Deadly Deeds (11 page)

‘
Hey, don’t be like that. I admire what you do. I’d be interested to find out what else you come up with. You know I’m only a phone call away. Just trust that instinct of yours. It’s all you’ve got.’

John was one of the finest people I knew.

I said goodbye to his wife and kids and apologised for the intrusion of privacy.

John walked me to the door. ‘And don’t worry about what people think about you,’ he added, ‘You’re perfect as you are.’

His comment really helped, because right now I felt as imperfect as humanly possible.

When I slid back in my Lancer, he picked up a garden hose and continued watering the front yard.

I waved goodbye and took off for the South Eastern Arterial.

As I drove back home, I wondered what had really happened at the Wilson’s household that night. Why didn’t Jeremy Wilson put up a fight? I knew such small abnormalities usually triggered a stream of inconsistencies.

I was certain everything in this case was not as black and white as was first assumed. As far as I was concerned, Jeremy Wilson’s death wasn’t just an open and shut case.

I got home in less than twenty minutes, going over the speed limit and burning a couple of red lights in the process. Tired of living by the rules, I decided to bend them a bit, just to suit my own egotistical mood.

The next logical thing to do would have been to contact Frank Moore and tell him about my little finding. That was had we not had that little war of words the other day at the VFSC canteen. We had been working on this case together since the beginning, and it was only fair to let him know what I had dug up.

But I wasn’t going to.

To begin, I’d received a direct order from my superior to stop investigating the Wilson homicide. The fewer people knew what I was up to, the less likely I would be to get in trouble. And I felt like I’d had my share of trouble for one week.

Secondly, Frank was too far up to his neck with Teresa Wilson.

That being the case, I thought it impossible that he would be able to keep his eyes open for more than fifteen seconds. If I had to confront him with something, I wanted to make sure it was more substantial. John Darcy made it clear that right now I had nothing but my instinct to follow.

However, there was still one person I wanted to visit to clear my mind.

In less than one hour, I was back at St Patrick’s Hospital and had parked my car in the space reserved for doctors and emergency staff.

The taste of Southern Comfort occasionally rose from my stomach, and I worried that if I got pulled over for a random breath test, I’d be way over the legal limit of .05. Of course I realised I was being absolutely irresponsible. Had I been a cop, I would have suspended my driver’s license for at least six months. People like me were death on the road. I promised myself that if I ever got drunk again, which I swore would never happen, not on Southern Comfort as long as I was conscious, I’d be catching cabs for an entire week, until every drop of alcohol had evaporated from my body.

A chill rippled down my spine as I entered the hospital. This place began to feel like a second home.

I paced right past the front desk and went straight to Teresa’s ward. When I got there, I was rather surprised to find her bed deserted.

When I inquired with one of the nurses in a freshly ironed white uniform, I was told Teresa Wilson had been discharged two hours ago.

I swore under my breath and headed straight for Port Melbourne. Maybe she had gone home, but I doubted it.

As I had more or less expected, no-one was at the Wilson’s household.

I drove back to St Kilda and decided to stop at the National Theatre, located approximately one hundred and fifty meters from St Kilda foreshore, Luna Park and the Palais Theatre, on the corner of Carlisle and Barkly Streets. I had a hell of a time finding a parking space. After driving around Irwell, Belford, Carlisle, and Barkly Streets, I ended up parking in Greaves Street, a walking distance from the theatre.

I assumed since Teresa had left the hospital, she might be back at work. Logic said she would probably take the rest of the year off to recover from the death of her husband, but I had nothing to lose by stopping there. I’ve known people who’d returned to work straight away after a major trauma to help them face reality or to escape from it. However, the last time I spoke to Teresa, she seemed well aware that her husband was dead.

I entered the theatre, surprised at the grandeur of the establishment, which I had never bothered to visit. I treated myself to a small tour of the foyers, grand staircase and the auditorium.

As anticipated, Teresa wasn’t at work, but I managed a conversation with the cleaner, a tall, dandy, twenty-one year old, blond lad with three earings in each ear. His name was Louis.

