Fatal Impact (10 page)

15

A
fter lunch, Jocelyn handed Anya a spare set of keys and dropped her off at the door. She had one more house call to attend. Anya collected her laptop and carry-on from the rental car and carried them up the verandah steps. The screen door didn’t have a lock, but the front door had two. Juggling her handbag and laptop, she pushed her case over the threshold. The metal screen door slammed against the back of her foot and pain shot through her heel. It had taken a chunk of skin just above the shoe line.

She steered the bag further along the corridor, dropped her handbag on the floor and entered the first room on the left, Jocelyn’s childhood bedroom. Slipping out of her shoes, she dropped the laptop on the double bed. The bedspread was a quilt her grandmother had made out of clothing her children and grandchildren had worn. Anya bent down and touched it, and noticed blood on her heel.

Holding a tissue from the bedside table against the wound, she hobbled towards the kitchen, careful not to bleed on the wooden floorboards. She stopped short at the family room to her left, shocked by the scene. Manila folders were piled high on the lounge, rug and on the television cabinet, obscuring half the screen. Some were opened and spread out across the floor. A bookshelf was half-empty, rows of books collapsed into the spaces. She counted three separate A4 notepads with scribbles on them. There was barely room for anyone to step without treading on something. Yellow sticky labels were plastered across a whiteboard with arrows and circles drawn to connect them.

Her mother had always been house-proud and obsessively tidy. A plate that had hung in the kitchen in their old home read,
Cleanliness is next to Godliness
. Jocelyn had moved in months ago, but this was not the result of interrupted unpacking. It had the hallmarks of frenetic activity and disorganised thinking. Anya’s heart lurched. Damien had good reason to be worried about their mother; only alcohol may not be the issue.

In the dining area, papers obliterated the surface of the mahogany table and there were more stacks of what looked to be patient files. The kitchen bench had medical books and reference papers spread out in piles. Dirty mugs and plates were stacked in the sink and spilled over to the stove top. Anya opened the oven. The clean glass door suggested it hadn’t had much use. The microwave had food spatters visible from where she stood.

It didn’t appear cooking, cleaning or eating were any longer a priority for Jocelyn.

Anya took a step and felt her heel throb again. She needed a Band-Aid to stop the bleeding. The kitchen drawers only contained eating utensils and bills. She checked the cupboards. Many were empty, or contained the odd tin of tomatoes or bean salad mix. No sign of a first aid kit.

She opened the fridge door, to see if her mother had it better stocked than the cupboards. Milk, cheese, carrots and a bag of drooping spinach inside a bag marked
Livelonger Organics
caught her attention. She lifted the bag out. The bin contained a couple of papers and the plastic lid from a jar; no empty alcohol bottles. Anya recalled that Livelonger was the brand she had seen at Evelyn’s home, and that the health inspector had mentioned. It wasn’t worth taking a chance in case it contained the lethal bacteria. The spinach went in with the rubbish.

She moved to the main bathroom to wash her hands. There were no towels, so she decided to try the ensuite off the main bedroom. There had to be a Band-Aid or plaster strip somewhere in the house. In the bedroom, the sheets and doona had been pulled up, and pillows unevenly placed at the head. An empty glass and a half-full bottle of iced tea sat on the bedside table. In the ensuite, a wet towel hung over the shower recess, and a linen basket was overflowing.

Anya felt uncomfortable violating her mother’s privacy when she opened the bathroom cabinet doors. Inside she found a packet of thin strip-plasters, which she grabbed. After removing a couple and applying them to her heel, she put the packet back, next to a half-used pack of Panadol, an aspirin and a small prescription bottle. She hesitated with her hand on the door. Her mother was a practising doctor, and if she was ill or impaired, patients could be compromised.

Slowly, Anya reached for the prescription bottle and read the label.
Thyroxin 50 micrograms once daily.
Treatment for an underactive thyroid gland. The seal was still intact. Instead of weight loss, hypothyroidism usually caused slow metabolism and weight gain. The prescribing doctor was listed as Jocelyn Reynolds. She closed the cupboard door.

Stepping back, she caught a glimpse of something reflected in the mirror. From under the bed, a scrapbook pad, like the ones she and Damien had drawn on as children, caught her attention. Beside it was a pack of coloured markers. She sat on the bed and lifted page after page of flow charts and arrows, pointing from one name to another. Another page, in red pen, repeated the letters, MIV, circled over and over. It looked like something someone with mania and delusions would have written.

