The Practice Baby Page 11

‘Whoever has access to Charlie’s money then. What about the boyfriend?’

  ‘Skinny ex-junkie, seems fond of Skye and he tolerates Charlie—which isn’t easy. Tom only moved out once Glen was on the scene. He’d probably still be there if Glen wasn’t.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove Glen didn’t see the insurance money as something to make their lives easier.’

  ‘That fits with Leah’s story of being watched. Glen has a motive to get rid of Tom, and Leah too.’

  ‘Did Glen know about the insurance? And the thirty-day business?’

  ‘It sounds too complicated—he’s not the brightest star in the firmament.’

  ‘The insurance company had to find out about his death somehow. Either Skye told them or the police did. Did Tom tell her before he died though? If not, there’s no motive for her and Glen.’

  Dee rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not Skye. Anyway, I told the detective about the insurance policy. He must have checked on it and alerted Skye and the insurance company. Leah said she knew about it so Skye probably did too.’

  ‘So Glen acting without her knowledge is still possible.’

  ‘How can we find out if Tom told them?’

  ‘Could you ask Skye?’

  ‘No, she’s still furious with me. Leah might know … that’s a dead end though.’ Dee paused, realised what she’d said and shivered. ‘It’s probably a good idea that she’s disappeared then—unless of course it’s too late …’

  They both sat silent for a moment.

  ‘I told her there was a risk but she’s so obsessed with GenSafe and the investigation Tom was doing that she didn’t seem to believe it was real. I was still hoping for an innocent explanation myself then. I should have made her understand.’

  ‘How? As you said, she’s disappeared. Some of the time is gone already. Saturday in two weeks will be twenty-eight days so three days from that and she’s safe.’

  Even in the brighter light of the kitchen the shadow of murder and murderers contaminated the safety of the space.

  ‘I’m starting to feel a bit spooked. Can we leave it there for tonight?’

  ‘All right, but there are other possibilities to look at. We ought to at least consider them. Another fifteen minutes?’ Raj asked.

  Dee nodded. ‘I suppose we haven’t considered the other stuff Tom was onto. Last time I saw him he was excited about what he implied were dodgy practices at GenSafe IVF.’

  ‘Well, if their system had any flaws, Tom could have found a way to hack them. But he knows how not to leave a trace. If there were something criminal going on, that’s a motive but only if they know he’s onto them. I might be able to find out who set up their computer security.’

  Dee hit the heel of her hand against her forehead. ‘I saw Professor Fairborn, the head of GenSafe, at a meeting. I was at uni with him. I told him Tom was a hacker.’

  ‘So if Tom was onto something, they could suspect he was into their system and monitor it.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘I know, you can’t imagine the professor as a killer, right?’

  ‘Tom said, well, alleged, they were offering designer babies at the clinic. Is that enough of a motive for murder? The publicity would probably get them lots of customers. But we can’t go past the fact that Tom is dead and he didn’t die of natural causes …’

  ‘So we have to check out all the possibilities,’ Raj completed Dee’s sentence.

  ‘There’s a major one we’re ignoring,’ Raj said and waited.

  ‘You can’t mean Leah. The girl loved him and she’s terrified.’

  ‘All I’m saying is we shouldn’t put people in and out of the frame because you “know” it’s not them. Leah admits she knew about the insurance and we know nothing of her background. She’s disappeared; that could be considered suspicious.’

  Raj was right. She’d let her feelings for Tom colour this. If she relied on what she imagined went on in people’s heads, no one was a murderer. She couldn’t imagine a mental state that would allow the killing of another human being. Yet murders did happen. A step back to consider all the possibilities was the only rational way to proceed.

  They agreed that Raj would try to find out more about GenSafe’s computer systems and hopefully Tom’s phone records. Dee would follow up the pathologist. It was something to do, a plan, a distraction from the fear she felt for Leah. At least the girl had disappeared so no one could find her, unless of course she had already been found by the killer.

  As soon as she got the final pathology report, Dee would try again with the police.

