Death Delights (32 page)

‘Ask my daughter,’ she said. ‘Not me. My daughter will make it all right.’ Her face was still more familiar to me than a twenty-five-year-old memory could allow—deep-set, shadowed eyes, and large hands.

‘Your daughter?’ I repeated stupidly.

I looked at the frail figure. The skin around her eyes was so dark it looked bruised. ‘Please, Mrs Bower,’ I said, ‘I need to ask you some questions. It’s very important.’

But Mrs Bower was lost again. ‘I used to have a son once,’ she was saying. ‘But he’s dead now. He’s dead.’ Her grief overwhelmed her and I sat there, feeling helpless and useless.

I took her old brown hands in mine. ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’ I asked, suddenly knowing.

‘Iona will make it better,’ she sobbed.

I leaned back in my chair, shocked at this confirmation. A nurse swooped down on us, briskly offering practical support, re-propping the old woman up in her chair, busy with distractions. Slowly, I walked away, leaving Mrs Bower repeating her daughter’s name and the nurse trying to offer comfort.

I hurried past the other old sentinels waiting lined up against the wall of the veranda and almost ran back to my car.

I drove back on automatic pilot, my mind trying to make sense of this new information. But I had witnessed a series of events that were incontrovertible. My sister’s name had had a profound effect on Mrs Bower. And in the next breath, she’d mentioned her daughter, ‘Iona’.

There it was again, the connection with my family. Rosie and Iona. ‘Rosie’ and the letters. I thought again of the strange conversation about terrorism and the children of Protestant clergy.

I drove straight to her place and even though the car wasn’t there, banged on the door. Iona Bower Seymour, killer or not, owed me some answers. I lashed out as hard as I could, deriving some relief from kicking her door. ‘Iona!’ I yelled. ‘Iona, talk to me!’

I stopped banging on the door and felt like a real idiot. I don’t think I’d ever behaved like this in my life. I tried to look in through the front windows, cupping my hands so as to cut out reflections. I was peering into the heavy Victorian room she’d sat me in with her cucumber sandwiches. There was nothing on the table now except a newspaper and I was about to turn away when I peered closer, willing my eyes to make out the newsprint. My own startled face stared back at me, all stark contrast and shadows. The newspaper was opened at the page of Merrilyn Heywood’s photograph, the one she’d stolen of me that night at Centennial Park, with Frank Carmody still oozing his life away against the wall and me like a rabbit caught in the shooters’ spotlight. I wanted to smash the window and take my picture away from her, out of her house. I came away from the window, not knowing what to do next, and sat on the worn black step while the breeze moved the rose canes and shadows played on the chequerboard tiles of the mossy veranda. But then I thought of her praying in the cathedral, her face and dark hair glowing by candlelight. How many killers leave prayers in churches? I recalled conversations with Charlie and shivered. The world was full of malignant psychotic zealots who prayed as they primed their bombs.

I walked back to the car. I wanted to know where she was, who it was she hid out with. I wanted to know who he was, the man to whom she always returned. I suspected his name might be Michael, maybe even Michael Seymour, and that was something to go on.

Two hours later I was back in the mountains, in the registry of the Springbrook church, going over the marriage entries with the woman we’d already met at the rectory, Veronica Bailey, who was also treasurer of the local historical society. As we crossed the garden from the house to the church, I felt my own history and the history of my family curling around me and it wasn’t a pleasant embrace. I made a donation to the historical society and Mrs Bailey, after pulling out the volumes that she felt would contain the dates I was interested in, left me to my own devices in the quiet sacristy. Slowly, I turned the big folio-sized pages over, my eyes scanning the various handwritings, bold or feeble, the different coloured inks, blue, black, blue-black, even the occasional sepia. I’d tried narrowing down the time when I imagined a youthful Iona Bower might have married a man called Seymour. She was only a little younger than I was, I thought, so I concentrated on the books from the early ’seventies to the ’eighties.

I seemed to search for a long time. The light in the small stone room was fading and the air was getting colder. Iona could have been married anywhere. Some fashionable Sydney church like St Mark’s at Darling Point, or the Garrison Church at the Rocks. Anywhere. Maybe even overseas, maybe on the island whose name she bore.

