The Trojan Dog (23 page)

In my letter to Derek, which I typed with two fingers of my left hand, I said the police were treating the case seriously, which I hoped was the truth. I begged Derek not to leave Peter alone, to deliver him to school and pick him up, talk to his teacher and explain that he might be in danger. I didn't think Peter was necessarily worse off in a school, and what was the alternative? To sit in Derek's office all day? I said to Derek that he might be tempted to leave Peter in the evening while he went out to pick up a pizza, but that
on no account was he to do this
.

Should I go to America? Or should I bring Peter home where I could watch over him myself? The closer he was to me, the closer he was to the trouble I was in. I had to trust Derek. I couldn't see that there was a better plan. My options were fewer, and clearer than before. I could give up my investigation, such as it was; or I could redouble my efforts to find my enemies, and Rae's, before they struck again.

Ivan stayed away and didn't phone. No-one crept by my house at night to throw a brick through my window and climb in with a knife between his teeth, to jemmy open the back door and strangle me where I half-sat, half-lay against my pillow and Peter's, glad I hadn't washed his pillow case, sucking up the faint smell of my son as I waited for the attack, forcing my eyes to stay open, my ears alert for every tiny sound.

No-one burnt my house down, or shot me through the kitchen window while I made a cup of tea left-handed early in the morning. No-one poured boiling oil down my chimney, or stalked me when I went outside with Fred and brushed him and left a pile of dog hair for the magpies.

I shut myself up in my house, while spring flounced along Goodwin Street. Every time I went into a room, I had to close the door behind me. My house was no longer open on the inside, but a box within another box, bordering on yet another. Not Chinese fashion, though I dreamed of this, of folding myself inside a small container that smelt of sandalwood, and then each time a smaller one, until squashed ant-like I might at last be safe.

I rang America. Listening to the dial tone, I broke out in an anxious sweat in case this time Derek's calm would be gone, and he would shout at me to stop being neurotic. But he didn't, and for that I thank him now.

. . .

Detective Sergeant Brook turned up in the middle of the afternoon, brandishing a sheaf of printouts.

‘You look as though you've been busy,' I told him.

‘Insomnia.' Brook grinned and scratched his head beneath his hat. ‘Reading in bed isn't such a punishment, provided you've got a good soft pillow.'

‘I should try it,' I said, then asked, ‘Read what exactly?'

‘I'll show you in a minute.'

I invited him inside. This time we went straight through to the kitchen, where I'd set a tray with cups, a teapot with fresh leaves. Of course, I didn't have to offer Brook tea. But again I felt proud that I was managing.

‘Our man,' Brook said, ‘if he
is
our man, the one with the wall eye? Name's Whitelaw, Bernard Whitelaw. Runs a company called Phoenix Information Services.'

‘Just him?' I grasped the handle of the teapot with my good hand. It was strange to hear the one-eyed man given a name.

Brook took a cup from me. I remembered that he drank his tea black and sugarless. ‘Company's unlisted. Last year they made a loss of over half a million.'

‘Who are Whitelaw's backers?'

‘I'm working on that. Another interesting question'—Brook downed his tea in a couple of gulps and dragged the pot towards him for a refill—‘what does Access Computing want with state-of-the-art ­computer graphics?'

I looked at him and waited.

‘Access Computing bought a heap of software off Compic. I've seen the invoices.'

So that was the pile of boxes I'd seen in the Brisbane office.

Brook shuffled through his papers and handed me one. It was a bank statement for Claire Disraeli and included the amount Compic had paid her that I'd seen on the computer file.

I read through it, while he topped up his tea once more.

I looked up at him, wondering if he guessed, or already knew, the parts of the story I'd left out.

‘The bank just gave this to you?' I said at last, handing back the ­statement.

‘I had a handy piece of paper called a warrant.'

‘So soon?'

Brook smiled and said with a slight bow, ‘Let's just say it's hard to refuse a dying man a legitimate request.'

Confessions

‘Hello,' I said, moving quickly in through Rae Evans's front door.

