Harum Scarum (18 page)

‘I’m visiting Stella Webster; want to show her the picture of Bianca we found on Kusak’s computer. I also want to have another look in Bianca’s room, see if there’s anything I missed the first time around.’

‘Good idea.’

Stevie’s voice softened. ‘Are you feeling better today?’

‘Great.’ He didn’t sound it. ‘Do you want to meet for fish and chips on the beach tonight?’ he asked with forced jocularity.

‘I have to go over some stuff with Tash after I’ve seen Stella.’

‘Natasha.’ He paused. ‘Ah.’

She counted to ten in her head. ‘But I should be able to meet you after that. I’ll bring food.’

From the balcony outside number 33, Stella’s sister pointed to the park and the lone figure sitting on the bench near the lake.

‘How’s she doing?’ Stevie asked. She could see the family resemblance despite Gail’s extra fifteen kilos and apple cheeked, outdoorsy complexion. Had she reached adulthood, Bianca might’ve looked like this.

‘Oh, up and down, you know. I’m hoping she’ll feel a bit better after the funeral.’ She gave Stevie a weak smile, not reflected in eyes that were deeply shadowed with sleeplessness.

Stevie glanced toward the lake and hesitated, not sure if she should intrude upon Stella’s solitude. No, she’d leave her alone for a bit longer, she decided. The picture of Bianca from Kusak’s computer could wait. She cocked her head to the door of the flat. ‘I need to have another look in Bianca’s room, do you mind...’ Her words trailed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the vaguely familiar shape of a stocky man wearing a checked shirt and jeans, swaggering towards Stella on the bench. Even from this distance, she could see the woman stiffen as he drew near.

‘Any idea who that is? I’m sure I’ve seen him before...’ Stevie spoke her thoughts aloud, making a hesitant move toward the stairwell. ‘I might just...’

‘I dunno,’ Gail shrugged, then did a double take and Stevie saw why. The man was leaning towards Stella now, one hand on the back of the bench. Stella cringed and shook her head, her panic obvious even from where they stood on the balcony.

Gail pushed past Stevie and stormed towards the steps. ‘The bloody creep, as if she hasn’t been through enough...’

‘Leave this to me,’ Stevie put a hand on her arm to hold her back.

Gail flicked the hand off, voice rising as she looked helplessly toward the park. ‘Look, he’s grabbing her!’

‘Stay there!’

Stevie hurtled down the concrete steps two at a time, four when she jumped the landings. She swung out from the stairwell at ground level, sprinting across the weedy verge, across the road and into the park.

The man saw her coming. He dropped Stella’s arm and took off at a run towards a car parked on the perimeter road. Stevie gave chase, but he had reached the car and was pulling out when she was still metres away. Hands on hips and panting, she watched him move into the traffic and splutter away. She was too far away to catch the number plate, but she caught the make. And she’d seen the white Ford Escort before, on the night she and Monty had brought Stella the bad news. It had been parked in the street outside Stella’s flat.

When she reached the bench, Stella was leaning forward, elbows on knees, as if fighting back nausea. Stevie sank down next to her, still puffing, and patted Stella on the back. ‘Are you okay?’

Stella straightened, wiped her eyes. ‘I think so. Thanks for that.’

‘That wasn’t Bob, was it, Bob of the pestering phone call from the other night?’ And the man who almost pushed me down the stairs, she added to herself.

Stella shook her head and spoke quickly, ‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’

Stevie scrutinised her for a moment in silence. When Stella continued to avoid eye contact she said, ‘Stella, are you sure...’

‘Of course I’m sure, he was just some creep, that’s all.’

‘What did he want?’

Stella hesitated. ‘Money.’ She looked down and began pulling at a loose thread from the hem of her T-shirt. ‘He was pissed off was all. When he saw I didn’t have a bag he told me to turn out my pockets. I said no and that’s when he grabbed me. I’m okay, don’t worry.’ Her gaze strayed across the lake to where a pair of black swans were gliding and spoke as if from the distance of a dream. ‘Bianca hated those swans. One pecked her hand when she was feeding it some stale bread. I told her it was just the bird’s nature, that it didn’t make it a bad bird. The man who killed Bianca was bad though, he must have been. He was bad to the bone to do what he done.’

