Pigrooter had given me and drove up and down the street a couple of times, pretending I was looking for parking, which was the truth. The house I was interested in was in a row of small nineteenth-century sandstone terraces, many of them covered in cement render or unfortunate paintwork. Just as Pigrooter had described it, number 42 had the traditional red light, now unlit, and a weird cactus bursting out of its pot in the tiny concreted front yard. Pigrooter had said the place was white, and I suppose it had been once. I drove round the back, checking the lane that ran behind it. East Sydney is one of the oldest suburbs, built in the earliest days of the settlement at Sydney Cove and the houses almost always back onto lanes where the dunny cart once made its way. I parked the car some distance away and walked down the footpath on the other side of the road from number 42. The cottage was the same as its neighbours except that it had a closed circuit security camera just visible above the front door. I crossed the road and walked past it, noticing the blind was drawn on the front window, went round the corner and then into the rear lane. Some of the cottages still had the outhouse down the back, covered in vines. Some had been removed, others rebuilt as part of a backyard shed. I stood up on the fence and peered over into a small overgrown backyard and a closed-in back veranda with a wooden staircase down the side. A dog started barking furiously so I stepped down again and rang Bob.

With Bob and a warrant, I attended the raid on number 42 Marian Street. Within minutes, it became clear that the joint specialised in ‘advanced’ S & M. My heart sank as we went through the place, collecting and recording the various illegal substances we found in cupboards and drawers. The bedrooms were decked out like medieval dungeons, with shackles hanging from the wall and whips, handcuffs, and various other items of restraint. As I walked into a bathroom, a girl sitting on the toilet screamed, swore and pulled up her black lace panties. Before she could say anything, I held up my ID card.

‘You bastard,’ she said, ‘you could’ve knocked.’

The thin, pretty girl in the black lace slip could have been seventeen or twenty-seven. I noticed several tiny sores on her chin and suspected too much cocaine. Her bronze-rimmed eyes were busy, watching, flickering, working me out.

I looked around the tiled area. Manacles and chains, baths and basins and shower areas were set up with every type of hose, nozzle and enema bag. I picked up and squeezed a rubber bladder. ‘People find
this
a turn-on?’ I asked, incredulous. To me, it was about as sexy as a bowl of cold cat sick, but even cold cat sick, I realised, probably had its afficionados.

‘You should try it sometime. You never know.’

‘No fear,’ I said, as I followed her to one of the rooms while she fetched her driver’s licence. Renee Miller, aged twenty-three, of Rushcutters Bay, stared out at me from the licence photo, and in reality a few metres away.

‘I don’t know who owns the place,’ she said, in answer to my question, worrying at one of the sores with a short painted nail. ‘You need to speak to Pam. I only do my shifts here and then go home. It’s got nothing to do with me.’

‘Pam who?’

Renee shrugged, pushing her long hair behind her ears. ‘She’s the woman who comes round for the rent.’

‘What about the other girls who work here?’

I pulled out a photo of Jacinta with her hair pulled back taken eighteen months ago, just before she left. Her shining features and intelligent eyes gazed clear and straight at the camera.

‘Have you seen her?’ I asked Renee.

Renee stared hard at the picture. Then she looked up at me. ‘You’re a bloody cop. Why should I tell you anything?’

‘I’m not a cop, I’m a scientist and Jacinta is my daughter,’ I said, keeping my voice on an even keel. ‘I want to take her home.’

Renee looked at me. ‘Why did she leave in the first place? Kids don’t leave home unless they have to.’

‘She had a fight with her mother.’

Renee was unimpressed. ‘Everyone has fights with their mother. They don’t leave because of that.’ I was starting to feel annoyed at having to explain and justify this painful complex subject to a sharp little moll.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘she ran away because of an argument. Happens all the time.’

‘When was this?’

‘Eighteen months ago.’

Renee stepped back at that, looking at me as if I was retarded. ‘Eighteen months ago? And you’re looking for her now?’

‘I’ve never stopped,’ I said. ‘Just look at the picture and answer my question.’

Renee looked at the picture of my daughter and then back at me. ‘If she’d wanted to come home, she’d have done it a long time ago. You just don’t get it, do you?’

It was then that realisation dawned on me. ‘You know her,’ I said. ‘You know Jacinta. And you know where she is.’

There was a long moment. Then she nodded. ‘I might do,’ she said. ‘But she looks different in this photo.’

‘She
is
different,’ I said more savagely than I meant to. ‘When this was taken she was barely thirteen.’

Renee shrugged. ‘We were all thirteen once.’ She turned away.

‘When did you last see her?’ I asked.

Renee’s face went blank. ‘Sometime. Maybe a few weeks back. She comes and goes here. Works other places, too. She’s like me. Pretty fussy about what she does.’

She must have seen the look on my face because she burst out angrily. ‘I know that look. You think you’re better than me! Bastards like you drive your kids away but you still feel superior to everyone else. You’re just like my bloody father. You’re
shit,
people like you.’

I took the photograph from her in silence, carefully replacing it. I’d handled this very badly and now I didn’t know how to go about redeeming the situation.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve got off to a bad start with you.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, with a hard, sarcastic laugh, ‘a copper trying to be diplomatic. A police raid isn’t a very diplomatic occasion,’ she said. ‘And anyway, Miss Manners hasn’t done that chapter yet.’

