Shooting Star

15

The helicopter landed on an expanse of mown grass a hundred metres from the complex of modern buildings. Its rotors blew away grass cuttings in all directions, a violent cuttings storm that caused the two people waiting to turn their backs and put their hands to their faces.

I waited until the noise stopped and the blades stopped before I got out, walked out from under the drooping swords and shook hands with the tall middle-aged woman and the younger and shorter man. She was wearing a white polo-neck shirt and black pants. He was in a dark suit, white shirt, striped tie.

‘We haven’t seen anyone from the family for quite a while,’ the woman said. She was English, could talk while exposing horse teeth and pink gums.

The man looked at her, their eyes met. ‘No criticism intended, of course,’ she said. ‘We understand how busy people are these days.’

I didn’t say anything, nodded at them.

The man smiled at me like a doorman at a five-star hotel. ‘We absolutely do,’ he said. ‘Do understand. Now Mrs Carson’s not in a terribly receptive mood, Mr Calder. Her doctor will give you a full briefing.’

‘Is she violent?’

The man was taken aback, tilted his head, raised his eyebrows, little downturning of the mouth. ‘Well, she can be that way inclined. It’s the price one pays. A trade-off. The alternative…’ He let the alternative hang, float off.

‘Forget about the briefing,’ I said.

‘It would be advisable, Mr Calder.’ A serious tone.

‘No. I don’t have the time.’ There wasn’t any pleasure in working for the Carsons unless you could behave like one.

They looked at each other, assigning responsibility.

‘You’ll have someone with you,’ the man said. ‘That is our policy.’

We walked across to the building, down a wide verandah with groups of plastic outdoor furniture, through a glass door into a reception area done in pastel colours with chrome and grey commercial chairs. It was empty, no one behind the counter.

‘Quiet around here,’ I said.

‘Generally, visits are by appointment,’ the woman said. I wasn’t looking at her but, at the edge of my vision, I saw the wet teeth and gums. She went to the counter and picked up a handset, said a few words.

We went down corridors lit by slit windows, passed doors with numbers, went through a gravelled courtyard with a square of grass and a drought-stricken birdbath, and came to a door at a dead end.

A woman in her twenties was waiting for us in front of the door, facing us, another short woman wearing the same white polo-neck and black jacket and pants uniform. Jaggedly cut hair, a home job, dyed blonde, dark roots, no neck to speak of. Martial arts said the balanced stance, the level shoulders, the loose arms. The cockiness.

‘This is Jude,’ the man said. ‘She’ll be with you while you talk to Mrs Carson.’

Jude moved her lips, some attempt at communication.

The man opened the door with a key. Jude went in first. Then her handler. I followed him in. It was a small square room, lit from a skylight. There was a door in the far wall and beside it a low window, one pane of thick security glass. In the wall beneath the window was a stainless-steel drawer front. A chrome and grey chair stood in front of it.

‘With other patients, we would ask you to visit from this room,’ the man said. ‘However, Mrs Carson won’t come near the window.’ He flicked a switch beside the window and a monitor above the door lit up.

It showed a grey view of a room, rectangular items of furniture, a figure slumped on one of them.

‘Your visitor’s here, Mrs Carson,’ the man said.

The woman didn’t respond. He unlocked the door and opened it. Jude went in first. The man ushered me in after her, closed the door behind us.

‘A visitor, Christine,’ said Jude.

Christine Carson was lolling on her spine in a chair carved from a cube of dense grey foam rubber, no cover on it. There were three more foam chairs in the room. That was it. No other furnishings, no pictures. A television set was behind security glass in the wall to my right, controlled by big soft rubber buttons below it. To my left was another room reached through an archway. I could see the end of a low grey foam rectangle, presumably a bed. Light came through slit windows, panes of security glass set in the masonry, behind Christine.

‘Don’t call me Christine,’ said Christine. ‘You’ve never been asked to, never will be.’ She looked at me. ‘I don’t know you. Have you been sent to kill me?’

She was about forty, thin, big eyes in a long face made longer by close-cropped hair. She was wearing a shift of some stretch fabric, high neck, long sleeves, only her bare feet showing. I couldn’t see Anne in her.

‘No, not to kill you, Mrs Carson,’ I said. ‘I gather that’s a job you’d rather do yourself.’

She looked at me for a while, cold grey eyes, a few shades lighter than the furniture, straightened up in her chair. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you don’t pussyfoot around, do you? Get this bitch out of here and we can fuck. Or she can stay and watch.’

‘Christine, don’t-’ said Jude sternly.

‘Shut up, I won’t have servants speak to me in that tone. What’s your name?’ Christine was looking at me.

‘Frank Calder.’

Christine stood up. She was tall. ‘Well, Frank Calder,’ she said. ‘You look like a man who’s seen a bit of the world.’ In one movement, she put her hands to her garment and pulled it over her head, threw it at Jude, stood there naked, pelvis thrust forward, smiling.

I didn’t look away. There were scars on her wrists, her stomach, on one of her breasts, on her neck. She’d inflicted a lot of pain on herself.

‘Mrs Carson,’ I said, ‘this is entertaining but I’m here to ask you a serious question. Do you know of anyone who would kidnap your daughter Anne?’

The smile went, her eyes widened, she held out a hand for her dress, pulled it on as efficiently as she’d taken it off. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please God, no.’

‘Let’s sit down,’ I said.