I was about to give up and leave when her name jumped out at me. I leaned forward to read the entry. Iona Bower, music teacher, married Peter Seymour, general practitioner, in August 1988. I didn’t need to write anything down. I’d never forget that name. I slammed the book shut, put it back on the pile, closed the door of the reading room after me as requested by Mrs Bailey and went to my car.

Medical Registrations told me that Dr Peter Seymour was presently working with Médecins sans Frontières in West Africa. Even though I knew from my past investigative experience that ex-spouses often maintained some sort of relationship, Iona’s man problem didn’t seem to revolve around him. And there still remained Michael.

The door of number 293 swung open as Iona let me in and she stood back while I stepped inside. The heavy Victorian furnishings seemed larger and darker and I was very aware of my emotionally exhausted state. There was no time for niceties, and anyway, I’d come to the conclusion that Iona Seymour was not a nice woman.

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some plain speaking, Mrs Seymour. Née Bower.’ I paused, watching the effect this had on her. ‘I want the truth.’

She looked startled and the beginning of a blush spread from around her neck and up through her cheeks until her face was pink.

‘You haven’t been honest with me.’ I raised my hand to stop her speaking. ‘Those phone calls you made to the police,’ I said, ‘about my daughter Jacinta. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. I heard the tapes. It was you. I know your voice like I know my own.’

She swung suddenly around, walking down the hall towards the back of the house. I followed her, wondering if she was leading me towards the laundry, towards the knife in the cupboard that was no longer there. But she didn’t go outside. Instead, she stopped in a little narrow kitchen, took a glass down from a cupboard and got a drink of water from the old-fashioned tap over the pebblecrete sink. The colours were unredeemed ’fifties—cream and green—and there was the slight odour of leaking gas and dampness. Then she walked wordlessly past me, head down, back to the front room. Again I followed her and stood while she sat in one of the old Victorian chairs, perched at the edge of the faded tapestry upholstery.

‘I… I…’ She started to speak, then faltered.

‘You were saying?’ I said. She put the glass down and looked at me. I could see her marshall her resources. Or was she getting her story together?

When she spoke, the voice was low, with a grainy edge to it, as if she was close to tears. ‘I made those phone calls because I was concerned about someone as young as your daughter—’

‘So you know—you knew—who I was all the time. You lied about your parents being dead. I’ve recently visited your mother.’

Her eyes looked terrified. ‘I didn’t say that. I said they weren’t around. She’s Alzheimic. She says strange things.’ I waited, letting the pressure of silence build. Finally, she could stand it no longer. ‘What did she say to you?’ she whispered.

I decided to let her stew a bit. I stood up and walked to the window so that I had the light behind me and her upturned face was exposed. What I saw was very interesting. Iona Seymour was terrified.

‘She was extremely helpful,’ I said quietly. What could a poor old woman in a retirement village have to say that might cause this personality change from seductress to fearful child? Iona was fidgeting with the glass, her fingers nervously tapping.

‘And Michael?’ I asked. ‘Where does he fit in?’

Her face was a picture of dismay. ‘That’s private,’ she said. ‘My personal life has nothing to do with you.’

‘I think it does, Mrs Seymour. I think your personal life and my personal life have started to get very mixed up together and I want to know why. And how. Why did you pretend you didn’t know who I was?’

She shook her head. ‘I swear,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know who you were.’ Her voice choked. ‘Apart from a kind man I met at one of the meetings. It wasn’t until I saw the piece in the newspaper with your photograph about that terrible murder in Centennial Park…’ Again, she stopped and I waited for her to regain her composure. ‘I was concerned about a child of your daughter’s age working in that place. Anyone would be concerned.’

I watched her very carefully. ‘Iona,’ I said, maintaining whatever vigilance my drained state could muster, ‘let’s say for the time being I accept your story—’

‘It’s not a “story”.’ The shimmering voice was suddenly hard as iron. ‘I did
not
know who you were when I rang the police about your daughter. I knew about Jacinta because I read the newspapers like anyone else. But when we bumped into each other at that Twelve Step meeting, I had no idea you were the same person.’ She was very convincing, I had to admit, the wonderful voice rich with truth.

‘Okay,’ I said, prepared to let that go for the time being. I stepped a little closer, still with the light behind me, using my advantage to interrogate her. ‘I have reason to believe that when you did make that phone call, you originally wanted to talk to the police on another matter.’