‘You’re working in an unlicensed whorehouse,’ I said. ‘Miss Manners hasn’t dealt with that topic either.’ The mutual joke softened the atmosphere a little.

‘I’m not a copper any more,’ I said.

She shrugged. ‘Once a copper always a copper. People like you, they never change.’

‘Why do you do it, this sort of work?’ I asked, trying a new tack.

Renee took a step back, put a hand on a hip, and gave me a contemptuous look.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she said. ‘Are you some sort of fundo?’

‘What?’

‘You know. A religious nut. We get them sometimes. After they’ve fucked me, they want to save me. They’re disgusting.’

‘I just want to hear in your own words why you do this work.’ I was hoping I’d get some insight, some way to understand or accept that my daughter worked in this world.

She raised her eyes to heaven.

‘I do it,’ she said slowly so that I’d understand, ‘because I can make ten, twenty times the money I’d get working a cash register.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

But she hadn’t quite finished. ‘And,’ she added, ‘because it gives me power over men.’ I waited in silence, thinking of Jacinta.

‘And how do you work that out?’ I asked.

Renee came in closer and looked up at me. Without the tiny sores and the garish make-up, she’d be a very pretty young woman.

‘Because,’ she said, looking at me straight with eyes that blazed hatred, ‘if I’m ramming a dildo up some bastard’s arse, then he’s not fucking me over, is he?’

She had a point. I turned away to leave. But just before I went, I had one last shot. ‘If you’d just tell me whatever you know about my daughter, we’ll call it quits,’ I said. Renee gave me a knowing look.

‘You people never call anything quits,’ she said.

I didn’t reply, just waited as the silence went on.

‘I’ll pass a message on,’ she finally said. ‘That’s all.’ She paused. ‘Then it’s up to her if she wants to take further action. How do I know you weren’t screwing her or something?’

In spite of myself, tears sprang to my eyes. I blinked quickly and shook my head. ‘I wasn’t,’ I said.

The tears surprised both of us. They were partly because of the nature of Renee’s suggestion, partly because of what had become of my child and partly because I knew well enough that too many fathers betrayed their daughters in this way. But they were also tears of excitement. Because, I thought, as I scribbled my address and phone number onto a torn-out page from my notebook, if Renee could give Jacinta a message, it meant that she knew where she was.

Renee took the piece of paper, glanced at it and then at the fifty dollar bill I’d taken out of my wallet. She cocked her smart little head to one side. ‘There’s a real dungeon here, the original cellar of this place. I could chain you up down there and do what I liked with you. No one would hear you.’

‘Help me, please,’ I said.

She snatched the fifty from me with one hand, yanked my zip undone with the other, and had my cock in her hand before I realised what was happening. ‘I love it when men beg,’ she said.

I jumped back, knocking her away, taken completely by surprise, not only by her move, but also her strength. I jerked my zip up, and straightened my belt.

‘Renee,’ I said, ‘I’m begging. Where my daughter is concerned, I’d do anything. ‘Please help me.’

After the others had left, I sat off the house in Marian Street until Renee left. A pair of currawongs called to each other,
‘To
me! To me! To me!’
as they circled and landed in a large fig tree down the street from the brothel.

Three male visitors had been and gone by the time she appeared, wearing a funny little tiger print coat, closing the front door, looking around the street, then heading off west towards a smart red Golf. I followed her to her address in a large block of white apartments at Rushcutters Bay and watched while she drove into the underground carpark and the automatic door closed after her. Even after I was sure she’d settled in for the night I stayed sitting there. Something Renee had said about my absent daughter came back and I couldn’t help applying it to my sister. Maybe Rosie, like Jacinta, hadn’t wanted to be at home either. Maybe being stolen by a stranger was better than what was going on at home. Memories from those days started surfacing. My mother drunk, half-sitting, half-falling from her chair at the dinner table. My father, white with anger, furiously carving a roast, serving the vegetables as well, his mouth a compressed line, Rosie shrinking away from him as she passed me my plate, baby Charlie crying down the hall in his cot. No one saying anything. I made a mental note that sometime soon Greg and I would have to have a father/son talk about how things were in this family of ours.

I started the car up and drove to the big supermarket at the top of Kings Cross, did a week’s shopping for myself and my son, remembering to stockpile milk, bread and various breakfast cereals. Greg could clean out a well-stocked fridge in forty-eight hours. He ate a loaf of bread most days, what with toast, sandwiches and other snacks.

When I got home, I went straight to the mailbox. I knew immediately I looked at it that the envelope I could see inside housed another of the anonymous letters. This time, I left it there until I’d gloved up inside and returned with a plastic bag. Leaving it unopened, I carefully transferred it to the bag and put it away with the other one. This one, I decided, I’d open myself in the lab. I didn’t want to miss anything. That way, too, it was more impersonal: I could pretend that I was simply doing a job and that the malice was not directed at me. I was very tired, but checked on Greg, to make sure that he was covered properly. Greg is the most restless sleeper, usually waking up with his head at the foot of the bed and the covers in a twist somewhere on the floor. He was sound asleep, lying across the bed with his head hanging over the side and the pillow bunched up under his hips. There was little I could do without waking him, so I backed out. My mobile rang and I snatched it up, pleased to have this distraction. ‘McCain?’ I snapped.