  Raj went to the fridge and waved another beer in front of Dee. It was 10 pm. She shook her head, got up and put their coffee cups in the dishwasher and turned off the overhead lights.

  ‘Let’s leave it now till we get more information from the autopsy,’ she said. She couldn’t bring herself to make the possibility of Leah being killed real by putting it into words.

  Dee wondered if she should offer Raj a bed for the night. What if he thought it was a come-on, which it sort of was. It was much too complicated. If he was gay it would be too embarrassing. Why couldn’t she ask him about it?

  ‘I’m okay to drive,’ he read her thoughts.

  They touched cheeks.

  ‘Thanks, Raj, you’re a good friend.’

  Dee rinsed the empty beer bottles and put them with the two still full bottles in a plastic bag next to her handbag. Tomorrow she’d dispose of them. No need for the kids to know she’d had Raj over.

  21.

  The next day, Dee was back downstairs from where Tom had died, an hour and a half late for her home visit. Would Jock let her in? She walked across the same dusty ‘garden’ of dead bushes and cigarette butts. Jock’s flat was on the ground level. She rang and Jock buzzed her through the outer door. Dee stood at the bottom of the same dingy stairwell she’d followed the robot cops up that awful day. The light was poor. She glanced up the stairs and quickly looked away.

  The police refused to do anything. Skye had her hands full with Charlie and wanted to believe it was asthma. Leah’s suspicions could be paranoia. Dee didn’t want to join her in some bizarre folie à deux.

  The memory of Tom’s last visit to the surgery came back to her. His undefended enthusiasm, his lanky awkwardness—and now her baby hacker was dead. He deserved more.

  The door next to her opened. A large unshaven elderly man, flannelette pyjamas stretched across his considerable paunch, glared at her. The smell of stale spices and grease from the stairs was replaced with corned beef and cabbage.

  ‘I suppose you’re thinking of coming in sometime. It’s one thirty; we should have been in bed half an hour ago.’

  Jock hobbled slowly back across the lounge room, his knees held apart by a basketball-size sac of fluid hanging down from his scrotum. He had resisted surgery for the hydrocele till it became too difficult for him to get to the shops. From then it was eighteen months on the waiting list. Now he was finally due for surgery that would allow him to leave the flat again.

  ‘Hello, Jock. I’m sorry. I got held up by someone having an overdose. How’s Lil?’

  A wrinkled woman with straggly grey hair in a threadbare nightie and adult nappy left the curtains she was fiddling with and came over to take Dee’s hands between her own.

  ‘You’ve come to take us home, dear.’ She turned to Jock, ‘Get my purse.’

  ‘It’s Jenny, love,’ said Jock.

  Dee extracted her hands. Jock took Lil by the shoulders and sat her down on the lounge. She had no idea who Jenny was but the name always calmed Lil down.

  Lil submitted sweetly to having her blood pressure and lungs checked. Her weight was stable and she was no more agitated than normal.

  ‘Have they collected your blood and done the ECG?’ Dee asked Jock.

  Jock’s operation was next week. Dee had arranged home pathology and Lil was booked into respite care for a week so he would have time to recover.

  ‘They said they can’t co
me before three so I cancelled them.’

  ‘But you can’t have the operation without the tests and without the operation you won’t be able to get to the shops. You told me you’d had enough of being housebound.’

  ‘We go to bed at one o’clock—Lil has to have her routine—I can’t upset her for a test. She’ll be impossible.’

  Jock was implacable. It was hard to disagree with him. Any minor change in routine and calm sweet Lil became a screaming harridan lashing out with fists and fingernails.

  The Dentons’ extraordinary sleeping schedule was a result of Jock’s anxiety. To make sure it was done in time he started each task earlier and earlier. They’d gradually got to the point where he started getting ready for bed at 11 am. At 1 pm they were in bed asleep. They got up to start the day an hour before midnight. In a few more years they would be back to a normal schedule. Dee suspected it made no difference to Lil but if it gave Jock a sense of being on top of his difficult situation then all was well. She rang pathology to arrange a special visit outside the normal hours and Jock calmed down.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ he asked. It was a routine and routines were inviolate. The cuppa provided company for Jock and allowed Dee time to assess Lil’s mental state and their interactions.

