Fingerprinting

The police turned up in our section at morning-tea time the next day.

At first glance, the detectives looked like two well-cut suits joined together at the shoulders, Siamese twins who had miraculously grown to adulthood. Then they separated into a policeman and woman conferring soberly together.

Detective Constable Gleeson was cool, unsmiling. Her expression never seemed to change. I watched her face while she grasped my hand by the wrist to bring it right over the ink pad, then, holding the base of my thumb, firmly pressed my thumb pad down.

It was like those stamp pads small children play with, covering their fingers as well as the stamps and paper with red and green and blue ink, enjoying the mess as much as the smudged shapes of rabbits and giraffes that they produce.

I wondered how many times Detective Constable Gleeson had taken fingerprints, smelling the nervous sweat of suspects under metallic ink while a line of people filed past, polite, affronted or guilty-looking in spite of themselves. I guessed she wouldn’t speak or interfere unless it was to tell the person that it hadn’t worked, to try again. No twitch of facial muscles, no smile of reassurance or grimace of distaste escaped her.

What if the police found my prints on Rae’s computer keyboard? Would they think that unusual? Had they been told about the public files we all used? Suddenly our working arrangements seemed open to a number of interpretations.

Before she left, Constable Gleeson went through Rae’s desk and rubbish bin. Ivan told me about it. Gleeson had left Rae’s door open a crack, and he’d peeked through it and seen her.

‘Where was Deirdre?’ I asked.

Ivan didn’t know. He laughed coldly, flicking a fingernail against my computer and said, ‘Don’t they know the clues are all in here?’

. . .

Detective Sergeant Hall interviewed me in a perfectly fitted dark blue suit that smelt strongly of dry-cleaning fluid. The cut and obvious expense of his clothes indicated a man conscious of his appearance. At the same time, he looked and sounded bored. It was only when he asked me about my relationship with Rae Evans that his voice deepened into something like curiosity or interest.

Hall had chosen, or been offered, a small room off the reception area on the first floor to conduct his interviews. There was nothing in it but a table holding a tape recorder and a folder, a computer that wasn’t plugged in, and two black swivel chairs. As soon as the policeman had shaken my hand, leaning across the table to do so, he sat down in one chair with a scarcely audible sigh and pulled the other chair close, indicating it to me. I felt too nervous and unsure of myself to move it back.

When he asked a question, Hall held his face right up next to mine, the way some children do when they want to tell you something. It was extraordinarily disconcerting. I hoped that, by not reacting at all, by staying calm, I’d make him drop the tactic, switch to something else.

He kept his voice low, so that if I wanted to hear every word I had to listen carefully, couldn’t pull back too far. I licked my lips and passed my hand across my forehead.

‘Does Ms Evans have any enemies that you’re aware of?’ Hall asked, making Ms sound like an insult.

‘No,’ I answered.

He looked at me and waited, as though my awareness of what day it was might well be incorrect. He would have already spoken to Felix, Jim Wilcox the division head, the Deputy Secretary and the Secretary too for all I knew, starting at the top and working his way down. He would have gathered people’s opinions of Rae and would know that she was unpopular. He might have been told that she’d singled me out for some reason. Did this mean that from one word he knew that I was lying?

‘How would you describe your working relationships, Mrs Mahoney?’

‘I’d say they were cordial.’

‘You were happy to get the job here?’

‘Very happy.’

Hall was clean-shaven, with a face that I could imagine sculptors being drawn to, chunky without being fat, bones squared off at the jaw and temples, eyes wide-spaced with flawless whites, as though their clarity in close-up could bore a confession out of you. His hair was dark brown with a flickering of grey.

‘What about the one with all the hair?’

‘Excuse me?’

Hall opened the folder and referred to a list of names. ‘Semyonov. Does he own a suit?’

‘You’d have to ask Mr Semyonov that.’

‘Law unto himself, is he? Bit of an eccentric? Do you ever discuss your problems with him?’

‘Which problems?’ I asked.

