A Certain Malice Page 3

  “I’ll have a coffee too please, Ruth,” Cecelia said.

  Ruth sighed. “Pikers, the both of you.” She vanished through a small side door into a kitchenette and soon they heard the clattering of cups. Cecelia made a move towards the sound then stopped as if she thought her disappearance might seem suspicious. She changed direction and walked back to the bench.

  Cam put his hands in his pockets and ambled around the lab, whistling something tuneless between his teeth. Benches lined the walls topped with strategically placed Bunsen burners and sunken sinks. Equipment, bottles of chemicals and jars of dead animals adorned the shelves. He tapped at a jar holding some kind of embryo; pieces of dead tissue spun around like snow in a snow globe.

  He saw a brown rat in a wire-covered aquarium nibbling on a chunk of dried corn held between its tiny, needled paws. It stopped nibbling, twitched its nose and gave him a furtive glance. In another glass tank a snake followed Cam’s every move with shiny black eyes and darting tongue. Cam shivered and turned to Cecelia who was now sitting on a tall stool by the window.

  “I don’t like snakes,” he said for conversation’s sake.

  “Neither do I.” She laughed, smoothing the skirt over her legs. Her hand crept to the collar of her blouse, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. Some of the drunken glow had faded from her soft brown eyes, leaving in its wake the smart of self-conscious awareness. He pulled up the stool next to hers and sat down.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Cecelia said. “I’m afraid we’ve made fools of ourselves. We’re not usually this bad. I’ve had a terrible day and Ruth was trying to cheer me up. I hope we haven’t made you feel too uncomfortable.”

  “I’ve had to deal with a lot worse, Ms Bowman,” Cam reassured her, wrapping his long legs around the stool.

  “Please, call me Cecelia,” she said.

  Ruth returned from the kitchenette with a tray and put mugs of coffee on the bench in front of them. “Oh no, Cecelia,” Ruth said, “our little spectacle won’t have concerned Cam in the least. He always was a cool customer. I remember him as a man of few words.” She smiled. “And he obviously still is.”

  The familiarity in her voice startled him. He swivelled on his stool and stared at her, searching back through time for a memory he felt he should have been able to grasp.

  “You’ve no idea who I am, have you? You’ve changed a lot, but I suppose that’s to be expected after twenty-five years.” Ruth turned to Cecelia. “Cam was always tall, but very skinny. He’s filled out, must have been all that football. Oh yes, and he wore his hair in dreadlocks then.”

  “They weren’t dreadlocks,” he said to Cecelia, for some reason feeling the need to explain. “It just gets like that when it’s long.” He ran his hands through the waves of his short greying hair, suddenly feeling hot. He caught sight of a frog hanging suspended in a jar of formaldehyde. Its long flippered legs hung motionless in its watery crypt, its skinny arms raised in supplication.

  Ruth laughed. “OK, I’ll put you out of your misery. I used to go to school here. I was a couple of years younger than Elizabeth. We both kept ponies at the school stables. You used to groom for us at the weekends.”

  Many of the girls had kept ponies at the school in those days. Cam still had no recollection of this woman, but it was easier to nod knowingly than continue as the clown in this circus of embarrassment. He cleared his throat and reached for the witness statement forms.

  “We’ll have to get together sometime and chew over our old memories. For now I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Fire away then,” Ruth said, resting her head on her hand.

  “It says here that you were working in the lab when you first noticed the fire.”

  She yawned, gave him a nod.

  “Do you often work at the lab during the school holidays?”

  Ruth lifted her head up and looked at him with eyes the colour of butane flames. “Is this an interrogation? Am I under suspicion?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’re making it sound as if I am.”

  “Please, Ruth, just answer the questions.” He eased the tension in his jaw with a sip of coffee.

  “OK, I’ll tell you.” She glanced at Cecelia, drew a deep breath then turned back to Cam. “I was humping Jeffrey Smithson on this bench here. In the height of my passion I turned to face the window and saw the smoke. Funny, I always thought one was supposed to see fireworks.”

