Seventeen
As a piece of scenery, Lake Burley Griffin was undemanding. Tourists’ eyes passed over it, looking for distinction, perhaps lighting on the Parliament House flagmast, close as the crow flies, yet by road circuitous. The flooding of the valley floor had taken months, and still seemed incomplete.
I felt this incompleteness most at nightfall in the summer, after a day’s intense evaporation, the water flat and weak against a fresh-baked band of soil, a sense of urgency and resignation at the same time. Rain would come, a thunderstorm, or at any rate the autumn, but until then the artificial lake would continue to recede, leaving more of its bed uncovered at the end of each hot day.
The lake foreshore was an uncomfortable place for a meeting, yet I’d suggested it to Denise, knowing she would need to be somewhere she could smoke, and realising that she would not agree to meet me again if she thought there was a chance that she’d be recognised.
I’d wasted the afternoon, chasing after details no one I spoke to would, or could supply. I was glad to be driving to the lake at dusk—a clear night it would be—heat leaving the ground in gulps, while pelicans folded their wings and settled on an offshore roundabout.
Denise was there before me. She stepped out of a red Valiant as I pulled up. I locked my car, and we walked towards the water.
In the small light from her cigarette, her eyes were tired and wary. She flicked ash on the ground. A spark flared and died.
But then she looked straight at me and spoke in a decisive voice. ‘Ed never saw Jenny Bishop. He only saw me.’
‘What happened between Jenny and Simon Lawrence?’ I asked.
‘Lawrence is a pig.’
In the near darkness, I could feel Denise reacting against this now she’d said it, wishing she could take it back.
‘I heard you helped Jenny, got him off her.’
‘What else was I supposed to do?’
‘Did Lawrence threaten her?’
‘Why would he do that? What that bastard wants, he takes.’
‘What did he take from you?’
‘I never let him near me.’
‘Margot?’
‘You’ve got the wrong idea. It was just—what he did to Jen.’
‘Do you know about the flyer she had made?’
‘What flyer?’
I described it, while Denise shook her head.
‘Did Jenny get into a fight with Margot?’
‘No.’
‘Did they argue over money?’
‘There wasn’t any argument.’
‘How was Jenny paid?’
‘By cheque.’
‘All that she was owed?’
‘Margot may be hard sometimes, but she’s not stingy, or a cheat.’
‘Even when she doesn’t like a girl?’
Denise began to protest, but I persisted. ‘She didn’t like Jenny. Even before the incident with Lawrence.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I worked it out. Did Margot ever tell you about some trouble she got into when she was young?’
Denise’s cigarette made fireworks. ‘What trouble?’ she asked with a catch in her voice.
‘With a client. He died while she was with him. The coroner’s verdict was a heart attack, but she got done over by the press.’
Denise didn’t answer straight away. She smoked and stared out over the lake. Finally she said, ‘The guy died of a heart attack. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.’
‘Is that what Margot told you?’
‘It’s what happened.’
‘What about Stan Walewicz?’
‘What about him?’
‘Did Jenny ever talk to you about a movie he made? She and Lawrence were in it.’
‘No.’
‘But you know who Walewicz is.’
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression,’ I said. ‘I think you’re far from stupid.’
The night was stripping layers of heat off itself, flinging them up and outwards, with a carelessness that made me want to shout. Denise strode forward, then stopped, her stillness more impatient than her movements.
I caught up to her and asked, ‘Have you ever been to Jenny’s house in Sydney?’
‘Why would I? We weren’t friends. We never saw each other outside work.’
‘Where were you on December the thirtieth?’
‘At the club.’
‘Who with?’
‘Margot.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What time did you start?’
‘Round eight.’
‘And leave?’
Denise hesitated, then said, ‘Shortly after two.’ I could feel rather than see her shrug. ‘I know what your game is,’ she told me. ‘It won’t work.’
‘I don’t have a game. I just want to find out what happened to Jenny.’
We started walking back towards the cars.
‘Did Margot ever say anything to you about a company called CleanNet?’
‘Who?’
‘A computer company. They make filters for blocking out stuff on the Internet.’
‘No.’
‘That afternoon Carmichael turned up—did he tell you where he’d been?’
‘At work, wasn’t he?’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘I don’t remember what he said exactly.’
I felt sorry for Denise. I liked her, and she was doing her best.
We were almost at the cars. ‘One last thing,’ I said, ‘if you could please tell me again what was in the room when you came back and found him?’
Denise sighed, getting out her keys. ‘There was the bed, the side table, the chair.’