The third bedroom door had been closed when she arrived. Reluctantly, Anya headed back to the corridor, searching for more evidence to explain what might be going on in her mother’s mind. Turning the enamel knob, the door clicked open. She stepped back, nausea rising in her gullet.

Inside was Miriam’s old bed, with the few photos they had of her framed on the tallboy. A second white metal bed that had once been Anya’s was on the other side, piled high with wrapped presents. There was no need to count them; Anya knew there was one for every birthday and Christmas since her sister’s disappearance. Thirty-three years later, the bedroom was set up exactly as it had been: a shrine to Jocelyn’s lost child.

Anya felt winded. She thought the move would be positive for her mother, and give her the chance to finally move on.
A soft pink blanket lay scrunched at the foot of the bed and there were indentations on the mattress. Miriam’s second-favourite cuddly toy lay against the pillow. Her favourite had been with her when she was taken.

Anya stepped inside and reached for the pale pink bear with piercing blue eyes. She thought of Emily Quaid being put in the box with her favourite yellow duck. She hoped and wanted to believe that whoever took Miriam had let her keep her Blinky bear with her for as long as she had lived. Blinky had gone everywhere with her and she’d needed it to sleep. The police knew that it was unlikely her sister had lived very long, and was probably buried or dumped in some remote part of the bush – something her father accepted but her mother would not. Wherever Miriam lay, Anya hoped Blinky was with her. She sat on the bed and held the pink bear. Damien had been right to be worried. Their mother was behaving strangely and the house was disorganised and nothing like how she had lived in Launceston. Anya put the conversation with Damien aside for the moment and thought about her mother’s weight loss. Anya had seen the pattern before, many times in her mother’s family. Jocelyn’s mother, aunts, uncles and older brother had developed dementia in their sixties. For them, it began with weight loss from disinterest in cooking, and forgetting to eat. If diagnosed
with the brain disorder, Jocelyn could no longer practise
medicine. It was her reason for living.

Anya sat for a while in the room, desperately trying to work out what to do. Her mother wouldn’t take kindly to being forced into a medical assessment of any variety, no matter the ruse. And she was self-prescribing medication. Anya decided to stay a few days longer. She needed to call Martin.

Reaching for her bag, she felt a presence and half turned. The barrels of a shotgun were less than a metre from her face.

16

A
nya froze where she stood. The man pulled the magazine handle back, then forwards. The pump action meant the barrel was loaded.

‘Don’t move or so help me, I’ll blow your head off.’

Trapped between the shooter and the door, heart hammering in her chest, she had little choice but to act calm.

‘I don’t have much cash.’ She caught sight of the man’s bearded face as he stared at her, gun mounted on his shoulder. A red cap made his eyes difficult to see. He was wearing a fluorescent safety vest. She quickly established that he was much heavier and taller than she was, even hunched over the barrel.

‘I don’t want your money,’ he almost shouted. ‘I knew something was up when the door was open. Jocelyn never leaves it like that.’

He had to be a friend or caretaker of some sort. Anya relaxed and breathed out. ‘Mum’s gone to a house call and gave me the keys.’

The man was unmoved, finger still on the trigger. ‘Her kid lives on the mainland. Let’s start again. Who sent you?’ It suddenly occurred to Anya that the paranoid writings may have come from this man. Maybe he was one of Jocelyn’s patients?

The screen door banged. Anya flinched, but the man remained fixed.

‘Len, what the hell are you doing?’

‘I caught her going through your things. Call the police.’

Jocelyn pushed the gun barrel down towards the floor. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’s my daughter. I dropped her off before checking on the Lovetts.’

Gun now by his side, the man pulled off the cap and revealed a mess of wiry hair. ‘Sorry. Thought you were someone else.’

Anya wondered who he’d imagined was in the house, uninvited.

‘Who’s been in Miriam’s bedroom?’ Jocelyn’s voice was calm but forceful.

‘Joss, you know I’d never stick my nose in your business.’

‘You came into the house uninvited and pointed a gun at me, why?’ Anya wanted to know. And what was he doing with a gun in the first place?

‘Regardless, that room is off-limits. To everyone. Do you understand?’