I thought I saw her flinch. It is hard to lie in close-up; indeed, hard to lie at all. The mind is filled with the truth that mustn’t be said and the face reflects this. And each false statement could be plaiting the rope with which a liar finally hangs herself.

‘What could you possibly mean by that?’

Questions are the safest tactic, and that’s what Iona was using. I went straight for the kill.

‘I have reason to believe you know something about the mutilator murders,’ I said.

The colour drained from her face. She looked sick.

‘And you were going to tell the police something about it, but you changed your mind mid-sentence, and instead gave the information about my daughter.’ Bob would kill me if he knew I was here saying this, but he had no jurisdiction over me and I was free to lead the inquiry the way I wanted. This woman owed me.

‘I know nothing about those killings,’ she said, but her resonant voice was strained.

‘You’re lying,’ I said. I stood up, ready to go. ‘You got me into your bed, knowing that the existence of a prior relationship would compromise any evidence I might have concerning you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice was quite sharp. ‘Are you such a pathetic, passive thing that you can talk like that? That I “got” you into my bed?’ She flung away from me in disgust. I grabbed her arm. She looked at me, looked at my hand holding her.

‘Let go of me,’ she said in a low voice. Her dark, wounded eyes filled with anger. ‘God, you men make me sick!’

I tightened my grip on her. ‘Sick enough to stick a knife into them?’ I asked her. ‘Sick enough for you to cut a man’s balls and penis off?’

I let her go. She remained in front of me, immobilised by my words.

‘Why are you saying this?’ she said, but her voice was faint, the anger gone, now only terror in her eyes. Her lips trembled and I felt like a brute. This had not been part of my plan at all and I hated myself. I’d bullied her, pushed her around. And now I wanted to make it up to her. I was a seething mass of inconsistency. Bob was right. I should be right out of this particular picture. But I’d never been in a picture like this, where a suspect had become a secret obsession. There were no protocols that I knew of for this scenario. All I could do was follow my instincts. I admitted to myself that I was exhausted and that exhaustion had drained everything from me except desire. I was feverish with it. I wanted to comfort her, kiss her, but I managed to collect myself.

‘Letters were written to the victims,’ I said harshly. ‘On notepaper that came from this house.’

Her eyes widened further. She’d moved closer to me and I grabbed her hands. It was self-defence as well as what I wanted to do. ‘And I found a knife,’ I said, ‘in your laundry. It’s with the lab now.’ By this time, I reckoned, the amped traces Jane had discovered would be delivering their information via the PCR replication process. ‘Right now,’ I said, ‘there’s a graph about to go up on the screen at the forensic laboratory. It’s a DNA picture of the person who held that knife.’

‘You had no right to come here. To take things from my house. You had no right!’ Everything had changed. Her voice had a desperate edge now. Her reactions were erratic and unpredictable and I remembered the wild mood swings of early recovery and wondered again if this woman had an addiction of her own. I picked up the glass she’d emptied. ‘All I have to do is compare this’—I brandished the glass ‘—with the graph on the screen and we’ll have the person who’s killed at least four men.’

She shrank back at this, shaking her head.

‘Your DNA picture is here.’ I pointed to where she’d drunk from the glass. ‘I’ll compare it to the sample we already have.’

‘It won’t be mine,’ she said. ‘It can’t be.’

I was becoming more convinced of her guilt. Innocent people don’t behave like this. After many years of dealing with the guilty and innocent, I knew how innocent people deny the charge outright. ‘No way,’ they yell. ‘I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!’ Anything else is tactics and this woman was using every tactic known. Anger overcame desire. I pulled her roughly back to me, squeezing her wrists, looking down into her white face.

‘You found out who I was,’ I said. ‘You knew I was working with the Sydney police. That’s why you rejigged our date here so you could get me into bed. You knew you’d be safe then. Once your defence counsel knew about that you knew you’d walk like O.J.—no matter what sort of evidence we had!’

Anger flashed through her eyes. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying!’ she cried.

‘I think I do,’ I responded. ‘You thought you’d use me, find out what you could about my investigation.’

‘And did I?’ she asked scornfully, her voice charged with a new energy. ‘Think about it! Did I question you about these murders? I didn’t say a word about them.’ She lunged at me, grabbing for the glass in my pocket but I blocked her arm, grabbing her close. ‘That’s my property,’ she said. ‘You have no right to it. You come here to my house with these wild accusations. I can have you charged with theft.’