‘Sandra!' Rae spoke softly, but she didn't attempt to hide her surprise and annoyance. ‘I don't know if anyone's—'

‘Anyone?' I repeated sarcastically. The adrenalin that had got me to Rae's flat was rushing out of me, and I felt empty and light-headed. ‘You mean your friends from Compic?'

Rae stared at my arm and asked, ‘What happened?'

‘The brakes failed in my car.'

‘I'll take you out the back way.' Rae was suddenly decisive. ‘Through the laundry. The back way's—'

‘No,' I said. ‘I'm not leaving till I get some answers.'

Rae stared at my arm in its plaster cast and sling, as though staring hard enough might make it disappear. Her lips looked dry and cracked, and her voice came as though forced through thirsty ground. ‘What happened to you?' she repeated.

‘I was in a car crash.'

My shoulders slumped. Oh God, I thought, I'm not going to cry now. Not when I've got this far. My broken arm, which I'd carried ­possessively, protectively, in the taxi to Rae's flat, in the sling I'd made out of a square of black cotton I'd found at the bottom of my rag bag, felt impossibly heavy.

Rae put her arm around my shoulders and gently lifted aside my jacket, so that the black sling caught and drank the light. She asked gently, ‘Does it hurt?'

‘A bit.'

Rae's hair, her silver-grey no-nonsense helmet, looked dull and dry. Her clothes were creased, as though she'd been wearing the same jumper and tracksuit pants for days. Without make-up, her face looked smaller, compacted and pressed down.

She stayed close to me, but let go of my arm, then cocked her head, listening for a noise outside. I hadn't been frightened on my way to the flat; I'd been determined, as though I was moving along on a steady blue-and-orange flame. I tried to take hold of that again now, to keep it in front of me.

‘Come and sit down. I'll get you something to drink.'

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘Water will be fine.'

Rae came back with the water, and I sipped it slowly while I told her about the accident, still believing, with half of my mind, that she already knew. She was looking at me apprehensively, and rather helplessly too, as though I was a child she'd been asked to mind and did not know how to deal with. Yet, at the same time, it seemed to me that Rae really couldn't be bothered any longer, that the hint about somebody watching her flat might be as much to get rid of me as anything, because all she wanted was to be left alone. Rae's poor judgement, her passivity, her spurt of nervous energy, were the result of a desire somewhere deep inside to have done with the whole thing.

‘I made a mistake.' Rae spoke with an effort. ‘I should have looked at Access Computing's grant application more closely—' Her voice, not strong to start with, tapered off.

‘If you had, what would you have found?'

When Rae didn't answer, I asked, ‘Who are you protecting?'

She laughed, a small dry laugh. ‘I can't even protect myself.'

She moved a few steps away and stood with both hands pressed down on the back of a chair.

‘I did ask you to stay out of it.'

I began to laugh. I couldn't help it. I felt so ridiculous suddenly, with my broken arm, my hopes of saving this woman, and maybe myself. And once I'd started laughing, I couldn't stop.

I drank more water, and it helped a bit.

‘Did you and my mother sleep together?' I asked Rae.

She accepted the question indifferently. ‘Once or twice. But it wasn't that, I don't think. It wasn't sex, at least it wasn't only sex. It was me, my job, my education, my ambitions.'

‘Do you remember meeting me one day, when you came home with Mum?'

Recognition flickered, and Rae almost smiled.

‘What happened?'

‘You mean that night? Nothing.'

I hadn't meant just that night, but perhaps Rae had already answered my more general question.

Rae said. ‘Your mother put out ideas of herself, ideas about all sorts of things, and then when it came to letting herself go with them, she wouldn't, or couldn't.'

‘You only saw one side of her,' I said.

Rae looked different again, or maybe it was that I was looking at her with different eyes. Sadness seemed to fill her whole body, from her grey dome of hair to the toes of her awkward-looking sneakers. It occurred to me that she was dressed in the uniform of the '90s housewife, the uniform I'd lived in myself until three months ago—tracksuit, running shoes, thick white cotton socks bought in packs of three at Woolies, a uniform that announced itself as comfortable, serviceable, no need to look any further.