He explained how the theatre was originally built in 1920 with a three-thousand seat capacity for the showing of films. But soon after the opening of the nearby Palais Theatre in the mid 1920s, the theatre was closed for extensive renovations, and the seating capacity was reduced to two-thousand-five-hundred, which still seemed a large number to me. But that was back then, and currently the theatre only held a seven-hundred-and-eighty-three seat capacity. He went on explaining how the original stalls had been converted to Drama, Opera and Ballet Studios.

He invited me for an entire tour of the theatre, but I suggested another time.

After our little introductory chit-chat, I told him the true reason of my visit.

‘
That was terrible,’ Louis said, emphasising on the word
terrible.
And I knew straight away he was
that
way inclined.

‘
So you’ve got no idea where she might be?’ I asked.

‘
No idea. I was really surprised to hear her friend Walter killed her husband.’

I kind of liked the way he moved his hands when he talked. Something reeked cuteness about him, and I guess if he had been straight, I might have considered someone fifteen years younger.

‘Yes, so was I. They stopped being friends quite a while ago,’ I commented.

He looked at me blankly. ‘Not that long ago!’

And then it occurred to me Teresa never mentioned how long they had know Walter Dunn. ‘What are we talking about here? One year? Five years?’

‘
Oh, no, nothing like that. Three months at the most. No one said anything at first. You know, the whole situation was kind of awkward in the first place. She was married after all.’

Now I was completely lost. I could feel my brow creasing.

‘Oh, you didn’t know,’ he went on, one hand covering his mouth as if he had just pronounced that four-letter word.

‘
Louis,’ I whispered, ‘maybe this is not a good place to talk. Are you free for lunch?’

‘
Sure.’

‘
Bala’s at twelve noon?’

‘
Twelve-thirty.’

I approved and walked out of the National Theatre feeling something was very wrong.

CHAPTER NINE

I
ordered a Vegetable Stir Fry with Pepper, and Louis a Thai Green Curry Chicken, a delicious looking chicken dish in hot coconut cream and curry sauce with vegetables. We shared a large coconut rice.

Frankly I wasn’t hungry at all, but the food tasted fantastic, so I didn’t exactly force myself to eat it.

Bala’s was located just opposite Luna Park, on Shakespeare Grove, close to the corner of Acland Street, next to the recently-constructed Post Office and the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES). Its mission, read the menu, was
to serve fresh & fast, a fabulous variety of delicious food prepared daily in a clean & friendly environment at affordable prices
. The cuisine was described as ‘Modern Asian’, but ‘Heaven’ would have done just fine.

The inside of the restaurant was extremely modest, with only enough wooden tables and chairs to seat around twenty people.

A tantalising aroma of fresh vegetable, coconut and spices filled the air, giving the distinct impression of being in an exotic country, away from the stress of everyday life.

But this would remain a fantasy, because my brain was buzzing with curiosity, and stress was flowing in my veins like acid.

‘Walter used to see Teresa,’ Louis said, matter-of-factly. He was now wearing a stunning-looking maroon, wool jacket I would have killed for.

‘
Go out with?’ I asked, wondering if it was a serious relationship or just a friendship.

‘
Yes, but it wasn’t official or anything.’

‘
What about Jeremy? Didn’t he say anything?’

‘
Jeremy and Walter were best friends. Had been for a long time. I don’t think he suspected anything. But everyone else knew. And besides, he was having an affair as well.’

I was stunned.

Louis stopped for a few seconds, acutely aware of my reaction.

I didn’t know why I had presumed the Wilson’s marriage was a perfect one. Taking a full spoon of coconut rice, I raised one eyebrow for Louis to continue.

‘Jeremy began to see the secretary of one of his clients. Teresa told me. She liked confiding in people. You know what some women are like. He’d been seeing her for a few months, but by then, Teresa had been having an affair with Walter for at least a year.’

‘
Jesus Christ,’ I heard myself say, almost choking on my coconut rice.

Louis tapped me on the shoulder. ‘You okay?’ he asked, filling a glass with water.

I took a sip from the glass he handed me and said, ‘You got any idea why Walter killed Jeremy?’

A blank look crossed his face.

I went on, ‘He didn’t get in the way or anything?’

‘
Jeremy kept to himself. He and Walter were still friends, and Teresa knew about his affair because Walter reported everything back to her.’

I was trying to figure out why Walter snapped. ‘Did he seem crazy to you?’