‘By all means do so,’ I said. ‘By that time, we’ll have enough to convict you.’ I wasn’t at all sure about that, but I was quite prepared to bluff it. ‘You told me about the children of Protestant clergy,’ I reminded her, ‘how they represented a huge percentage of European terrorists. What was all that about?’

‘Did I?’ she said, still angry. ‘I don’t remember. And you’re crazy to hear a confession in some anecdotal remark of mine. It just shows me how desperate you are to charge someone. Anyone!’

‘You were trying to tell me then that you are a killer,’ I said, ‘in some strange, oblique way. Killers do. Murder is a huge thing. It’s hard to hold a murder in your mind. Let alone several.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘This conversation is ridiculous.’ She pulled her hands away from mine and went to the long french windows. Standing there, half-turned towards me, she could have been the subject for a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She opened the sideboard, took out two glasses and poured a dark red liquid from a crystal decanter.

‘Drink this,’ she said.

I shook my head and she slammed the decanter down.

‘Oh for God’s sake!’ she said with irritation. ‘Do you think I’m going to
poison
you?’

Despite everything, I almost laughed. ‘I hadn’t thought,’ I said. ‘I don’t drink alcohol.’

Comprehension dawned on her face. ‘Oh,’ she said. She sipped at one of the ports and stood there, facing me squarely. ‘From my point of view, you’ve behaved atrociously, and here I am, pouring you a drink and comforting you.’

Now, I wasn’t sure at all. This woman no longer seemed the guilty party of only minutes ago. Suddenly she’d become dangerously interesting. It must be some reaction to adrenaline, I told myself, that made me want to take her upstairs again. I knew I was physically very tired and I knew that people made fatal errors in the state I was in. But my mind seemed more alert and fast-moving than usual and I felt I was in control of the situation.

Later, I couldn’t really remember how it was that we ended up in her bed again. But there I was, lying beside her scarred body, kissing her, touching her, listening to her murmurs of pleasure, relaxing into the series of delicious moments that followed. Rich light shone through the heavy, decaying curtains and in the gloom, Iona’s room and the woman herself had a preternatural quality of mystery and refinement. We strained together and I traced her scar with kisses. My climax was huge, and I collapsed across her body, barely aware of a different sound somewhere, unconnected to us or this room. Iona sprang up and pushed me off her as easily as someone might throw a sheet aside.

‘What is it?’ I asked, only half-present and shocked by the suddenness and vigour of her action.

She pulled her dress over her head and hurried to the closed door where she stood, listening.

‘What is it?’ I repeated.

But she waved me quiet with her hand without looking at me. She opened the door and without a word left the room.

I sat up. The magic had well and truly vanished and I dressed.

I went to the escritoire behind the fading curtains and was hardly surprised to see that the notepaper and bottle of French ink were no longer there. I waited in the room for a few minutes, then I opened the bedroom door and looked up and down the hall.

‘Iona?’ I called, and her name echoed through the house. I stepped out and walked down the hall, away from the staircase towards the rooms I hadn’t yet explored. I called her name again, but there was no answer. I tiptoed down to the first door past her bedroom, pulling it open suddenly. A spare bedroom, dark and musty and very uninhabited. I could just see myself in the mirror of the dressing table opposite, veiled in dust. Visitors were not, it seemed, a part of this woman’s life. I closed the door again. The door to the third room at the end of the hall was a little ajar. I peered in there, and found it was the junk room: old boxes and furniture, broken chairs, a huge chandelier in pieces lying partly across the worn carpet. ‘Iona? I called again, wondering where she was.

There was one last door, right opposite me, one that closed the corridor off from the rest of the house. Perhaps it had once been the servants’ quarters. I don’t know what it was, some investigator’s instinct firing, but I stopped in the hallway, drawn by the door. I came closer to it. It was a handsome, four panelled original door with a heavy crystal or cut-glass knob and with an etched glass fanlight over it. I don’t think I’d ever encountered anything like this arrangement in the middle of a house and I wondered at the oddity of it. It wasn’t locked, however, and neither was the steel security gate behind it which swung open to my touch. I stopped where I was, taking in what I saw.