  Cecelia almost choked on her coffee. Cam didn’t smile.

  “For God’s sake, Ruth, be serious for a change,” Cecelia said, hiding her smile behind her hand. She said to Cam, “Like me, Ruth has been putting in extra work because of the renovations. The whole lab’s been rebuilt and she’s spent a lot of time cleaning, unpacking and re-stocking. That’s what she was doing when she saw the smoke.”

  “Cecelia, you’re a killjoy sometimes,” Ruth said.

  Cam looked out of the large front window. Ruth Tilly was trying to provoke him and he was careful not to show any sign of annoyance.

  The view of the crime scene was unimpeded from here. He noticed that the coroner’s van and another vehicle had arrived. It was time to wind up this meeting and get back to Leanne.

  He glanced back at the form in his hand. “It says here the smoke you saw was dirty grey. I’d like you to think hard about this.”

  “I can only say what I saw, Cam.”

  “Did you see any flames?”

  “Not at first, just the smoke.”

  “When you did finally see some flames, what colour were they?”

  “Just your normal common garden variety of flame, kind of orange yellow.”

  Cam considered this for a moment, nodded. “Do you think it’d been burning long when you first noticed it?”

  “No, I don’t think so; there wasn’t even much smoke. I called Cliff Donovan from the bushfire brigade as soon as I saw it. You know how quickly fires get out of control at this time of year.”

  Cam agreed. “How long did the bushfire guys take to respond?”

  Ruth folded her arms. “Is all this necessary? I’ve already been through it with Vince.”

  Cam felt the muscles in his jaw tighten again. She sighed, fluttering her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh, all right. I’d say about twenty minutes.”

  “Did you notice any people or cars in the vicinity before you saw the smoke?”

  “No.”

  Cam made a note then slid off the stool, collecting his papers. He still had more questions but felt he’d do better speaking to Cecelia alone. He was heading for the door when Ruth’s voice made him turn.

  “I’m sorry about Elizabeth and your son. I read about it in the Old Glenroydians’ Magazine.”

  She sounded as sincere as her intoxication would allow, but Cam still reeled from the unexpected blow. He looked at Cecelia to gauge her reaction and saw his own shock mirrored in her eyes.

  “I sent you a sympathy card and a long letter but you obviously never got it,” Ruth continued.

  “I – we – got lots of sympathy cards. I lost track.” He let out a ragged breath and ran a hand across his face, before pinching his right ear lobe between his thumb and forefinger. It did nothing to allay the jolting shiver that ran up his body.

  Cecelia looked at Ruth, knitting her brows with a silent rebuke.

  He gave Cecelia a faltering smile and left the lab with the roar of flames in his ears.

  4

  TUESDAY

  Cam scowled when the door yielded to the first nudge of his key, sighing at the blatant disregard of his instructions. He took in the sight before him: the unpacked cartons, the precarious stacks of furniture, the piles of books, and everything else that contributed to the warehouse appearance of his new home.

  “Hey, looks like you’ve been busy,” he said to his daughter as their small white poodle, Fleur, jumped at his legs.

  Ruby didn’t look up. It seemed she had barely moved since he’d left her earlier that morning,
though she had managed to summon up the energy to unpack the TV. She now lay on the floor with her head on a pillow, apparently too engrossed in the midday movie to acknowledge his presence.

  Cam patted the dog, then walked to the TV and punched the off button, plunging the room into sudden silence.

  “Where’s Cindy?” he asked. Cindy was a university student he’d employed to help around the house until he could find a suitable, permanent housekeeper. He’d hoped, being reasonably close in age, Ruby might have found something in common with her.

  “Cindy’s gone,” Ruby said.

  “What? For good?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Cam’s voice rose. “But she never rang me to say she was quitting. I was told she was very reliable.”

  “It was some kind of emergency, I think. Half the youth choir down with flu or something.” Ruby turned and looked her father in the eye.“That or maybe her calculator broke.”