I said, ‘The person behind all this—I think it might be Ivan.'

I waited for Rae to offer an opinion, and when she didn't, I told her about finding the printouts in Ivan's cupboard, how he'd been watching her for months.

It seemed to spark a memory. Rae said, ‘Ivan
did
take an interest in those grants. He wanted to know all about Access Computing. But I didn't think there was anything odd about that. Ivan's like a bowerbird, always picking things up and peering at them and putting them down again. He joked about it. Self-help groups for women. Hens' clubs.'

‘Was there anything else? Anything he did?'

‘Well, he was caught up in that business with the Compic tender. Because Felix Wenborn was making such a fuss.'

‘Was Ivan backing Compic, do you know?'

‘I never got far enough into it to find out.'

‘But you would have.'

‘If this other business hadn't blown up in my face, yes. I got the impression—it wasn't any more than that—that Felix listens to Guy more than he listens to Ivan or any of the others.'

A dark, lakeside image brushed my shoulders. I'd been hurrying towards this moment, and now it had come all I could do was sit and feel relief dissolve and flow away from me. What had I wanted Rae to do? Prove Ivan's innocence and her own in one fell swoop?

Rae held out her hand and said, ‘Come on. I'll show you out the back way. Someone, I don't know who, has been watching my flat.'

She looked exhausted as she said goodnight.

I raised my broken arm in its white cast and black cotton sling in a kind of half-hopeful, half-resigned salute.

Loyalty comes at you in such devious ways, I thought as I made my way along the alley beside Rae's block of flats. I still wasn't frightened. I wondered if it was stupidity, or plain lack of imagination. Out there in the dark, nothing seemed certain except that somebody was out to get me, but for this evening at least, the fear that accompanied that knowledge lifted, allowed me some respite.

My hope that Rae and I might help each other seemed as slippery as the reflections of streetlights in the grey puddles of water on the footpath. What did I want Rae to do? Help me get over losing my mother, once and for all?

Loyalty grips you by the scruff of the neck, and by the time you wake up and try to shake yourself loose, it's too late. You're caught. I should have known, from all those years of tagging along behind my mother, that the claims of loyalty were devious, with more legs than a centipede.

. . .

On Detective Sergeant Brook's next visit, he and I ended up walking further than we'd intended, along the drain under the bridge at Mouat Street and on through Southwell Park.

It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, my suggestion of a walk, ­grabbing Fred's lead—a combination of sudden, choking claustrophobia, and anxiety that needed movement, outside air. If I had to go through another round of questions, I couldn't bear the thought of being shut up inside while I answered them, tried to fathom what was behind the detective sergeant's unsympathetic, but persistent manner.

‘To be honest'—Brook stopped at a line of young eucalypts and spoke portentously, as though this was the moment he'd chosen to set himself straight with me—‘at first, I didn't think your accident was any more than that.' He was looking better, I noted, his skin firmer, less like unbaked dough.

‘I want you to start at the beginning,' he said, ‘and this time tell me everything.'

I lowered my head and pretended to fiddle with my sling. I knew I shouldn't be using one. The doctor had forbidden it. But the weight was punishing, and I cheated in the afternoons. I was supposed to go back to work in two days time. I knew I had to, if there was to be any hope of getting the outwork report finished on schedule. I hated the thought of having to face Ivan.

We started walking again, at Fred's pace, pausing while he sniffed at trees and dug for crickets in the clumps of grass that bordered Sullivan's Creek. I cast around in my mind for something I could tell Brook, and remembered the silly episode with the disk in the first-aid room, the even sillier one with me taped to a microphone trying to get Bambi to confess.

Brook gave a short laugh when I'd finished. Then he said, ‘You think this—Bambi did it? Surely that's not her real name.'

‘Brenda, but she won't answer if you call her that.'

‘And she admitted planting this disk? Who has it now?'

‘Felix Wenborn,' I said. ‘And no, unfortunately she didn't.'

The detective sergeant was watching me as he had before, his ­shadowed eyes a mocking brown.