Hall moved his face a fraction closer. ‘There seems to be a feeling around that these—ah, viruses, are the work of students. Local students?’

‘Whose feeling?’ I said.

The policeman leant even closer again, giving me the message that my responses were getting us nowhere, and it was his job to ask the questions. I realised that my fingers were clenched tight. Deliberately, giving the action all my attention, I unclenched them and moved my chair back.

‘Evans,’ the Detective Sergeant said, his eyes flicking to my chair’s new position on the floor. ‘Is she worried?’

I felt an absurd sense of victory that he hadn’t moved his chair.

‘Worried about what might happen after the elections?’ Hall continued. ‘Possibility of having her budget cut to ribbons?’

I stared straight at him and said, ‘I think you might be mistaken about the sorts of things Rae Evans would discuss with me.’

Hall raised an eyebrow, and I moved my hands in my lap, pointlessly clasping and re-clasping my fingers. I thought he’d finished with me, but suddenly he growled, ‘And what’s your opinion of Access Computing?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Is it a bona fide organisation?’

‘I’ve no reason to doubt that it is.’

‘Have you had anything to do with them?’

‘No.’

‘This Angela Carlishaw? Have you spoken to her?’

‘No.’

‘But you reckon she’s fair dinkum?’

I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn’t help myself. The detective sergeant had responded to my cryptic answers by becoming more aggressive. I couldn’t blame him for this. In his position, I might well have done the same. Why hadn’t I been more forthcoming when he asked if Rae had enemies? Why hadn’t I stated plainly that in my view yes, she had several, and rattled them off? I didn’t know, except that my first impulse when faced with a police interview had been to say as little as possible.

Now I compounded my mistake by saying in a loud voice, ‘If I was planning to make a bogus grant to an organisation, the very least I’d do would be to make it payable to a real person.’

I stomped back to my office, heart racing, sweat between my toes.

Ivan patted me on the shoulder, made a sympathetic face and said, ‘Copper get to you?’

‘He asked me about your hair.’

‘Sure he did.’ Ivan primped, pretending to look coy and flattered. ‘Only wear it like this to put pigs off the scent.’

Ivan had his own theory about the police search. ‘Knew they couldn’t find anything, but they had to put up some sort of show. Did you watch their faces? They were just as pissed off at being here as we were with them.’

When it came to Ivan’s turn, the detective sergeant’s manner didn’t seem to bother him.

‘Your BO probably saved you,’ I said crossly.

Ivan grinned and said, in his old teasing way, that he’d suggested to Constable Gleeson a more efficient way of putting their fingerprinting files on computer.

‘How did she take that?’ I asked.

‘Philosophically.’

. . .

I guessed that the man in the crumpled blue suit talking to Detective Sergeant Hall in the corridor was another policeman. He was much shorter than Hall, and shorter than Detective Constable Gleeson as well. The two men stood conferring together in a shallow alcove by the lifts, Hall stooping a little and the shorter, stockier man shifting his weight around and moving his arms, his face half-hidden under a wide-brimmed Akubra hat. He managed to look unyielding and vulnerable at the same time.

It was what happened next that made me remember the smaller man. In mid-sentence, he stumbled against Hall, knocking his arm and throwing him off balance. Hall moved quickly and gently to steady him and help him upright. Nobody had pushed him, and there’d been nothing for him to stumble over. But I had the feeling that neither man was surprised; that whatever it was had happened before.

. . .

After Di Trapani’s interview with the police, she disappeared into the warm arms of the travel centre, recovering from hard questions or catching up on smokes. When she came back upstairs she looked more withdrawn and miserable than I’d ever seen her.

The atmosphere in our small office was thickly quiet. The words of the introduction I was trying to write blurred and wriggled in front of my eyes. I glanced up through the window at the trees in Northbourne Avenue. There will be a point, I thought, when the questions will cease. The police will have found out all they can. The inquiry will be over. Maybe it will be next week or the week after. Maybe I won’t know until the questions stop, but I will know it’s happened. Like a sponge layer cake that collapses.

