13

CHAPTER 13 MIGHT bring bad luck. There is no Chapter 13.

14

ON LIFE’S JOURNEY the only person who will piss you off more than the directionless is someone who is certain of where they are going.

Cassandra’s ‘for sure’ navigation took us an hour, though it was only twelve kilometres from the pub. After dozens of misturns, we parked down the road from what turned out to be a townhouse, not a unit. Townhouses are more welcoming than units. Many, even in middle-class suburbs such as Dupont’s, do not have the elaborate security of the modern block of units.

I hid in the bushes and let Cassandra ring the bell. After about a minute, a light went on and Dupont came to the door in cotton pyjamas which had various pictures of Scottish singer Annie Lennox printed across them. I had never seen PJs on a performer’s merchandise table so I wondered what they were about. Before I could ask, Cassandra yelled, ‘Surprise!’

This made the lecturer open the door wider, even as a startled frown crossed his face. The girl skipped over to me, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me inside. Dupont, bewildered and still clutching the doorknob, swivelled his body to stare at us. Admitting his bafflement, he threw his hands in the air, and quietly shut the door.

Cassandra turned on Dupont, as he wiped the tiredness out of his eyes. ‘Why’d you kill ProJoe?’ she accused.

Dupont could only begin, ‘I . . .’

Cassandra continued the attack. ‘Don’t lie to us. Steele’s got a gun.’

I put myself between the girl and Dupont, and put my arm on her shoulder to tell her to back off.

‘I haven’t got a gun,’ I said calmly to Dupont. ‘I don’t like guns. Guns kill people.’

Cassandra challenged my last words. ‘Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.’

‘Fine,’ I answered, ‘the next time I want a personalised T-shirt printed, I’ll remember that.’

I looked at Dupont and waited for his contribution. He shook his head. ‘As if I’d kill Lavinsky. I would not give him that satisfaction.’

A novel denial, but I wanted more. ‘Though he was going to expose you for sexual blackmail of students. It would have finished your academic career.’

I thought he would lie, but he was the sort of bloke who liked to verbally surprise. ‘That hypocrite Lavinsky would never put me in.’

‘Are you saying you had something on him, too? You never mentioned it when you told him to get off your back.’

Dupont answered casually. ‘I may have taken some advantage of my office. Nothing worse than any employee using the resources of his employer for a little outside activity.’

‘I doubt if you could sneak that argument past your Ethics Committee,’ I said. ‘You might have killed Lavinsky for less than what we know about you.’

‘He would never put me in. I knew it; he knew it. Lavinsky was a lecher at heart. He traded his brains for sex, and I know which party got the better of that deal. So did he. He was guilty about his own indiscretions. On and on he would go about the beauty of fresh young minds. He was after something, but if it were minds, he didn’t know much about anatomy.’

‘But he told you to stop, Dupont.’

‘Repeatedly, ad nauseam, continually. And I have stopped.’

‘Because of Lavinsky?’

‘Because I’m living with AIDS.’

Cassandra or I must have given a funny look. ‘Oh yes, I am, or was, bisexual. I’m now asexual, though I don’t think that’s the right word, because that would make me an amoeba or some such thing.’

Even if it all were true, he could still be sexually active, with a continuing reason to kill Lavinsky.

‘Couldn’t you practice safe sex?’

‘I did for a while, but it became a bother. I discovered that abstinence has pleasures not unlike promiscuity. Abstinence is its own reward. As time passes, hypocrites like Lavinsky won’t have examples with any currency with which to persecute me.’

I was dealing with a very sick man here, with a chronic illness that predated his AIDS. But illness is no crime, and I had to call it one way or another. My call was that Dupont was not a killer. I told him we were going, and asked him not to call the police.

When we got out the door, Cassandra spoke sarcastically. ‘Well, that went well. Good interviewing technique, Steele. He was lying through his teeth. That crap about AIDS. God, he only had to mention that and you went all soft and blubbery. What a sook.’

‘You finished?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Why didn’t you hit him? Or at least make him think you had a gun? Like I said.’

I was about to ask her to shut up, when I heard someone calling my name across the dark. Turning, I saw Dupont standing in the doorway, spot-lit against the night. He screamed at me, ‘The cowardly lecher does it with a compliment, Hill.’

I yelled back. ‘Didn’t Kim Wilde say that?’

He shut the door on the darkness.