‘What was on the table?’
‘What’s usually there.’
‘The wig box?’
‘That was on the floor.’
‘Under the table?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened before you and Carmichael went into the room?’
‘Nothing,’ Denise said. ‘I mean nothing special.’
‘Did he bring his dress in as usual?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about his underwear?’
‘It was in the bag.’
‘Did you help him put it on?’
‘I—yes.’
‘Margot handed him the wig in its box and he brought that in too?’
‘I don’t remember every single detail.’
‘People don’t, when things are where they expect them to be. Did you help him to get dressed?’
‘I started to.’
‘How far did you get?’
‘Rebecca rang,’ Denise said, unlocking her car.
She got into the driver’s seat and said emphatically, ‘Jenny Bishop overdosed.’
She started the engine before I could say anything more.
. . .
Walls mocked me—the relentless heat that the house had absorbed all day, and was now throwing back. I saw car headlights where there couldn’t possibly be any. In shadowy corners, I caught glimpses of a badly shaven jaw. Hostile brown eyes looked back at me, reflected in my windows when I threw them open to let in the cooler air.
I filled Fred’s water bowl, and he lapped and lapped. We sat side by side on the front step. There was hardly any traffic. A few cars passed at an ordinary pace. The sky was clear, and the stars were the best that you could hope for in a small inland city.
I hoped Denise would be all right. I shouldn’t have pestered her to meet me. The best thing for Denise would be to report back to Margot that I’d swallowed her lies about Jenny Bishop, and have nothing more to do with me. But Jenny was dead, and so was Eden Carmichael. A person couldn’t walk away from that.
The blue of the upper air was the same colour as Carmichael’s dress. It seemed that Jenny’s death had left a space in the sky for his dress to slide into, a garment empty of its wearer. His death lay next to hers, but so much more public and flamboyant. A politician’s death made waves, while Jenny’s, if a certain logic, already set in place, was allowed to take its course, would sink without a ripple. Carmichael’s heart would have got him eventually, but the embarrassment could have been avoided—this was emerging as the consensus. And Jenny’s death—predictable for different reasons, in a different way? A dead man could be pulled in many directions, and a dead woman too. Undertows and currents kept on moving round them. Everyone seemed confident that they could explain one or the other.
. . .
I made myself a late meal of hard-boiled eggs and salad, then sat in front of my office windows, opened as wide as they would go, and typed up my conversation with Denise. I was washing my plate and drinking glass when there was a knock on the front door.
Ken Dollimore stared at me with the demeanour of a man who’d set out with a clear purpose in mind, but had lost his way. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocussed. His hair was less than perfect. I invited him in.
Dollimore blinked, getting his bearings, glancing round my house. It was very late to be paying a social call, but this was a man more capable of surprising behaviour than I’d given him credit for.
He swayed back and forth on the balls of his feet, and licked his lips, which looked slightly swollen. I asked him to sit down, and offered to make coffee. He shook his head at the latter, but lowered himself awkwardly into a chair.
I sat down opposite him and leant forward. ‘One night, Ed Carmichael saw a different girl at the club,’ I said. ‘Not the one he usually saw. Do you know her name?’
‘Ed did whatever Madam told him to.’
Dollimore’s speech was slurred, but I could smell no alcohol.
‘I’m trying to find out what your friend told this girl that turned out to be dangerous. I think I know who she was, but I need confirmation.’
‘Ed betrayed a confidence,’ Dollimore said, reaching his tongue around the syllables with difficulty. ‘A promise he’d made to that woman. I made a promise to Ed and I broke it.’
‘You told the police about John Penshurst.’
‘The police had better do their job.’
‘You reminded Margot Lancaster about Penshurst too.’
‘No one else was going to. She got away with murder.’
‘How did she do that?’
‘Don’t tell me it’s not easy enough to take a man whose health is failing, and to harass, or frighten him to death, then dress it up to look like a heart attack.’
‘What was Carmichael’s promise to Margot Lancaster?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me.’
‘But you guessed that it had to do with CleanNet.’
‘Why else would Ed suddenly turn round and start promoting the company?’
‘You told me all he did was attend the presentation.’
Dollimore glanced at me the way a tiger might consider a mouse, too small to be a meal unless he was desperate.
He swallowed as though the movement hurt and said, ‘There’s all those missing years, you see, years when Ed and I lost touch. Madam disappeared after that business in Sydney, or Ed believed she’d disappeared. He couldn’t get anyone to tell him where she was, except that she was supposed to have gone overseas after the coroner’s inquest. He tried to find out where. And then he went himself.’