We were heading towards a picnic table and chairs. I told Brook about Di Trapani's brother, Tony, and the mess he'd got himself into at the ANU. And Tony's friend, Ateeq, and the international bulletin board they seemed to be addicted to. I said I'd seen Ateeq with Allison Edgeware, and they seemed to know each other well. I'd had asked Tony to find out what he could about Compic and Allison, but he hadn't told me much.

Brook scratched his scalp underneath his hat. ‘What made you think you could help the kid?'

‘I didn't really. It was a dumb idea, but I liked him so I said I'd try.'

The truth sounded lame, untruthful. ‘Tony's a scared kid,' I went on. ‘He's done some silly things. But he wouldn't booby-trap my car, I'm sure of it.'

Brook sighed, and gave me a quick, reproachful glance. ‘When I've got a few days to spare,' he said, ‘remind me to tell you some stories about 19-year-old hackers.'

I coughed and cleared my throat, thinking of Ivan's shadow in the dark.

Someone had lit a fire in a rubbish bin and it had spread and blackened the whole picnic area. The smell of burning was strong, though the fire did not look recent.

Brook eyed the nearest bench. ‘Are you tired?' he asked me. ‘Do you want to sit down for a minute?'

I nodded. I did feel tired; but I thought he'd asked because he wanted a rest. I'd noticed that when Brook's energy ebbed below a certain level, his voice flattened out. If you represented it on paper, it would be a long flat line.

Fred ran down to the drain and began scratching for worms on the edge, where the soil was soft.

‘Old habits die hard,' I said.

Brook didn't ask what I meant. He'd ignored Fred so far, and hadn't offered to help while I'd struggled one-handed to let him off the lead.

Brook lowered himself on to the bench, first brushing off some dirt and loose soot with his hand. He took off his hat and set it on the seat beside him. Pale, unbaked skin stretched across the bones of his skull, white and shining as my plaster when I woke in the middle of the night. He ran a hand lightly over his head, not touching the bare, bald skin, his bloodless hand momentarily reflecting the milky light of water in the drain.

I licked my dry lips, and sat down on the opposite bench, trying to work out why he'd decided to remove his hat now, what he expected me to say. ‘Are you ill?' was wrong. ‘What's wrong with you?' didn't sounded right either. I was too embarrassed to ask, but my unspoken questions made the silence ring.

‘Why did your colleague go through the rubbish bin when she searched Rae Evans's office?' I said finally.

Brook looked surprised, then he smiled and leant forward on his elbows.

‘Let me tell you a story about trashing. This was back when I first joined the police, right? I knew how to direct the traffic and ride a motor bike.' He shifted on the bench, making himself more comfortable. ‘I was on the desk in Civic at ten o'clock one night. I remember that, because I had the 'flu, and I was already mentally at home in bed. An Inspector came in—this guy who thought he was the ants' pants, and I pretty much thought so too, at the time. He handed me this floppy disk in a plastic bag and asked me to take a copy of it. Then he said he'd be back in half an hour and left. I photocopied the label on the damn thing—that's what I thought he meant by copy it. I got hung by the balls because the static on the photocopier erased all the data on the disk.'

I laughed and said, ‘You must have felt terrible.' After a moment I added, ‘You didn't answer my question.'

Brook shook his shoulders. He crossed and re-crossed his legs, eyeing his hat on the table between us as a reformed alcoholic might a glass of whisky.

‘I'm getting to it. This will give you an idea of my meteoric rise from the dork who thought copy meant
photo
copy. I might add that what I am about to tell you is my one and only venture into undercover work. A child porn case, right? Me and two other officers collect the rubbish at this house in Narrabundah for four months straight. Once a week, we're garbos. We turn up on the truck, empty the bin—a metal one, I might add. The residence is classy. Around the corner we peel off, drive to the station with our plastic bags, start going through the loot. After four months we hit pay dirt, no pun intended. Would you believe our suspect had tossed a
list
of his clients? Ripped into bits the size of snowflakes and covered with vanilla yoghurt, but a fair dinkum list.'