Cassandra was still in my ear about my slack efforts, but what Dupont said twigged my memory of one of Lavinsky’s raves. The professor was disappointed in how students, and even academics, compared two things without considering the degrees that made them different. Like two killings with guns.

Malone had killed his lover with a fast draw from a drawer, but the spray of bullets could have gone anywhere. Dumb bad luck killed Paul Franks. There were a few bullet holes around Lavinsky’s heart too. But also one in the head. That was the difference. The killer left her signature, and I figured I had a match for it.

Cassandra protested against my driving her home, but she looked tired and appeared glad to see me pull up to her mother’s house, in another middle-class suburb. No lights on here.

Hoping to be caught by an outraged parent, Cassandra invited me in for coffee. I accepted. I had a couple of sips before the parental radar kicked in. Jan Russo, in nightgown, appeared in a corner of the lounge. I had not heard her footsteps and she announced her presence with three short coughs and a shake of her head. She ordered her daughter to bed. Cassandra refused. I asked Mum if I could have a few parting words alone with Cassandra. Jan Russo begrudgingly withdrew.

‘Cassandra, could you wag school tomorrow arvo. Meet me in your mother’s office at 3:15, awlright?’

I said I had to talk with her mother, but that she wasn’t to know Cassandra was coming the next day. The intrigue was enough for her to agree to go to bed. I continued to sip my coffee as I watched the teenager enter her bedroom, out of hearing range of adult conversation. Her mother reappeared in the lounge as soon as Cassandra shut her bedroom door.

‘Well, aren’t we the persuasive one?’ said Jan Russo, settling into an armchair.

‘Do you know where your daughter goes gallivanting around at night?’

She was affronted. ‘Of course I do.’

I took that as a no.

‘What I didn’t know, Steve, is that she’s been hanging around with a murderer the police are looking for.’

So the cops had found Lavinsky’s body. Homicide was probably still at Queensland Uni, trying to fit me for the deed.

‘The police are always looking for a murderer,’ I said. ‘Sometimes they find the right one. Who’s dead this time?’

She smiled thinly. ‘You won’t be on your own, protesting your innocence from a prison cell.’

I let that pass, putting on a braver front than I had a right to. ‘Dupont has already put his hand up for killing Lavinsky. Tomorrow, he’ll make it official before the coppers.’

Jan Russo didn’t blink. ‘That’s it, then. It’s all over. Goodnight.’

She did not move from her armchair.

‘Why do you think he did it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think he did it. I don’t think he confessed. I think you want some sort of reaction from me.’

‘Yair, you’re right, Jan. By the way it’s Steele, not Steve. And I do know who killed Lavinsky.’

She countered well. ‘I should think you would.’ She was obviously sticking to the story, popular with almost everyone, that I did it. But I was getting somewhere, because she could not hide a look of worry.

‘Cassandra doesn’t think I did it,’ I said.

‘Leave Cassie out of this. You seem to think, quite ignorantly, that I am a neglectful mother, because I allow my daughter her freedom. You may know she is only fifteen, but do you know what her IQ is? What was your IQ when you were fifteen, Steve, Steele?’

‘We were a deprived lot in the orphanage. The nuns would never let us have an IQ.’

She ignored that remark. ‘Cassandra has an IQ of 155. That’s approaching genius territory. So I owe it to her, I owe it to Australia, to let her mind roam free. Apart from that, I would do anything to nurture and protect my daughter.’

‘Including covering up murder,’ I said.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.

‘That’s a good tip. I’ll try to remember that in future. Only, first, I need to know if Clarissa Dunne has classes tomorrow.’

‘I think so. In fact I’m sure she has. At least one at 2 o’clock I know of, Introduction to Australian Society, in Lecture Theatre three. I’ve given a couple of those classes.’

‘And what about you, Jan, have you got any class around three tomorrow?’

‘I don’t think so. Two to three is the last one, I think.’

‘So what do you do between classes?’

‘I don’t know why you’re asking all these questions. I’m usually in my office. It really is getting late. I’d offer you more coffee, but . . .’

I could take a hint. I was in the dark night again, but spoke before she could close the door on me.

‘Why did you kill Joseph Lavinsky?’

Jan Russo shut the door in my face.

___o0o___

I WAS HANGING around Lecture Theatre three at ten to three. I soon spotted the red wavy hair of Clarissa Dunne, one of a group of students happily withdrawing from their Introduction to Australian Society. Dunne spotted me and excused herself from her companions.

