Текст книги "Harum Scarum"

EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 071106

BETTYBO has entered the chat room

HARUM SCARUM: were u been?

BETTYBO: Sry. Things bad hear. He cam round agin.

HARUM SCARUM: wats rong? He hrt u?

BETTYBO: pir

BETTYBO has left chat room

There wasn’t much traffic at ten o’clock at night and it didn’t take Stevie long to drive from Cottesloe to Shenton Park where the heady scent of frangipani replaced the briny tang of the sea. She parked her unmarked car between the other police Commodore and a white Ford Escort, outside a block of state housing flats. A beige rectangle with clunky concrete balconies, Shenton Rise wasn’t much to look at, but it did offer a pleasant view of the floodlit park on the other side of the road.

Monty joined her on the footpath and briefly took her hand. ‘Was there any problem getting Mrs Nash to mind Izzy?’

‘She was watching the late movie, didn’t seem to mind switching venues to watch it at your place. I said I wouldn’t be long.’

He filled her in on the details as they scuffed up the stairs. They climbed slowly, the caged lights on every level casting a crisscross of shadows across the graffiti-streaked walls. Had this been a prison or a place of refuge for little Bianca Webster? Stevie wondered.

They heard a door slam from the floor above, then the sound of heavy footsteps echoing around the stairwell. Seconds later a man pushed passed them on the stairs, shoving Stevie against the handrail.

‘Hey, watch where you’re going, mate!’ Monty called out.

Stevie glimpsed a stocky, denim-clad figure. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ the man said, leaving a trail of beer fumes behind him.

Monty mumbled under his breath and moved quickly down a couple of steps as if to follow him. The feint worked, the footsteps sped up and the man made a hasty escape, slamming the door of the stairwell behind him.

Stevie and Monty made their way along the verandah until they came to number 34.

Monty took a breath and knocked. ‘Here goes nothing.’

Stevie would never forget the first time she’d been the bearer of tragic news; a twenty-two year old PC telling a forty-five year old woman that her son had died in a car crash had seemed unnatural. She knew it was only the authority of her uniform that had let her get away with it. No uniform necessary these days, she mused, with age and parenthood the universal leveller.

The thin woman who opened the door had one arm in a greying sling. The sudden movement of her free hand to her mouth sent a draught of cigarette smoke wafting at them through the flyscreen. Despite their civvies they radiated the unmistakable aura of cop to Stella Webster.

They’d decided earlier that Stevie would do the talking. ‘Mrs Webster? I’m DS Stephanie Hooper and this is Inspector Monty McGuire. May we come in?’

Stella Webster barely glanced at the ID Monty pressed against the screen door. Her nose was red and inflamed and her watery eyes fixed on Stevie, searching her face for assurances she could not give.

They were led into a small, airless lounge room. The furniture was dated and minimal, the place clean except for an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table, an empty beer can on its side next to it. A few knick-knacks on the shelf above the gas fireplace saved the place from total sterility and dreariness.

The woman wrapped her free arm around her injured one. She turned her back to them and spoke to a movie poster of The Titanic tacked to the wall. Stevie stared at it too, thinking how appropriate it was.

‘I hope you weren’t trying to reach me earlier. I had to get out for a bit. I shouldn’t have gone, the cops said I had to wait near the phone, but I had my mobile with me, so I thought what difference does it make? I went into Subiaco, couldn’t bear waiting around at home for news on my own. If she’d been kidnapped and they’d wanted a ransom, they’d have rung me on that wouldn’t they, I mean—’

The woman dropped her head and her thin shoulders began to shake. Stevie noticed a red area on her neck where the knot of the sling had rubbed. She crooked her head at Monty, indicating the kitchen, which was separated from the lounge by a breakfast bar. He nodded, a look of relief on his face. Taking off his suit jacket he began to bustle about.

Stevie guided Stella Webster to a cracked vinyl couch and sank down beside her. She could tell by the woman’s stiff posture she knew the news was not good, but she still had to spell it out. ‘Stella, I’m afraid a dead body matching Bianca’s description has been found.’

Stevie tensed and waited for the barrage of anguished questions: where, when, how, by whom? And, most critical, did she suffer?

Monty was filling the kettle at the kitchen sink. He turned the tap off and stood as if holding his breath. Like her he was thinking of Izzy, thinking how it would be for them if the tables had been turned.