  ‘Had the wallopers here last week asking questions about the lad upstairs—bad business,’ Jock said as he dipped a whole shredded wheatmeal biscuit in his tea and successfully conveyed the soggy mess to his mouth.

  ‘What did they want to know?’ Dee asked, surprised the police had checked with the neighbours at all.

  ‘Lots of nosy questions. Didn’t tell ’em anything.’ Jock winked and tapped the side of his nose with his finger.

  ‘Was there anything to tell?’

  ‘Only some bloke watching the front door for a week beforehand.’

  ‘Jock, you have to tell the police.’

  ‘No way. No filth getting anything out of me. I’m no dobber. And whoever did over young Einstein might have a go at us. I couldn’t put Lil in danger.’

  Dee decided not to push it. He looked bursting to tell but there was no way he would give anyone up to the police.

  ‘What happened?’ Dee asked. ‘The police say it was an asthma attack.’

  ‘Asthma my arse. Why were they watching the door all week? And who came down the stairs without the lights on the night he died? Poor bugger—seemed a decent sort, he used to collect our scripts from the chemist. Didn’t deserve it. At least Bambi wasn’t there.’

  Bambi had to be Leah. Bambi and young Einstein, perfect names for them.

  Dee still wanted to convince Jock to go to the police but if she tried he’d be likely to clam up completely.

  ‘So what happened? There were people watching the house?’

  ‘Not people, one bloke—black clothes and a dark cap pulled down over his face. He was in different cars every day. I got the numbers just in case, and I was right too.’

  ‘You reckon there was foul play?’

  Jock gave a shrug but didn’t say no. Dee held her breath as she asked, ‘You got the numbers of the cars?’

  Just then Lil wandered into the kitchen and picked up the kettle. Jock was instantly at her side and gently took it from her. Anyone from any of the flats could come down the stairs late at night but car numbers were real evidence, something Dee could take to the police. But would Jock tell her?

  ‘She’s got to go to the toilet now.’

  Jock knew the signs that Lil needed a toilet quickly. From the bathroom he called, ‘Can we have all our scripts. I’ll hunt out those numbers later. Lil’s put them away somewhere.’

  Dee wrote the scripts. With Lil rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet as she held onto his arm for balance, Jock signed the Medicare forms for both of them. It was 2 pm, a full hour past their bedtime. He was too distracted now for more questions.

  Once Lil was in respite, Jock would come into the surgery for his post-operative check-up. Without the stress of keeping a constant watch on Lil he might tell her more.

  On the way out, she looked up and remembered the last time she’d seen Tom, the person, not the remnants of him, the corpse. His mix of vulnerability and competence; a grown-up four-year-old with her as the adult looking on, ready for him to fall, ready to catch him, cuddle him and kiss better his injuries—except no one was there to protect him when it happened.

  She braced herself to go upstairs.

  ‘Asthma my arse,’ she repeated Jock’s words as she made one foot follow another to the top of the stairs.

  What hope was there that she could get more information from Jock? If there were no hitches with respite for Lil and his operation went ahead maybe he would tell her. The chance of him corroborating any evidence to the police was nil though. Dee would have to see if she could use the information herself to find something the authorities would take seriously.

  The door to Tom’s flat was new, bare unpainted plasterboard with what looked like the same lock. The handle didn’t turn. Skye would have the key.

  22.

  The key slipped into the lock. It was a week from the funeral. Skye made it plain she didn’t want any further enquiry into Tom’s death but handed over the key in exchange for Dee’s feeble excuse.

  Someone had to speak for Tom. And then there was Leah—was she paranoid or was she really in danger?

  Dee put the key in the door and heard the tumblers turn in the deadlock. She pushed open the door and noticed the jamb was undamaged metal. When the police broke in, the flimsy material of the door had given way and broken away from the intact lock.