‘Jeremy?’

‘
Walter.’

‘
Walter was a quiet guy. We use to walk to have a pizza at Chichio’s on Friday night, me, Walter, Teresa and some friends from the theatre. Walter didn’t seem to be the violent type. In fact, when I heard the news, it shook the hell out of me. I didn’t think Walter was capable of doing something like that. And then kill himself. I don’t know, I guess you never know what goes on inside people’s minds.’

I had to agree with Louis on that one.

‘How long have you known them?’

‘
Since she began working for the National Theatre. Well, she’s self-employed really. But we always used her whenever a new production called for a set-designer with superior skills.’

‘
And how long was that?’

‘
Oh, I’d say about two years, two and a half years.’

I nodded as I emptied my glass of water.

We chatted about his life for a while. He had a boyfriend in Sydney, which made their relationship rather difficult. I asked him if he’d ever considered moving up there. After all, Sydney was well-known for its Mardi Gras and its high concentration of gay people. But it was more complex than that, he explained. His parents didn’t even know he was gay. I thought they were either blind or plainly refused to accept what was merely a fact-of-life. He’d known he was gay since he was back at school. Everyone gave him a hard time, calling him a fag, and other derogatory terms. He was sick and tired of people treating him as if he had a disease that was curable.

‘
They expect you to do the impossible,’ he explained.

‘
How’s that?’

‘
You know. If you’re a heterosexual, which I assume you are, and I ask you to become a homosexual overnight, you couldn’t do it. I mean, it’s not like you have a choice. You were born heterosexual. And no matter how much I’ll tell you that being a heterosexual is wrong, you wouldn’t suddenly change your sexual preference. So why the hell do some people think that with counselling, every homosexual on the planet can turn heterosexual overnight? And even if we could, we probably wouldn’t. People have to understand one thing: we’re not ashamed to be who we are. Being different makes us even stronger. The only thing we can do is keep our chin up and accept ourselves as we are. And we’ve done that. The rest of the word has yet to catch up.’

I totally agreed with him. It made me bitter how some people could be so narrow-minded. I knew if I’d been gay, I wouldn’t take shit from any one.

He had to return to work, so I paid the tab and said, ‘You don’t mind if we meet sometime again in the future?’

‘
You’re welcome, as long as you keep on buying me lunch,’ he said, chuckling away.

‘
And if anything important comes to mind, don’t hesitate to call me.’ I handed over my business card and thanked him for his time.

Being a Sunday, there was no point calling into the VFSC. I didn’t expect to get any help, and frankly I didn’t want to come across Frank Moore or Trevor Mitchell. If I was going to jump up and down about the Jeremy Wilson murder, I had to accumulate more evidence. So far, all I had was a photograph with suspicious blood-spatter patterns and good gossip.

I lay in a long chair on my balcony with
K is For Killer
, a crime novel by Sue Grafton, an American author who lived in California and churned out one book a year using a different letter of the alphabet for each new title. I wondered what she would do once she reached
Z is For Z-
something-or-another. Use the Chinese alphabet?

The sky was overcast, but the air was warm and thick. I could smell rain in the distance, and it made me feel anew.

I loved those days when I was safe from sunburn and could still wear next to nothing while indulging in some serious reading on my balcony.

I sipped a Dr Pepper from a mug and wondered what
normal
people did with their time? According to the amplified noises coming from under my neighbours’ doors, they watched television almost twenty-four hours a day. I had a television, but the only thing it was watching was me walking from the bedroom to the kitchen and vice-versa.

Next weekend the Grand Prix was on at Albert Park, a couple of kilometers from Chapel Street, and I hated to be here when it happened. To begin with, I cared little about car racing. Secondly, the traffic would be unbearable, not to mention the screaming of tyres going on for three days in a row.

In the past year, there had been an uproar about staging the Grand Prix in a public park. I saw both sides of the arguments, but never made up my mind as to whether the State Premier had been right or wrong in locating the international car race in the park. But, as with everything political, there was always a lot of cards being dealt under the table. No-one really knew the real agenda for relocating the Grand Prix from Adelaide, in South Australia, to Melbourne, in Victoria, unless they were involved in the process.