‘You need a cup of tea. Or something stronger.’ Stevie looked up to see Gail watching them from the balcony and gave her a reassuring wave. ‘Come on, Stella, let’s go home.’

‘You are absolutely certain you haven’t seen that man before?’ Stevie asked again as they sat on the squeaking couch in Stella’s lounge room. She wondered why Stella would lie to her. She was almost certain the man in the park was the same man who’d bumped into her on the stairwell the other night. She recalled the hoppy reek as he’d barged past and associated it with the beer can she’d seen lying on Stella’s coffee table.

Stella waved her hand impatiently. She seemed tired out. ‘Positive, I told you that. Can we just forget it?’

‘You’ll let me know if you do see him again?’ Stevie asked, allowing just the right amount of suspicion to shade her words. This wasn’t the right time or place to push, but she hoped her tone of voice was enough to let Stella know this was only a temporary reprieve.

‘Yes, of course I’ll tell you if I see him again.’ Stella reached for her cigarettes and offered Stevie one. Stevie shook her head; after the sprint her lungs still felt filled with molten lead. It must be time for another go at quitting.

‘You wanted to talk to me about something?’ Stella said.

‘I wanted another look in Bianca’s room to see if there’s anything I missed the first time around.’

‘The crime’s solved, they told me the guy’s dead, why bother?’ Stella replied in a voice laced with despair. ‘Why bother about the man at the lake? Why bother about anything now?’

‘Do you want some lunch?’ Gail called from the kitchen. It was a timely interruption to Stella’s rising hysteria.

Stella shook her head. Stevie reached into her bag, producing the print Clarissa had extracted from Kusak’s computer, a head and shoulder shot of a slightly younger, slightly slimmer Bianca. Her bare shoulders were hunched and swathed in a ribbon of floating muslin and the painted lips did nothing to disguise the tension of a tight little smile. While it could hardly be considered pornography, the photo was a tasteless attempt at turning a child into a sexualised, alluring adult. The look on the face alone would have screamed out vulnerability to any predator with the wiring to receive it.

Miro Kusak.

Stella balled her fist and bit into her wrist. Shuddered. ‘Oh, that, I’d forgotten about that.’

‘Where was it taken?’ Stevie asked.

‘Bianca was desperate to do some modelling. I let her audition for a modelling agency a year or so ago, had seven hundred bucks worth of photos taken. But she was turned down, told to come back when she’d lost some weight.’ Stella’s face crumpled and her voice broke. ‘She was nine years old and that stuck up bitch told her to lose some weight—can you imagine what that can do to a young girl? She wasn’t fat at all, just a bit of puppy fat, but after that she felt like a real freak.’

Yes, Stevie could imagine what something like that could do to a child and felt the rage flare. She wondered what had induced Stella to let Bianca go to a photo shoot in the first place and put it down to mother’s guilt again. Let the kid do more or less what she wants to make up for all the hours she’d been left alone.

The other pictures on Mason’s computer may have come from the same modelling school, downloaded by someone with access to the collection—the photographer perhaps? It fitted with Clarissa’s theory anyway. The modelling agency was the key, she was sure of it.

‘Can you remember the name of the agency?’ Stevie asked, sitting on the edge of her seat, trying her best to make the question sound routine. She crossed her fingers, hoping she’d get the information she wanted without having to confuse Stella with too many questions.

Stella shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It must’ve gone in one ear and out the other.’

‘It’s really important that you try to remember, Stella. I think the man who killed Bianca might have had access to the agency’s files. The photo we found on Kusak’s computer came with personal details of Bianca, including her email address. We think these files may have been distributed to a paedophile ring operating around Perth, which in turn sold them to private individuals. They’ve sold other pictures too, meaning that other children might be in danger. Please, Stella, try and remember.’

Stella shook her head in the manner of one who doesn’t expect success, but stopped as some memory slowly dawned. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I might have a receipt or something, I’m not sure where but, it was over a year ago.’

‘Would you mind having a search while I have another look in Bianca’s room?’ Stevie asked.

Stella seemed to deflate, as if the task were too much for her, as if the last mental exercise had dried up all her reserves. She glanced at the couch. Stevie could tell that all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and try to forget. She understood that, but she also understood how important it was to keep Stella busy, to put a stop to the despondency that threatened to overwhelm her. The woman needed to feel that in some small way she was helping to find justice for her daughter.