I felt very much alone, too frightened of incriminating myself to try and talk to Di or Bambi, even Ivan. My belief in Rae Evans’s innocence began to seem slippery, dodgy, unsustainable.

Outside a strong wind, growing stronger, tormented the trees. People hurried, many of them half-crouching, along the footpaths and across the street.

I began to think that maybe the approach the police had taken wasn’t so silly after all. Taking fingerprints gave them a chance to watch us together and separately, to note whether we co-operated or objected, whether we were inclined to laugh at the proceedings or take them ­seriously. If this was a tactic, rather than a way of gaining information valuable in itself, it must be because they suspected one of us.

. . .

There was a phone message waiting for me when I got back to my office after lunch. Peter was in the sick bay at school. I had to bring him back to work.

I found a spare chair and sat Peter down beside me while I rang for an appointment at the doctor’s, Peter complaining of a sore throat and earache.

‘G’day there.’ I heard Guy Harmer’s voice as I was putting down the phone. ‘Ladies got you working, have they?’

I turned to see Peter hesitate for a second, then give Guy a specu­lative grin. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’ve got tonsil—tonsil—’

‘Tonsillitis?’

Peter nodded, taking Guy in from the top of his smooth head to his buffed Italian shoes.

I introduced them. Guy made a sympathetic face and said, ‘Tonsillitis hurts, doesn’t it?’

‘A bit,’ Peter admitted.

‘Would you like a butter menthol?’ Guy reached into a pocket of his coat and brought out an orange-and-blue packet. He handed the packet to Peter, saying, ‘Vanessa loves them.’

‘Who’s Vanessa?’ Peter asked, taking one of the sweets and beginning to suck on it experimentally.

‘My daughter.’

‘Oh,’ said Peter. ‘Has she got a sore throat?’

‘She did have,’ Guy said, taking back the packet. He glanced at me. ‘Well, I best be making tracks.’

‘Thanks,’ said Peter with his mouth full.

I felt grateful to Guy for taking the trouble to notice Peter and say a few friendly words to him. Neither Di nor Bambi had bothered. And certainly no other passer-by had stopped to say hello.

A public-service office was no place for an 8-year-old. But I couldn’t believe that it had never happened before, that I was the first mother ever to bring a sick child to work with her. Because of Guy’s friend­liness, the department was suddenly a nicer place to be. I’d never asked myself what was behind Guy’s glossy centrefold surface, or even if he was capable of kindness.

I had a meeting at three-thirty and I asked Ivan if he’d keep an eye on Peter for an hour or so.

When I came back, Peter was engrossed in a computer game and Ivan was on the phone. I mimed thank you, then asked Peter how he was feeling.

Peter grunted without taking his eyes off the screen.

Ivan finished his conversation, hung up and walked across to stand behind us. ‘A bit like Macdraw,’ he said. ‘But a tad more Oz content.’

‘Did you write it?’ I picked up the box. A logo in the corner looked familiar. ‘It says here Compic.’ I pointed to the bright pink and green lettering across the top left-hand corner of the box. Peter had dragged down a paintbrush, and was jumping up and down and crowing, ‘Man! This is excellent!’

Ivan said, ‘Compic gave me the chance to do something creative for a change.’

A credible outline of a dog appeared on the screen, a black dog with a big head. Peter laboured over the teeth and ears, but the smaller the features the harder he found it. The creature ended up with great long fangs, and ears that might have suited a giant rabbit. But Peter was so pleased with himself he could hardly stay still long enough to finish it. He leapt about in front of the printer, calling excitedly as he watched the thick lines taking shape on the paper.

‘Have you done any recent work for Compic?’ I asked Ivan.

‘Here he is! Here he is!’ cried Peter. ‘I’ll call him Deefa! Like Paul Jennings’ story!’

Ivan put an arm round Peter’s shoulders while he shut the program down. I watched the way the fingers of his other hand curled around his keyboard, fronds of an underwater plant as the tide came in.