My mind was pre-occupied with Jeremy Wilson’s death, and I knew something in this homicide was being covered up. How could Jeremy have been hacked to death without putting up a fight? Why was it that there were no traces of bruising around his head? If he had been assaulted before the decapitation, why didn’t he have bruising on other parts of his body? This was especially intriguing since Teresa had told us she heard Jeremy screaming in the hallway. This clearly implied he must have been hit by Walter.

I stood from my chair, stretched my legs, and sat down again. Real life was becoming more intriguing than my Sue Grafton novel.

Why did Teresa conceal her affair with Walter?

Okay, so far I was certain of two things: Jeremy Wilson did not get hacked to death, and he wasn’t conscious when he got decapitated. I tried hard to steer myself into another direction, but somehow my finger wanted badly to point at Teresa. Could she have been the one who killed him?

I closed my eyes and pictured Teresa. The bruising and cuts on her beautiful face. The squash ball inserted in her anus. The semen found in her vagina. The state of shock she was in when we found her. All physical evidence clearly pointed the other way.
Teresa isn’t the killer.
And yet her account of what happened didn’t match the forensic investigation so far. Then why in the world did she lie to us?

Then there was Walter Dunn. A piece of dark fabric, which Frank had found in the woodwork of the window frame at the crime scene, did match up with a suede jacket we found at Walter Dunn’s home. The fact that he committed suicide was no coincidence. This clearly placed him at the scene of the crime. And yet, questions remained unanswered.

Was he the one who really killed Jeremy Wilson? Did he have an accomplice? If so, who was the accomplice, and why did they kill Jeremy? Why did Walter commit suicide? Remorse? Fear of retribution for his actions?

I couldn’t make up my mind. Further investigation was needed.

At times like these, all I had to do was pick up the phone and ring Frank. He would usually come over, and we would discuss for hours on end the hundred possibilities of a homicide. Bit by bit, each pieces of evidence would bring us closer to the truth, until, at some stage, only one scenario would be possible.

But as it was, I was on my own. Barred from further investigation on this case, if I got caught I would be charged with obstruction of justice, although I couldn’t figure out why since my only aim was to find the truth and not obstruct it. But then, who is ever certain that justice is a quest for the truth?

At 3.34 p.m., I wondered how Michael was going with his long weekend away. I had hoped he would call me to let me know everything was going fine. As it was, he hadn’t left me the phone number of his friend, so I had no chance to check on him.

I sat in my study and read the Jolly Roger article on stealing money from telephone booths. I wondered how many people in the City of Port Phillip had actually taped into the Jolly Roger website in the past three months, which was approximately the time span the coin stealer had been operating in the area. I knew there was no way to get the kind of information Jolly Roger had in his article in Australia from a book or magazine. The information could have only been obtained from the Internet or word-of-mouth. Logic told me that I needed a list of all the people in the area who downloaded Jolly Roger’s information from the Internet. Could that be done? I’d have to contact all Internet providers in this country to find out. Time consuming stuff, but as long as the telephone company paid me my $150 an hour, I was willing.

By 6.00 p.m., I should have gone to the gym, but there was still a good percentage of Southern Comfort travelling in my veins, draining me of all energy, giving me the perfect excuse to curl up in bed and vegetate in front of the Sunday night movie. I defended my action as being the first time I turned on the damn box for at least a year. I was kind of surprised it still worked. Since Michael had his own television in his bedroom, no one ever used the 58cm colour Sony television.

I slouched on the floral couch in my living room, feeling light-headed. I couldn’t believe how long the effect of alcohol could stay in my body. Was it the same for everyone? I guess the fact that I rarely consumed alcohol, except when I was out for dinner or celebrating the festive season, explained why my brain cells were taking it so badly.

I turned the television off at the end of the late news, and pondered on my next move.

In spite of all the evidence stacked up against him, I began to doubt whether Walter Dunn had actually killed Jeremy Wilson. If he did, he’d probably had an accomplice. I was uncertain as to why I came to that conclusion, but when you’d worked homicides for as long as I had, you learned to trust your instinct.

The other reason why I doubted Walter Dunn killed Jeremy was because Teresa lied. She was obviously covering up for someone else.

The only way I was going to find out whether there was a third person involved was by conducting further unauthorised investigation into Walter’s suicide.