Perfect Victim (22 page)

There’s no going back. Gail’s daughter cannot undo what she did. Gail and David’s daughter. Caroline killed Elizabeth and Michael’s daughter. Daughter. Daughter is such a lovely sounding word. It is a word said with pride.

I nearly collected a truck today which went through a red light. I couldn’t believe it. I saw it coming, in slow motion, and I looked at the traffic light which was a firm green. The other cars had seen it and stopped. God willing we didn’t connect.

God willing. God willing, could your physical life not have been saved?

I need to know what time you died. I need to know so many things. I want to know what Caroline has done with your earrings, your two necklaces, Manni’s ring, your black jazz shoes, your Humphrey Bear and your Bloch dance bag. I want to feel angry all the time but I can’t, and can you appreciate how
annoying
that is? I am angry towards Gail and David’s daughter, but I am not angry towards
them
.

6 August 1999

Dear Rachel,

Again today, I was really upset in the car on the way home from work. Work all seems very bewildering at the moment. I’ve been making little mistakes and don’t usually do that.

Rachel, I went to see Nanny Joy in hospital, after work. Remember I’d told you she’d had a hip operation and then she’d developed blood clots? And to tell you the truth, if she had died, I’d have thought there would be only one small positive and that was that she would see you. And for a moment I felt jealous of this. I don’t believe Mum will die. She is still needed very much here.

Is this futile, writing to you every night? I really do hope you can
feel
these letters. I know I should read them to you, and if you can’t read my mind, then maybe you are sitting beside me and reading as I write.

Paul Ross, our Homicide detective, spoke to your dad on the phone today, and he said he would possibly call around Monday evening. I want to speak to him about the details of your death without your sisters being present.

Oh, the agony, Rachel. I so desperately want to hold you. At work today I just imagined you bursting through the back door, and saying, ‘I’m home, God’s let me come back.’ And Rachel, for a moment I really believed it could happen. It didn’t matter that I knew you were buried nine feet underground, surrounded by mementos with a headstone above you. It was like God could say, ‘Yes, Elizabeth, I’m giving her back.’

I can’t imagine I’m ever going to get over this.

Love, Mum.

12 August 1999

Paul Ross came this evening and filled us in on some of the details of your death. Until now we only knew some of it. You poor dear, how frightened you must have been, and what a bitch Caroline was.

He said the case is unique and bizarre, and there will be a lot of press coverage. I am amazed. Amazed that Caroline believed she could actually get away with it.

It was a comfort, however, to know your body was not disturbed by animals. Yes, they do have photographs, but Paul says he will not show us photographs that will upset us. I still cannot – no – I do not
want
to believe this has happened. And it wouldn’t have done if not for Caroline, a girl with no friends.

Michael Clarebrough, my counsellor, rang me at work today to let me know the name of the person who did your autopsy. It is a comfort, in some strange way, to know a woman carried out the autopsy …

When all this has finished, Rachel, if we wish, we can obtain copies of the police reports, the coroner’s reports and trial proceedings. And I do want these.

14 August 1999

Dear Rachel,

Your dad worried me yesterday morning by saying he was beginning to feel that death is the end to it. Final. No more. That there is no spiritual existence. He doesn’t believe he will ever see you again. I said to him, ‘You know that is not true,’ but he just looked at me with his all-knowing ‘I’m right’ expression.

Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t express that thought. If this was absolutely the case then life wouldn’t be worth living – at all. No point to any of it. I really want to discuss these thoughts with a minister of the clergy, but no minister is forthcoming. I’ve thought about attending a local church, but is that fair to them? Kew is so far away, and although a pastoral carer has visited us, how can I tell her I need a priest? So I wait. Sometimes I feel even they feel it is easier not to visit me, so they are not so confronted by the cruel manner of your death. It is easier to say, ‘There is a reason for everything and God has his reason.’ But I do not hold God responsible for your death. God’s protection for you was there for your soul.

I struggle now with all those warnings that seemed to occur before your death. The few I have discussed with Michael Clarebrough he feels are coincidental. But I cannot deny that they happened:

Daddy saying to himself, at the beginning of the year, how lucky our family was never to have had a tragedy.

Me thinking, while processing books at work, what on earth would I ever do if Rachel was not here?

You telling me, in the car this year, that you thought sometimes you would only have a short life and me laughing it off because everything was going so well for you, and you agreeing.

Me, sitting on your bed, while you were laughing and dancing with Manni in our living room (only a few weeks before your murder) and you sounding so excited that I thought, ‘This kid’s not going to make it through her teen years. I must warn her to slow up.’ I never did.

You sharing with our friend David – only a few weeks before your murder – a nightmare you had about someone trying to push you into an open grave and a person in a dark cloak and scythe standing above you both, encouraging you down. Dad knows these details better because David told Dad after your murder. It was the same dream you wanted to tell me about – only I said, ‘Tell me later.’ And of course you never did.

Manni saying a few weeks before your death he put your photograph on his bedside table in the centre of a circle of candles. His mother telling him off because in their family this is what they do for people who have died. Manni’s answer was, ‘But she looks so pretty surrounded by a circle of candles.’

You telling Manni you had seen an elderly woman in his bedroom – either the week before your murder or the second weekend before your murder, and then you sharing this with Rosa. Rosa telling you the woman you described sounded like Manni’s grandmother – the one who had died – and how you had
insisted
on Rosa taking you to her grave.

The last morning, the Thursday, that I dropped you off at the corner of Riversdale and Tooronga Roads so you could catch your tram, and me watching you wave in my rear-vision mirror, and me thinking it could be the last time I ever see you do that. It was.