She smiled. ‘How are you, Steele? We could have used you in that lecture. Boring. Got time for a coffee?’

I had time. Clarissa Dunne certainly was not letting a little murder interfere with our contribution to café society.

Over our cups, I asked, ‘Clarissa, what was the relationship between you and Lavinsky?’

Her face clouded. ‘I don’t think I did anything wrong. He’d buy me things, but I only accepted them because it upset him when I didn’t. You don’t know what it’s like at uni, Steele. A lot of us students are totally broke, living on government assistance. I work two part-time jobs, which really makes it hard to find study time. And all Joe did was shout me dinner and some clothes. Only once did I have to ask for some money towards the rent. And . . .’

I was starting to see where Clarissa Dunne was coming from.

‘I know bugger all about uni, Clarissa. I always thought you were kids from rich families, just doing the apprenticeship to carry on the tradition of privilege. I guess I was wrong.’

‘You are wrong, Steele. My father works for the railways, and Mum is only part-time.’

I mustered as much sympathy as I could. ‘I guess you really shouldn’t worry about what you and Lavinsky had going. You only have to answer to yourself.’

That cheered her up. ‘I probably overreact. I just want to get ahead on my own ability. This university is like a game of snakes and ladders. Personality, politics, physical appearance, family background, can all hold you down or push you up. For a lot of students, their entire future is at stake. Has anybody told you about Steven Dupont?’

I nodded to let her know I was aware of Dupont’s activities, and she continued. ‘His kind is the worst, but there’s all sorts of pressure on students to get the best results, any way they can. I just don’t want to play that game, whether I’m sliding on a snake or climbing a ladder. Fortunately, I’ve been surviving with medium grades so far.’

‘On more mundane matters, Clarissa, how good a shot are you?’

‘You mean with a gun? I’ve never had a real gun in my hand in my life, Steele.’

‘Yair, that’s what I reckoned. You know, you could probably end up a professor like Lavinsky. You seem smart enough.’

‘Maybe in twenty years’ time. For the next five years, I’ll be living in poverty and finishing my arts-law. Then I’m going to live like a queen, keeping rich corporate criminals out of jail.’

‘Someone’s got to do it,’ I said. I glanced at the clock. ‘Better go, Clarissa. Keep up those medium grades.’

After I left, I realised Clarissa probably did not know Lavinsky was dead. I had not mentioned it and the coppers would have told uni staff who did know to keep it to themselves. I wondered how she would react, but only for a moment. I was more concerned to track down someone who did know Lavinsky was dead, his killer.

Hiding around a corner, I watched Jan Russo enter her office at ten past three. Steven Dupont was with her. No coppers in sight. I hung around for another five minutes for Cassandra Russo, but she was a no-show. I went down the corridor and tested Russo’s door, to find it open. The department head and Dupont stopped talking as soon as I entered. From the shifty looks on their faces, it was a fair bet they had been talking about me.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said cheerily. ‘So this is where the heavy-duty thinking goes down.’

‘You can knock, you know,’ Jan Russo said.

‘It’s a surprise. I bet Joseph Lavinsky was surprised when someone put a bullet through his brain.’

Before Jan Russo could answer, her daughter Cassandra entered the room. ‘Surprise!’ she said. I reminded her that she forgot to knock, while her mother asked if she had been suspended from school again.

Dupont told me he was calling the police this time.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘So they can arrest Cassandra for truancy, or Jan for murder?’

‘No,’ said Dupont. ‘So they can take you down for murder, and for stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of computer equipment. Which, by the way, no one has mentioned to the police. Yet.’

‘I did it,’ Cassandra said. We all turned to look at the girl.

I thought she was going to try to cover for me about the computers, but she went on. ‘I killed ProJoe.’

‘Cassie, don’t say any more,’ her mother warned.

Dupont threw in his two cents’ worth. ‘Yes, that’s enough, Cassandra.’

She ignored them both. ‘What will happen to me, Steele?’ she said in a frightened sad voice.

Jan Russo interrupted. ‘You are a minor, Cassie. Nothing serious is going to happen.’

I had a suggestion. ‘You could say Lavinsky sexually assaulted you, Cassandra.’

‘He raped her, that’s what he did,’ Jan Russo said enthusiastically.

‘He didn’t rape me. He didn’t sexually assault me.’

‘Then why did you do it?’ I asked.

Cassandra looked glum. All she could say was, ‘Just because.’

‘That’ll go down well as an excuse,’ I said. ‘And where did you get the gun?’