  Cam plunged his clenched fists into his pockets, counting to ten in his head. Exactly what his daughter had done to drive away the congenial Cindy he did not wish to contemplate.

  “Well, I’ll have to see about finding someone else. I can’t have you roaming about town on your own for the rest of the school holidays.”

  Ruby groaned and said something unintelligible. Cam clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Come on then, let’s make some headway here. I’ve got a few free hours, we should be able to get quite a bit of this stuff stowed away.”

  Ruby pushed herself up from the ground and leaned towards the TV controls. Cam beat her to it, pulling the plug from the socket.

  “This stays off until these boxes are unpacked,” he said, deflecting her acidic look with his well-used neutral expression. “This is a bonus, we’re lucky to get this stuff so early, cartons from Sydney can take weeks. The place will start to look much more homey with our things in it.”

  “This place sucks.” Ruby reached for Fleur and buried her face in the soft white curls of her hair.

  “Let’s not go into that again.”

  Ruby said, “I want to go back to Sydney. I miss my friends.” She lifted one of Fleur’s tiny paws and spread the toes wide, searching too carefully for grass seeds.

  “As soon as you’re settled you can start looking for a part-time job, save up to fly back for a visit,” Cam said.

  He hoped that by the time she’d raised the money, she’d have settled in so well she’d have forgotten her loser friends in Sydney.

  “Gramma said all I had to do was ask and she’d send me the money.”

  Yes, Gramma had always been very accommodating.

  He picked up one of the cartons and plonked it down beside her. “This looks like your junk. How about we start arranging your room?”

  Ruby released the dog and rolled on to her stomach, sticking her bum in the air and burying her head in the pillow. She used to sleep like that as a toddler and it had always made them laugh.

  He didn’t feel like laughing now.

  Her voice was muffled through the pillow. “I hate my room. I hate the bed. The mattress is stained, it’s lumpy and there’s lino on the floor. I want a carpet.”

  “I’ll look into the cost of carpet. I can’t promise anything straight away but we can start looking. How about we drive up to Toorrup next Thursday and do some late night shopping? We can grab a bite to eat and look at the prices of carpet then. I think they have a cinema in Toorrup now. Never did when I was a kid; we might be able to catch a movie.”

  “Whoopy-doo.”

  He tried for another angle of positive reinforcement, if that was what it was called. He had a feeling it was just plain, unadulterated bribery.

  “I’ve been keeping my eyes out in the local paper for a pony but haven’t had any luck so far. I’ll check at the stock feeder’s on my way back to the station.”

  Ruby slapped her hand down hard on the burnt-orange shagpile, shooting him a death stare.

  “Dad, how many times do I have to tell you? Read my lips.” She pointed to her mouth and mimed, “I don’t want a fucking pony.”

  He ignored her and dragged a box into the kitchen. Of course she still wanted a pony. She’d wanted a pony ever since she’d been old enough to write a Christmas list. He opened one of the kitchen drawers and wiped out the mouse droppings with a dishcloth, then started clattering the knives and forks into their compartments.

  Ruby moaned and picked herself off the floor. She started to scrabble at a carton with her fingernails in a futile attempt to break the seal. When she realized she was getting nowhere, she swore and sloped from the lounge into the kitchen. One of her dragging feet caught in a patch of torn vinyl and propelled her into her father’s arms.

  “Enjoy your trip?” he said, laughing. She pushed away from him. Her face was pink and streaked with sweaty strands of hair. “You’re supposed to say, See you next fall,” he said, willing her to smile with a silly grin of his own.

  She reached for a knife and held it upright in her fist, looking at him with eyes of chipped sapphire. For a moment he thought she was going to stab him; maybe she thought so too. He hadn’t needed the police psychologist to tell him his daughter had poor impulse control and anger management issues.

  But then she relaxed. Her hand dropped to her side and she returned to the carton in the lounge. Cam went to the fridge and gulped some iced water from the bottle.