These all happened close to your death this year. But what of the time I took you to the Opera in the Park at Prahran? And how I had parked the car in Trinian Street, down the end where Caroline’s flat was to be only a few years later. I remember when we left the Opera about midnight, how you carried on about how much you hated the street, going on in your over-the-top way, and hurrying me on. You wanted us to get out quickly.

So many clues and I ignored them all. I didn’t make any connection. Why would I?

Your sisters’ counsellor Catherine saw Ashleigh-Rose and Heather last night. Ashleigh-Rose wants to go to the trial but I do not want her to go. It’s not a suitable place for a twelve-year-old, even a thirteen-year-old, as she may well be by then. Now I am not sure if your dad has conveyed my feelings, but Catherine is apparently going to ring Paul Ross to see what the situation is. I must say I was cross when I discovered this and told your dad so. Ashleigh-Rose immediately told me it was
her
life (where have I heard that before?) and she would go if she wanted to. Dad got cross with me then, and said that I did things he didn’t approve of either …

12 October 1999

The following is not a letter to Rachel, but was written as a grief statement.

When your children are alive not a day goes by when you don’t think of them. When your children die not a day goes by when your mind is not consumed by them. When a child is murdered not a day goes by you do not suffer, consumed by the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘whys’. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of the total cruelty of the evil act that senselessly robbed Rachel of the highs and lows – of grandchildren that may have been. Not one child is murdered but generations are murdered. Only a parent who has lost a child can grasp any real understanding of the grief experienced and in the case of a murder that grief is exacerbated.

We are supposed to die in our old age surrounded by children and extended families – that is the fantasy of life. In reality some parents experience the grief of watching terminally ill children slip away – some parents suffer the anguish of losing children in a sudden accident. And some parents suffer the agony of being told, ‘Sorry, there is no easy way of saying this. Unfortunately your child has been murdered.’

Murdered
. Can you believe it? And for a time you choose not to believe it. But when your beautiful child continues not to run in through the door, when she continues not to contact you and you know deep down it really was a funeral you attended, and it really is a cemetery you visit each week with a headstone engraved with your daughter’s name – you know deep down that life has dealt her and yourselves an evil blow.

Into the next year …

10 January 2000

Your dad and I went to see the new film
Cider House Rules
. There was one scene where a dead man was being unceremoniously taken from a house on a stretcher covered in a white sheet and put in a van to be taken to the mortuary. Your dad said later, all he could think of at that moment was you. He feels the police should have told us you were found at Kilmore so we could have gone with them. I said they would not have wanted hysterical parents interfering with the crime scene. Even so, your dad feels we were left right out of the picture. I think he feels the same as I do – that we let you down. We should have been with you at some stage – even before Forensics saw you. You are our daughter and it was our right. Of course, at the time neither of us could think straight. We couldn’t even think bent.

Paul Ross is right though when he explains why we couldn’t go, because we are possible witnesses for the trial.

This is a living nightmare …

17 January 2000

Did I tell you I’ve changed the formal living room around? I’ve brought my desk out to encourage me to write. I can also see your photographs and feel comforted and inspired.

I wish your daddy could feel inspired – or interested in anything. Life has no meaning for him. He says he just lives one day to another, living a boring existence until he dies. He says he is not happy. It is amazing how quickly one’s life can change.

24 January 2000

I have no interest in life. Your dad’s views on the universe are beginning to rub off on me. It seems easier now to be uncomplicated by life’s complexities, such as friendships. I do not wish to be a sideshow.

I fear for the girls because I am no longer challenged by life. You, my darling Rachel, were always given opportunities to extend your creativity. But I am being hard on myself. For Ashleigh-Rose loves playing the flute and has done so for four years, and she enjoys her pottery. And although Heather seems to have lost interest in singing – she is still musical. But I do not want to do anything. It is easier to sit at home and do nothing than even to go for a walk in the park, and I fear I will bring your sisters up not to enjoy the company of others …

I am reading Grandad Ivan’s book
Ziggurat
again, published in 1997. It is the story of Knut who went missing one night without trace. Life has so many odd coincidences.

I rang Paul Ross today.

Yesterday, the vicar from the church we now attend would have read out our statement about your death at the Sunday services. Rachel, the parish folk have not known about you, and neither did the vicar for the first few months. The girls said they felt normal going to a church where no one knew about their sister. I had to respect their wishes. But this will change next week with the committal hearing. So with the co-operation of the vicar we thought this was the best way of telling people at the church. It has become a responsibility.

We went to Grandad Ivan’s. We labelled all Ashleigh-Rose’s workbooks and sewed up her hems. The girls
will
stay with Grandad while we go to the committal hearing …

Your sisters don’t like to see me cry. I need to know that I am loved. You loved me. I feel you loved me, dearly.
Yet
I was unkind to you, too. There were times I smacked you, and times I yelled at you. But, Rachel, I was scared for your future. I didn’t want you to grow up struggling for money. It is probably because we struggled for money that you now find yourself dead because I kept on at you about looking for a job. If we’d earned more money, just maybe Caroline would not have been able to entice you away with that so-called story about making lots of money.

I need a holiday away from all of this nightmare, Rachel. It’s a shame I couldn’t come on holiday and see you. But then, if I did, that would be a permanent holiday and I would grieve the loss of your sisters because I would be in heaven and they would be on earth. No, I’ll have to learn to accept what has happened but I find it hard to believe almost a year has gone by.

This time last year you only had five to six weeks to live – yet possibly they were some of the happiest weeks of your life.

What will happen to your sisters, Rachel?

Love, Mum.

29 January 2000

Dear Rachel,

Yesterday Paul Ross rang.

The barrister for the prosecution, Robert Barry, has said he doesn’t want your father and I to be present during the committal hearing. As you can imagine I was distressed by this development. Paul said the reason for this is to do with the documents I saw a little of when we were making a police statement at the Homicide office on 14 March last year.