I thought she wasn’t going to answer me, but after a few seconds she said, ‘At the club, the Go Kat Klub.’

‘You got it from a stranger in a club,’ I repeated. ‘That’s an old favourite for the police. They always believe that one.’

‘It was a woman. I got it from a woman at the club,’ Cassandra said, defying me to call her a liar.

She was lying, all right.

‘Why didn’t you just use one of your mother’s guns?’ I asked.

Cassandra appeared bewildered. She looked at her mother and pleaded desperately. ‘I didn’t tell him, Mum. Honestly, I didn’t.’

‘But you did, Cassandra,’ I contradicted. ‘When you said “guns don’t kill people; people kill people”. That was so different from the way you speak, and what you have to say. You know, it’s funny, no matter how cool teenagers are, they still repeat what their parents say, just like when they were little children. Or maybe you saw it on the wall of your mother’s gun club. How long has your mother been in a club, Cassandra?’

Jan Russo answered for herself. ‘Since before Cassie was born. A lot of women I knew were learning martial arts for self-defence, but that was too much of a hassle. So I joined a gun club, though I only told my closest friends. But how did you know?’

‘Lavinsky told me before he died.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Russo said.

‘I don’t mean straight before he died. You made sure he wasn’t doing any talking at all. But he told me earlier, that two things that look the same can be different by degrees. And two killings by bullets in the last thirty-six hours were different in one respect.’

‘Two killings?’ asked Cassandra. ‘You said no one was killed at the club.’

‘I lied. But, as a matter of historical record, I doubt we will find any mention in the papers of the death of Paul Franks at the Go Kat Klub. He was killed by a spray of bullets. Unluckily for him, they landed in the wrong places. But Lavinsky had one neat bullet hole through the middle of his forehead. Lavinsky’s killer had expertise with a gun. She probably killed the professor with the first shot to the head, and just pumped the other bullets into him, like I might have done, as the police were meant to think.’

Jan Russo took in a long breath and I thought, here we go, here comes the justification.

‘I would never have let Cassandra go to prison, even a prison for minors. But as far as I’m concerned, Lavinsky did rape her. Cassie is still a child. Her intelligence works against her. She won’t admit how inexperienced she is. Joseph took advantage of that. He did damage that could be with my daughter for the rest of her life. He could have side-tracked Cassie from the great tasks she’s destined for.’

I did not state the obvious: that knowing your mother had murdered someone you admired might give the teenager a few sleepless nights.

Jan Russo lamented the aftermath, if not the murder. ‘She wasn’t supposed to find out,’ she said hoarsely.

The chairman of the departmental Ethics Committee cleared his throat to intervene with wisdom. ‘The simple solution of unsolved robbery will satisfy the police. You’ll get out of this lightly, Hill. I’ll corroborate your story. And you can keep the computers. However, if you try to advance a different scenario, those computers will bring you undone, as will my revised memory of your whereabouts. Nothing will bring poor Joseph back, so I think it is in everyone’s best interests if we tidy our own nest.’

I had heard enough. I left the room.

___o0o___

THE COPPERS GRILLED me for three hours, but they let me go at the end of that, and only called me back twice. Both times, they appeared to be going through the motions.

___o0o___

THE GOOROO INSISTED we get rid of the computers, though I told him we didn’t have to. He kept saying I had cost him a grand, but, to this day, he has never asked me to give back the money. We loaded the gear into the tray of my EH ute, and at midnight, under a full moon, drove to a relatively isolated reach of the Tweed River. We threw two video monitors in, before we realised that an old Aboriginal man was watching us. He waved; put down a net he was holding and came over.

‘Could I have that thing?’ he said, pointing to the laser printer in my hand.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ I asked.

‘Put it in my crab pot,’ he said.

‘You still catch crabs around here?’

In way of reply, he went back to his camp and retrieved a large mud crab from a hessian bag.

‘Do you like muddies?’ he asked, offering the crab to me.

‘Sure, but you can have this printer for nothing. I don’t think it’ll be much use to you, anyway.’

‘It’ll be good,’ he insisted. ‘Tie some old bones to it. Once the smell gets through it, I’ll be able to catch muddies, even when I run out of bones.’

Sounded reasonable to me. I gave him the printer, and two computer boxes for other pots. The rest of the electronic gear we threw in the river.

Despite our protests, he insisted we take the muddie.

We ate the crab the next night. It was delicious.