  Dee remembered her brief surge of hope that day as they looked at the intact door. All was normal, Tom was fine, this was all an over-dramatisation. Then the police broke it down and the world changed.

  Now she stepped inside, closed the door quietly and leaned back against it till her heart stopped thumping. She faced the main room and kitchen. It looked the same as the awful day they found him. On her right, a wall of computer equipment was winking red or green lights at her. It was neat, the cords gathered in bundles and descending through holes in the desk. Tom’s chair faced her as though the last time he had got up was to go to the door. What had happened?

  She pictured Tom at his desk. A knock on the door and him turning the chair, unfolding those long limbs, getting up, a brief walk across the floor to the door. Surely he would check the peephole? Why would he let someone in—unless it was someone he knew? The other option was someone had a key and had let themselves in without Tom knowing. The last person to sit in the chair could be Tom’s killer. Perhaps he sat in the chair to check out the computers then turned to leave, taking Tom’s key to lock up.

  Dee made herself revise the pronoun to he/she. Killers were mostly men but it was a mistake to make assumptions at this stage. Hadn’t Glen sat there when he wanted to take away Tom’s computers?

  Dee used her phone to take several photos of what she could see from the door. Craig had implied that the police had not taken fingerprints. Their cursory investigation was dropped once they received the pathology report that said he died of asthma.

  Dee put the plastic fishing box that served as her doctor’s bag on the kitchen table and opened it. She’d stuffed it with crime scene detective tools before she left the surgery. Evidence collected by an amateur would be not accepted by the police but she had to at least try. She pulled on vinyl gloves.

  First the bedroom. Her memories of that day all led to the body on the bed and a painful rent in her heart. For Skye it was clearly unbearable to let her thoughts stray near that day. She was willing to believe anything if it let her keep Tom’s death out of her mind. It was probably a desire to have the reminder of that day gone that made her hand over the key so easily.

  Dee had to put aside her distress, look at everything about the scene and be methodical. For her, the only way to peace was to find out what happened.

  The bed was made and there was a slight wrinkle in the quilt i
n the middle and the pillowslip was creased. Nothing else—no secretions from the corpse. Dee silently thanked a god she didn’t believe in.

  The Ventolin puffer she had taken from his hand was there on the bedside table. Dee picked it up. It was too light; she puffed it, she’d been right, it was empty. Why would Tom be using an empty puffer? She pulled the empty canister from the plastic holder and noticed something yellow, a fine powder, inside. She pulled a clip-lock bag from her pocket and put in the canister and holder. She climbed onto the bed and looked closely at the pillow. There were fine yellow dots on it too. She took a swab from her bag and rubbed it in the area of the yellow substance. Her grandfather was a policeman, maybe it was in her blood—or maybe it was watching CSI with the kids when she was exhausted after work.

  Where were the rest of Tom’s medications? He was meticulous about use-by dates and always had spares. She walked down the three steps to the bathroom and checked the drawers and cabinet: neat rows of moisturising soap, disposable razors and Band-Aids. There were no medications. That made sense, Tom wouldn’t store medications in the heat and steam of a bathroom. She was tempted to go straight to the kitchen but she made herself proceed logically. She turned back to the bedroom and checked the clothes hanging in the built-in wardrobe. Tom had three identical brown corduroy jackets, the kind favoured by academics in the fifties with leather patches to protect the elbows. Half-a-dozen white shirts, gabardine trousers and some jeans. Everything was pressed and on hangers. His socks and underwear were folded and neatly arranged in drawers.

  Her eyes moistened. All they were now was used clothes. No one inhabited them to make them matter.

  Two drawers were empty and a space to the left in the wardrobe had no hangers. This must be where Leah had kept her things. It hadn’t been clear if she lived with Tom or not. Dee didn’t know what would happen with Tom’s possessions or money. She assumed anyone as obsessive as he was would have some savings. Could Leah have been in to clear out her possessions? She denied having a key. Perhaps she took her things before Tom died?