‘Where?’
‘Wherever he thought she might turn up. Europe, anyway, I found out later. She hadn’t left Australia at all, as it turned out, but she’d changed her name, and her appearance. Become a blonde. She’d told him she was going to Europe before it all happened. Perhaps she was intending to. He used up his savings searching for her.’
Dollimore swallowed again, then winced.
I brought him a glass of water, asking, as I handed it to him, ‘Why would Margot want to kill Eden Carmichael?’
‘Money. I’m sure he told her he was leaving her his flat.’
‘Do you have a key?’
‘What makes you think that? No, Ed had areas of his life that were completely private. His flat was one. In all the years I’ve known him, I could count the times I’ve been there on one hand.’
Dollimore read my expression and went on, ‘Ed knew his days on earth were numbered. If he kept newspaper clippings, letters, anything like that—I’m not saying she did write to him, but I’ve wondered—I think he probably burnt them after his first heart attack. However much Ed might have acted as though he didn’t care, he was afraid of dying.’
‘What about his office? Could he have kept letters there?’
‘Too public.’
‘A safe-deposit box?’
‘There’d have to be a key. I asked the police about it when they interviewed me. They wouldn’t say, but I doubt it somehow. I think if the police had found papers, letters, that threw some light on what had happened, then they’d have asked me about them.’
I agreed that it was likely, then pointed out, ‘Margot must have known Carmichael was in Canberra when she bought the club. Do you think that’s why she moved here?’
‘I don’t know, but once she was here, she set out to trap him.’
‘She wouldn’t have sex with him.’
‘That could have been Ed’s salvation.’
‘How?’
‘It could have been the moment when the spell was broken.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘It’s what I believe.’
‘My problem is that I can’t connect Margot Lancaster to CleanNet,’ I said. ‘Can you?’
Dollimore stared at me without replying.
‘That’s what you were looking for when you rang me the first time, wasn’t it?’
Dollimore still didn’t reply, but I knew that I was right.
‘The other girl Carmichael saw, was her name Jenny Bishop?’
‘Ed never told me. I wouldn’t have forgotten if he had.’
I pictured Dollimore going from one bar to another on that Tuesday, searching for his friend. I felt that I’d misjudged this proud, censorious man, and underestimated the lengths he might go to once his natural inclination to obey the law had loosened, or a hole had been gnawed in it wide enough for another Ken Dollimore, a more impulsive, less predictable version, to slip through.
‘It was you who warned Senator Bryant’s office that something was wrong, wasn’t it? You phoned and said you thought it might be better if the meeting with Carmichael was postponed.’
Dollimore looked about to deny this, then said, ‘I—all right, yes, it was. I was trying to protect him,’ he continued woodenly. ‘I suspected the appointment had something to do with the promise he’d made. I had to get to him first and find out what it was.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’
‘I should have, I know. I was going to, then I felt ashamed. If I hadn’t rung the senator’s office, Ed would have kept the appointment. He wouldn’t have gone to that club. He’d still be alive.’
‘It would be easy enough for the police to find out.’
‘I thought they would. I keep wondering why they haven’t asked me.’
‘Perhaps because they’re satisfied that your friend’s heart would have got him sooner, rather than later,’ I said gently. ‘Was Carmichael going to recommend that Senator Bryant include CleanNet on his department’s list?’
Dollimore’s shrug said that this was a possibility he’d thought of and discarded.
‘You’re thinking that alone wouldn’t have accounted for Carmichael’s distress.’
‘And McFadden didn’t need it. He was doing a perfectly good job of lobbying on his own.’
‘Could someone have given Margot Lancaster some shares? If they were a gift, they wouldn’t show up on ASIC’s records.’
‘Yes, but who?’
We exchanged another glance. It was possible that Margot had been given shares by a grateful client, but the chances of either of us tracing such an individual were slight. And from what I’d seen of Margot, it seemed unlikely that she would have involved Eden Carmichael for such an indirect, elusive gain. Margot wanted to sell her club, and she might need extra money for some reason as yet unknown to me. But still.
‘All I can do is keep on looking,’ Dollimore said in a voice that was suddenly exhausted.
A few minutes later, I showed him to the door and watched him walk away, hunched and slow, with none of his confidence or style.
I longed to get into my car, not stop or slow down, until I reached the sea. I went back to my office and typed up our conversation. I did not switch on any lights. The computer gave off just enough, and it was a story suited to the darkness.