‘Relax,’ he told me. ‘You’re a prickly little woman, Sand. You know that? An echidna woman.’

‘I wish people would stop saying that.’

I wondered if Ivan’s beanies, the winkle-pickers, the kingfisher jumper and the rest, had been a hangover from some past gesture or mood of defiance. Now that Ivan was discarding them, neither of us was quite sure what would take their place. Defiance can form the core of a person’s character, so that you don’t know when, if ever, they’re going to get beyond it. And then they can confound you by changing from one minute to the next.

Me, I have to take in new experiences a little at a time. I get confused when a lot is happening at once. Confused and frightened. I have to absorb information slowly, resisting, not always successfully, the impulse to run away and hide behind what I already know.

That evening, when Peter was getting ready for cubs, I became aware of an odd resemblance between him and Ivan. When Peter pulled his cap down hard on his head, his hair stuck out under it and to the sides, the way Ivan’s used to under his striped beanie.

‘I wonder what Dad’s doing right now,’ Peter said, avoiding looking at me by fidgeting with his blue-and-yellow cub scarf.

‘I guess he’s getting up. He might be having breakfast.’

I expected Peter to laugh, as he had before, tickled by the time ­difference. I wanted him to laugh.

Instead, he looked straight at me and asked, ‘When’s Dad coming home?’

I told him, though I’d told him a dozen times already, and he started chattering, telling me a story about a trip he and Derek had made to the Shoalhaven last summer, pretending to forget how often he’d already told me; or perhaps he did forget. But I had the feeling, listening, watching my son, that he was buying time, occupying my attention while he worked out just what questions he could ask and expect a truthful answer.

Ivan didn’t present himself as a figure of success to Peter, someone to be admired. Sure, he knew a lot of things, and some he was passionate about; but there was no demand to follow in his footsteps. I don’t think anything I’d ever said to Peter impressed him as much as Ivan’s story of travel and confusion, and failing to learn to read. It wasn’t told as a cautionary tale—simply, that was the boy I was.

Ivan’s face reminded me of a landscape with mountains and vol­canoes. But it’s his mixture of awkwardness and defiance that has stayed with me, as though those two qualities formed one necessary edge. As though Ivan couldn’t, and wouldn’t, decide which personality suited him best. He had to dare people to pigeon-hole him. And then he had to dare himself to live up, or down, to their expectations.

I think life for Ivan wasn’t what it is for most of us—the tension of relationships, the pull and counter-pull and drift of love and responsibility—but it was his own personality that held him in thrall. His persona, his character, was a piece of elastic, to be pulled and then let snap.

He had his own special greeting for me in the mornings.

:-)

When I went into Peter’s room that night to clear away roll-up wrappers and empty fruit boxes, our new computer screen was a huge kaleidoscopic eye, noting my every move.

Ivan had brought Peter a christening present, a spelling program he’d designed himself, with funny cartoon characters sprouting the words from the tops of their heads. The common words Peter had trouble with grew legs and arms and made farting noises. Peter had pronounced it awesome.

Gail Trembath phoned while I was brushing my teeth.

‘I rang around some outworkers,’ she said. ‘Like you asked me to, you know?’

I apologised for having a mouthful of toothpaste, then began to thank her. She cut me off.

‘Was quizzing one about her jobs, her kids, sticking to that brief you gave me. She told me her name and address had found its way on to a mailing list for a software company. Scads of junk mail, brochures for stuff she couldn’t possibly afford. Phone calls at night. She told them to stop, but apparently the message was rather slow in getting through.’

‘What was the name of the company?’

‘Compic.’

‘Compic,’ I repeated. ‘Had you heard of them before?’

‘Looked them up in the book. Local outfit.’

‘And?’

‘And?’ Gail’s voice was mocking. ‘I checked to see if we’ve got any of their stuff at work.’

‘Have you?’

‘A CD-ROM. Some crap about meat pies.’

I laughed and said, ‘Of course.’