  Through the open kitchen door he watched her unpack a carton. Some things she flung to the lounge floor, others – stuffed toys and animal posters – she carried to her bedroom. He was about to suggest she drag the whole box to her room when she reached for something wrapped in tissue paper. In a moment her expression changed from sullen belligerence to a look of sadness that made his throat constrict.

  He tossed the remaining cutlery into the drawer and walked through, desperate to engulf her in a bear hug, to tell her how everything would work out, that he was doing it all for her. But he stopped, remembering how she’d stiffened in his arms and turned to face him with eyes so full of hatred, they’d seared him with a pain almost physical.

  He gently took the picture from her hands. After wiping the dust off the glass on the leg of his pants, he placed it on the mantelpiece above the gas fire.

  “There we go. They can keep a good eye on us from up here,” he said, trying to smile.

  His wife and son had been dead for over three years but there were still times when he felt Elizabeth’s presence in bed next to him and smelt her perfume, or heard the excited peals of Joey’s laughter. Moving from one side of the continent to the other had done nothing to diminish these sensations. Now, looking at the picture again, he felt the same bittersweet ache, sensing them even here in this drab police cottage.

  The phone rang. Cam could see the immediate relief on his daughter’s face; another tense moment with Dad had been avoided. Earlier he’d had to show her how to work the heavy old-fashioned dial phone and now she held it to her ear as if it were a black brick.

  She listened for a moment then shoved the receiver at him. “It’s PC Pork, for you.”

  Cam hissed and put his finger to his mouth.

  “Well, you’ve called him a lot worse, Dad,” Ruby said in a loud voice, though by now Cam’s hand was clamped over the receiver.

  He turned his back on her and listened to the voice on the other end. After a few succinct words, he hung up.“I’ve got to go back to the station. It looks like they’ve ID’d that body,” he said.

  She had returned to the packing carton. She shrugged her thin shoulders then gave a start, remembering something.

  “Uncle Rod called this morning. He wants to meet you at the Glenny Arms tonight, at six.”

  Superintendent Rod Cummings was Cam’s immediate superior in Toorrup and his friend from their Police Academy days. He was largely responsible for the string-pulling necessary to get Cam back to WA and secure his posting to Glenroyd.

  “Right, I’ll come home after work to change
, then head out again.” Cam said. “I don’t imagine the meeting with Rod will take long.” He walked back to the kitchen and checked the fridge. It was empty except for a can of beer and a bottle of mayonnaise. “Looks like fish and chips again; I’ll bring some home after I’ve seen Rod,” he said.

  Ruby made no response. There was a time when she would have done anything for fish and chips.

  “Try and get some more unpacking done, OK, love? Oh, and I put the wheels on your bike last night, so if you like you can cycle down to the shops and pick us up some groceries from the general store.”

  “They don’t call it a general store any more, Dad, it’s called a supermarket.” She stretched the word, emphasising the syllables.

  “It was always the general store when I lived here.”

  “Yeah, like a hundred years ago.”

  He reached into his pocket and put some money on the breakfast bar. “Until we find a replacement for Cindy, I want you to ring and tell me where you’re going.”

  “I’d ring if I had a mobile phone,” she said with a sly smile.

  “Mobile phones don’t even work half the time around here. You will ring, young lady, and keep the door locked – until I can find someone else to keep you company.”

  Ruby responded with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. But as soon as the door closed behind him, she jumped to her feet and moved to the front window. She prised open the venetians and watched the tall figure of her father walk through the jelly haze of the footpath towards the police station. With a small jump of excitement, she hurried over to Fleur who stood gazing at the front door with troubled eyes.

  “Come on, Fleur,” she said to the dog, her voice high and breathless. “We’re going to the park.”

  5

  The general store might have revamped into a supermarket, but little else had changed in Glenroyd over the last twenty-five years. Cam walked down Main Street, past the same tin-roofed fibro cottages he remembered from his youth, the same small shops decorated with the same archaic advertising logos, faded by the sun and meaningless to anyone under forty.