‘I shouldn’t have gone out,’ Stella managed before the tears began to fall.

Stevie resisted the temptation to put her arm around the woman. In her experience, overt gestures of sympathy often did more harm than good. ‘It doesn’t matter, Stella, it wouldn’t have made any difference,’ she said, gently.

‘Not today maybe, but all the other times, the double shifts, the overtime, I left her alone too much.’ The woman patted the pocket of her shapeless pinafore dress and frantically looked around the room. Stevie offered her a cigarette and lit it for her, her own hands shaking so much it was hard to catch the tip with the flame. She could imagine herself reacting in the same way if something happened to Izzy—the guilt first, always the guilt.

She said, ‘We’re going to need to ask you some questions, Stella. We can come back in the morning if you like...’

‘But now would be better,’ Stella finished for her. ‘I know all about this, seen it on TV often enough. You have to act fast; every hour that passes lessens the chances.’ She choked on a sob. ‘But time has run out for Bianca, hasn’t it?’

‘Time is still imperative. We need to catch this man before he does it again.’ And when we do catch him, I might consider leaving him alone with Tash, Stevie thought. Or I might even give Tash a hand.

The phone in Stella’s kitchen rang. Monty pointed to it and Stella indicated for him to answer it.

‘Stella’s phone,’ he said and listened. ‘Just a minute.’ He covered up the mouthpiece and called out to Stella, ‘A bloke here wants to speak to you. Won’t give his name.’

Stella shrank towards the back of the couch as if she’d just glimpsed a poisonous snake and shook her head.

‘It’s all right, Stella, you don’t have to speak to anyone. A lot of people take their phones off the hook at a time like this.’ Stevie put her hand over Stella’s, which trembled like a wild mouse under her touch. ‘Who do you think it was?’ she gently enquired.

Stella took a breath and gave a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Probably Bob, some guy who’s been asking me out, that’s all. He often rings at this time.’

It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it. Stevie paused as she puzzled over the reason for Bob’s brush off. ‘You don’t seem to like him much.’

‘Hey, got that right in one.’

Monty unplugged the phone from the wall, then he put a tray on the coffee table before them. ‘Did you have a visitor before we came around? We passed a man on the stairs, he seemed angry,’ he said.

‘No, I’ve been here on my own. He was probably from upstairs.’ She pointed to the floor above with her good hand. ‘The woman up there has a different fella every night.’

‘How did you break your arm, Stella?’ Stevie asked, still thinking about Bob.

‘I was carrying a basket of laundry downstairs and missed my footing. It’s getting better, plaster’s coming off soon.’ She flexed the fingers of her left hand, moving the arm in the sling to show how much it had improved.

‘Is there anyone we can call to sit with you?’ Monty asked. Stella shook her head.

‘Are you sure? It’s not good for you to be on your own at a time like this.’ He handed them each a chipped blue mug, ladling a generous amount of sugar into Stella’s without asking if she wanted it. As gently as he could he told her that someone would pick her up in the morning to formally identify the body.

‘Where was she found?’ Stella turned red-rimmed eyes to Stevie.

‘In a half-built shopping centre in Midland.’

‘She’s never been to Midland. I don’t even like the place, never took her there. How was she, was she...?’

‘She died quickly, but I’m afraid there is evidence of sexual assault,’ Stevie said.

Stella covered her ears with her hands. ‘That’s enough, please, I don’t want to hear any more.’

Discarding her earlier caution, Stevie put an arm around the woman. ‘And we won’t tell you any more, not if you don’t want to hear it.’

Stella ignored the gesture of comfort, reached for her tea and took a shaky sip. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want, just as long as you don’t tell me anything more about how she died.’ She put her mug down and buried her face in Stevie’s shoulder.

Stevie remained with Stella long after Monty left to relieve his neighbour of babysitting duties, promising to stay until the distraught woman was asleep. She contacted the medical officer who dropped by with some sedatives, then called Stella’s sister in Esperance who said she’d arrive in Perth about lunchtime the next day. In between talking to Stella and making phone calls, Stevie briefed the team of uniformed officers assigned to question the neighbours.

Stella had taken the sleeping tablets and was now having a shower before going to bed.

