Chapter 31

 

 

Mrs Roycroft stood balanced on a chair alongside her lounge room wall. Finally, after five minutes trying, she’d managed to pop open the air conditioner’s filter. The entrance bell’s jingle soon put an end to that small triumph.

When she opened the front door, she assumed the casually dressed man behind the flyscreen was here to dig up dirt on her daughter and the Fortune currency fraud. The NO DOOR KNOCKERS sticker usually scared everybody else off. She’d grant him a courteous thirty seconds.

“Hello. Mrs Roycroft? I’m Ewen Langtree from the Western Times. Is it possible to ask you a few questions?”

Behind the flywire, the journalist looked like a fencer on the Olympics, the black mesh covering his face as he stabbed away.

The city’s afternoon heat clawed her face, her arms, tried to push past into her house. Grief concerning her daughter’s suicide had wilted, but anger remained. Anger drains. She knew she sounded tired. “I can’t help you.”

“I won’t take a minute of your time.”

“With you lot, a minute is all it takes to conjure a whole heap of heartache.”

“I know it still must pain you, and I’m sorry to intrude. You see, I didn’t come to discuss your daughter; I want to talk about Zeya Hogmyre. Mrs Roycroft. I’ve been investigating...”

She closed the door. Still clutching the handle, she leant in and rested her forehead against the painted panelling, the wood hard against her skull. She imagined it smoothing her furrows. She circled her forehead against the woodwork, more intent on massaging her mind than listening to the voice behind the door. Until the voice said, “Trust me, something isn’t right.” It froze her massaging. She reached for the handle, opened the door and stared past the flywire into the front yard’s hot light. “You’re darn right something was wrong.” The journalist, hand on the front gate, shot her a compassionate backward glance over his shoulder.

She watched him walk back to the house. “And what do you think was wrong?”

He stepped into the shade. “It’s well known Zeya had an affair with your daughter. Zeya’s gay. And I’m guessing, if the guy had an affair, it would be with a man, not a woman.”

Mrs Roycroft held open the flyscreen and ushered the journalist in. “All I know, Mr Langtree, is that no affair or currency fraud would drive my daughter to suicide. She loved life as a young mother. I knew my daughter. The police didn’t.”