We sat down. She was shaking her head, looking down, breathing quickly and shallowly. ‘Poor baby,’ she said. ‘Poor, poor baby.’ Then she looked up slowly, eyes narrowed, smiled. ‘Just a trick, isn’t it? They sent you to play this trick on me. They want me to go completely out of my mind.’

‘Who would want that?’

‘Tom and Barry. Who fucking else? They used to put a tape recorder next to my bed when I was asleep. Telling me what a bad mother I was, telling me I should kill myself, how that was what was best for the children. Of course, Carol was behind it all. She hated me from the start. Detested me. She told Mark I’d trapped him, that I should’ve been on the Pill.’

She was moving her head from side to side now, her right hand at her throat inside the shift collar, feeling the scar tissue.

‘They sent you, didn’t they? Didn’t they?’

I took a chance. ‘Pat sent me,’ I said. ‘He sends you his love.’

She was startled. Her head stopped moving. ‘Pat? Did he? Why doesn’t he come and see me?’ Her voice had taken on a sad, whining tone. ‘I love Pat. Like a father. Pat doesn’t know what the others are doing. He’d never let them do anything to me…’

‘Anne hasn’t been kidnapped,’ I said, tasting the lie on my tongue. ‘I’m the new person in charge of the children’s safety. I’m trying to identify any possible threats to them. So that we can act in advance, keep them safe.’

She nodded, thoughts now somewhere else. ‘My father doesn’t want anything to do with me,’ she said. ‘He married his secretary six months after Mum’s death. They killed her. Murdered her.’

This was not the person to be asking questions about possible kidnappers of her daughter. I should have accepted the briefing, accepted it and flown back to town afterwards. I could have had the briefing on the telephone, never flown here at all.

‘They destroyed Jonty too, you know. And Mark, their own flesh and blood,’ Christine said. ‘Although he’s the sick one, he’s the one who’s sick.’

‘Jonty. Who’s Jonty?’

‘Stephanie’s husband.’

I remembered Pat’s words on the first night, in his study sipping malt whisky:

…and Stephanie and her fuckin husband, don’t like to say the bastard’s name, Jonathan fuckin Chadwick.

‘How did they destroy Jonty?’

Christine sighed, scratched her scalp, put her hands into her sleeves, scratched, took them out. ‘Isn’t it time?’ she said to Jude, standing behind me. ‘Jude, isn’t it time? Darling?’

‘In a while,’ said Jude, power in her voice. ‘When your visitor is finished.’

I repeated the question.

Christine got up, began to walk back and forth in front of me. ‘Jonty? Oh, they have their ways. They got his licence taken away. Tom and Barry. They’ve got the power. Just pick up the phone.’

‘What licence was that?’

‘Licence to be a doctor, I don’t know what they call it.’

‘On what grounds was his licence to practise suspended?’

‘They’re so fucking self-righteous. Stephanie found her father screwing her school friend in the tennis pavilion at Portsea, did you know that?’ Her shoulder twitched, moved again.

‘Tell me about Jonty.’

‘Jude, it must be time, why can’t I have a fucking watch, what fucking harm can that possibly do? How do I fucking kill myself with a watch? Please, Jude…’

‘Your visitor’s not finished,’ said Jude curtly. ‘Pay attention.’

Christine looked at me, jerked her head from side to side. ‘Jesus. What?’

‘Tell me about Jonty.’

‘Shit, he’s no saint. The guy was dealing in his office, right, he was shooting up junkies in his office. The far gones. Including me. He used to shoot me up, shoot up too, then I’d leave and he’d go back to seeing patients. Old ladies.’

‘And after he was suspended?’

‘Kicked him out. Expelled him from the family. Like me. Started dealing in clubs, in the street. He owed huge fucking sums to the suppliers, they were going to kill him…Can you go now, please, please.’

‘Just one last thing. How did they destroy Mark?’

‘Wouldn’t have him in the business. Barry wouldn’t have him. Barry hates him. I don’t know why. Won’t be in a room with him. He got Mark’s law firm to fire him. Then his own father wouldn’t give him a cent.’

She was rubbing her hands together, scratched her face. ‘Can you go now. Please?’

I stood up. ‘Thank you, Mrs Carson,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your talking to me.’

‘Yes. Goodbye.’ She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at Jude. ‘Jude, darling, he’s going…’

The man was waiting for me in the anteroom, presumably had watched us on the monitor.

‘As you’ve seen,’ he said as we walked down the corridor, ‘Mrs Carson is not the easiest of patients.’

‘She’s not a patient,’ I said, ‘she’s an inmate.’

We flew home over the lush hills, beneath us the fields, the settlements, the roads, the cars, they looked like the perfect countrysides model railway enthusiasts build: one of each thing and everything in its place. I thought that there had probably been a time when the Carsons imagined they had built a perfect landscape, shaped the world with their money. Then strangers came and took Alice away from them and suddenly their money was as shells and flints and sharks’ teeth and Reichsmarks, a basketful would not preserve a hair on the girl’s head.

The pilot was looking at me. ‘Ex-military?’ he said. In his dark glasses I could see my reflection, bulbous.

‘Why?’

‘Dunno. Something. I had ten years.’

‘Ex all kinds of things,’ I said. ‘Ex-everything, basically.’

He looked away, flash of glasses.

We were over the Dandenongs and ahead, choking on its own foul breath, lay the imperfect city. Many of each thing and nothing in its place.