Catherine Meiklejohn has recalled Kelly to Sydney to cover the new ICAC hearings. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is always worth attending, and these particular hearings, concerning the granting of liquor and gaming licences to organised crime figures, were inspired by one of Kelly’s predecessors on the Times crime desk. But Kelly finds it hard to concentrate on the complicated trail of dealings that the lawyers are attempting to untangle. Her mind keeps returning to Donna Fenning. Harry hasn’t got back to her. Her own attempts to find a record of a Karen Schaefer in the country north of Newcastle have produced nothing, and it’s preying on her mind.
When she was maybe eight or nine, playing hide-and-seek with three younger cousins, she climbed into an old disused chest freezer in the garage. For twenty minutes she congratulated herself on her clever hiding place; then she started to get stiff and uncomfortable, the air hot and stale. She pushed at the lid and found she couldn’t open it from the inside. It occurred to her just how far out of earshot the garage was from where her parents were pottering in the house. In the muffled dark her breathing became short and panicky. By the time one of the cousins heard her frantic banging on the inside of the freezer she was convinced she was going to die.
Since then, she’s had a problem with confined spaces. It’s been reinforced by various incidents, including the time she allowed her lover, a married man, to lock her in the boot of his car while he dropped off his wife and kids before going back to her place. It seemed a hysterically funny idea to a young, slightly pissed Kelly. Until the steel lid slammed shut.
So when Joost Potgeiter lowered her down into that dark sink hole after he’d grown tired of using her, her terror had deep roots. It was as if he had seen into her soul. Read her most paralysing fears.
And now the thought of Potgeiter’s accomplice, reborn as Karen Schaefer, living untroubled by her past crimes makes Kelly feel physically ill. The only slender thread that connects Karen to that past is Kelly herself. She dwells upon it constantly. Come Sunday she will drive back up to Newcastle to wait once again outside Bottlebrush Gardens nursing home, armed this time with one of the Times’ telephoto cameras and a furious determination to nail the bitch.