Clothes scattered the floor of Bianca’s bedroom and the residual tang of salt and vinegar chips salted the air. The top of the Formica desk was scarred with slash marks and pitted with tiny holes as if from multiple compass stabbings. ‘I ♥ Daniel’– a boyfriend, a rock or movie star?—had been scratched into the surface.

Stevie cleared the desk chair of shoes and sat down to make notes of the key points of her conversation with Stella.

Bianca was the product of a one night stand with a New Zealand backpacker on a Darwin beach. Stella remembered the man’s Christian name, Nicholas, but that was it. After their brief encounter he’d returned to New Zealand none the wiser of Stella’s pregnancy.

It had been a struggle to bring up Bianca alone. Stella worked a regular shift at Lotus Lodge as well as moonlighting at several nursing homes in the metro area. She averaged a sixty-hour working week and was saving up to take her daughter to Queensland for a holiday.

Bianca grew up well able to amuse and take care of herself. Last year she’d chucked a tanty (Stella’s words), insisting she was too old for after-school care. Stella had conceded and bought her daughter the laptop which had provided hours of amusement—much more educational for her than the TV, Stella had said.

Stevie had been unable to reply.

No, Bianca didn’t seem to enjoy school much, was often teased. She was a bit of a loner—her teacher had reported often seeing her alone at lunchtime, playing with her iPod. She didn’t have many friends, despite the effort she took to fit in: the belly button ring, the dyed hair, even the rock stars on the wall. Stevie tried not to react when Stella had mentioned the belly button ring—the early sexualisation of girls Bianca’s age seemed almost the norm these days.

Stevie gazed at the posters, recognising the Veronicas, Pink and a boy band whose name she couldn’t remember. Her talk with Stella had given her enough insight into the child’s personality to make her wonder whether the posters were only there on the off chance that one day a school friend might come over to play.

Bianca had wagged school several times last term, promising her mother after their last blow up that she wouldn’t do it again. Her mother thought it was because a kid called Zoë Carmichael was bullying her. When she’d approached the school about it they’d done nothing.

Despite her absenteeism Bianca’s school grades had been improving, especially in reading and story writing, and she even had a story published in the school newsletter. Untidy piles of type-written paper formed a nest where the laptop should have rested on the desk. Stevie shuffled through the scattered sheaves, hoping she might find some printed emails, but she only found doodles of brick walls, more Daniel hearts, and piles of half finished stories. ‘Once upon a time in a place far, far away.’ Or ‘It was a dark and stormy night...’ Nothing particularly original; atrocious spelling, but not bad for a child of this technological age where DVDs and computer games were the entertainment of choice.

Stevie searched through the wastepaper basket next to the desk and found a few more screwed up stories, some used tissues, chocolate wrappings and several empty potato chip packets.

A row of sagging shelves above the desk was weighed down with paperbacks—the Harry Potter series, Alex Ryder boy detective, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, Paul Jennings and several others. Despite the strained finances of her mother, it didn’t seem as if Bianca had gone without. Next to the books were jumbled piles of CDs, an iPod and a small-screen combo TV and DVD player.

‘Did you ever see what Bianca was doing on the computer?’ Stevie had asked Stella earlier.

‘Don’t know anything about computers, all I know is I get a whacking great bill for the Internet every month.’

‘Did she use email?’

‘Yes, with her Internet friends. I encouraged it. I couldn’t write a proper letter when I was her age. I was proud of her.’

If the woman had known anything at all about kids’ activities on the Internet, Stevie thought, she would have realised the letters were probably far from proper.

‘Why’s everyone so caught up over the computer, anyway?’ Stella had queried.

‘We think it might have been taken by her abductor to cover his tracks.’

‘You mean he took it when he grabbed her? But why would he do that?’

‘This man is probably a cyber predator, a paedophile who picks up children through the Internet and tricks them into meeting him. I doubt he came here to take the computer. A common ploy is to get the child to bring their laptop, if they have one, to the meetings. In that way they can destroy the computer and any evidence of their activities.’

At that point Stella had buried her face in her hands. ‘I never knew any of this. She was always so good. So quiet.’

Stevie heard her own mother’s voice across the chasm of the years: ‘You’re too quiet, you’re up to something.’ And usually they were, either putting laxatives in the shearers’ tea or hiding the hand-reared calf from their father at market time. There were no computers then, no Internet chat rooms and no mobile phones.

Stevie was thirty-five years old, but her childhood could have been a century ago.