She took Stella’s hand and gently pulled her from the couch. ‘I think the kitchen drawers might be a good place to start. I have a drawer at home where I dump all my odds and ends of paperwork, maybe you do too?’

Gail needed no prompting. She moved into the lounge from the kitchen area and took her sister’s arm. ‘We used to keep our stuff in an old shoe box when we were kids, remember?’

Stella sniffed, gave a strained smile. ‘Yeah, old habits die hard, it’s on top of the pantry cupboard.’

The sisters moved arm in arm into the kitchen and Stevie took herself off to Bianca’s bedroom.

‘Enter on pain of death,’ the sign on the door read. Izzy had scrawled something similar on her bedroom door—a less sophisticated ‘Keep Out!’ with a wobbly skull and crossbones.

There were other stickers and signs in Bianca’s room that she didn’t remember seeing before. ‘Fuck, I think I’m turning into my mother.’ How did Stella feel about that? And, ‘Jim Beam lives here’ slapped onto the wardrobe. Both seemed strangely precocious for a ten year old and Stevie wondered if she was still trying to play the part of the muslin-swathed woman-child in the photo.

Her mind wandered to Emma Breightling. Like Bianca, she also seemed to be in a hurry to grow up, but Emma had made much more of a success of it. She remembered Emma’s emotional reaction to the newspaper headline about the death of what presumably was a stranger—it had left Stevie wondering if the girls might have known one another. Now there was a modelling agency, and Emma’s mother ran a modelling agency. Somehow it would not surprise her if it was the very one that Bianca had auditioned for.

Stevie twirled the hair in her ponytail through her fingers as she thought. There had to be something else in this room. If she could find a way to free up her thinking, she might find it. There was a thread, she was sure of it, a connection between the two girls floating about in this room, something she’d overlooked the first time. She released her hair from the confining ponytail, as if her thoughts too might be unleashed.

The room was arranged exactly as before, Stella would probably keep it as a shrine to her daughter, never rearranging it or cleaning it again. Every night she would come in here and lie upon the bed, absorb memories from the scent on the pillow, try to ready herself for the day when they would disappear into the air like smoke.

Mindful of this, Stevie didn’t touch the pillow. Sitting on the bed she leaned her back against the wall and faced the desk, allowing her gaze to trace the contents of the bookshelves. Left to right, left to right she trawled while the fluorescent pink iPod stared down at her like the eye of God. She blinked and tried to ignore the distraction of its glowing image, tried to focus on whatever was prodding at her subconscious.

‘I want more stories!’ It was something she’d heard Izzy say. No, it wasn’t that, but she was getting close, it was something similar. She closed her eyes:
Because they don’t have magic powers like Katy Enigma.

Katy Enigma, the story Emma had been telling Izzy during that first babysitting session. Stevie snapped up straight on the bed and slammed her fist into her hand, ‘Yesssssss!’

Springing from the bed she moved over to Bianca’s desk and the jumble of half written stories she’d dismissed during her earlier search.

One title immediately caught her eye: ‘Katy Enigma and the case of the missing puppy.’ There were other Katy Enigma downloads, sandwiched amongst the mess of papers. Katy Enigma must be some new kind of new kids’ fad, perhaps a series like Harry Potter, she thought. The stories were important, Stevie was sure of it. Perhaps both girls had belonged to an Internet message board or chat room devoted to the character, they might have written fan fiction together.

The eye continued to stare down at her as she leafed through the sheaf of stories. Ridiculous that a gimmicky music machine could make her feel so uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because it reminded her of a strange little poem her Gran used to recite, about the green eye of the little yellow god. Was this white-eyed pink iPod god trying to tell her something? Giving in to its implacable stare, she picked it up from the shelf and took it with the pile of stories into the kitchen.

‘Stella, do you know anything about these Katy Enigma stories on Bianca’s desk?’

Stella shook her head. She had not heard of Katy Enigma, she had no idea about Katy Enigma, and she didn’t care if Stevie took the stories with her, or the iPod, she just wanted to go to bed.

It was the sister, Gail, who proffered the piece of paper, a receipt from Tall Poppies, signed by the owner, Miranda Breightling.