The man unloaded the chamber of its shell and propped the gun in the corner near the now closed front door.

Anya couldn’t fathom why it didn’t seem to bother her mother that this man had held a gun to her head.

‘Well, I should probably introduce you properly,’ Jocelyn said, kicking her shoes off near the door. ‘Len, meet my older daughter, Anya.’

‘Do you pull a gun on every new person you see?’ Anya asked, not even half-joking.

‘Not normally,’ he mumbled. ‘I did apologise.’ Under the safety vest, he was wearing dirty jeans and a dark blue shirt. Black socks covered enormous feet. He’d removed his boots before entering the house. That’s how he had approached her so quietly, she realised.

Jocelyn remained nonplussed by the event and was in the kitchen busying herself with washing out three pottery mugs from the sink.

‘I’ll make a pot.’ She turned on the kettle with wet hands. Len pulled a tea towel from the bottom drawer and dried the mugs.

Anya’s phone bleeped from the corridor. Concerned about leaving her mother alone for too long with Mr Gun Happy, she checked the text message. Two more E. coli cases, according to Schiller. The swabs taken from the food specimens could confirm the source within the next few hours if they were lucky. Not so lucky for the sufferers still incubating the infection.

She made her way back to the kitchen area. Jocelyn had cleared off three chairs at the table, and deposited the paperwork on top of already towering piles. The pair were in animated conversation and went silent when she re-entered the room.

‘Made you a cuppa,’ Jocelyn said. ‘Milk’s in the fridge door. If you want sugar, you’ll have to wait until I go back to town.’

Anya helped herself, and subtly sniffed the milk before pouring any into her tea. It was within its use-by period.

She still couldn’t believe the man at the table had held her at gunpoint and her mother was chatting away with him as if nothing odd had occurred. He had to be a patient. Didn’t it unnerve Jocelyn that he had entered her house, uninvited and with a gun? He could have killed her daughter. Anya couldn’t get the image out of her mind. Her mother didn’t appear to have taken the threat seriously. She wondered whose behaviour was the least rational. She sat on the chair her mother had cleared.

‘Sorry about all the mess, but I’m working on something,’ Jocelyn said defensively.

‘Anything I can help with?’ Anya asked, keen to know if there was a reasonable explanation for what she was seeing and the changes in her mother.

‘Just an audit of my patients. Part of my CME.’

‘What’s that?’ Len took a gulp of tea.

‘Continuing medical education. It’s compulsory in order for doctors to keep their registration and stay up to date.’

It seemed logical, but it was strange that it seemed to have taken over her home, that she hadn’t kept it in the surgery, or done the work via computer. That was one of the advantages of computerised medical records. It was easy to establish patterns of disease and illness, in order to effect preventive strategies in communities.

Anya sipped. ‘How do you two know each other?’

‘We’re neighbours. We keep an eye out for each other.’ Jocelyn smiled at Len, who kept his head down.

It still didn’t explain the gun. Len must have sensed this, because he added, ‘I was in the ute and saw Jocelyn’s car drive out. I came over to drop off some mail for her, and saw that the door was open. The gun was on the front seat, so I went back and got it.’

Anya had always thought the area was safe. At least it used to be. ‘Have there been break-ins around here?’

‘The service station got held up, but people are just being more careful these days.’ Jocelyn glanced at Len. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Yep, can’t be too careful.’ He slurped his tea.

‘Mum, I was wondering if we could have a quiet word. In private.’

‘Better go outside, Joss, the walls have ears, you know.’

Anya headed out the back door. Her mother brought her mug of tea and lowered herself into the old bamboo sofa chair.

‘Mum, is he one of your patients?’

She sighed. ‘When you live in a small community, everyone becomes your patient when there’s no one else to see them. He’s harmless.’

‘Harmless?’ Anya paced up and down the verandah. ‘He could have killed me. That gun was loaded and he was ready to shoot. He sounds completely paranoid. Who did he think I was? And all this, “the walls have ears” talk. What part of that is normal?’

Jocelyn surveyed the backyard. ‘He’s a farmer. They carry guns. You’ve been away far too long. Things have changed. Life is different now.’

‘How? Explain it to me.’ Anya sat beside her mother and pleaded, ‘Whatever is going on, I want to help. You just have to help me understand.’

‘The Dengate farm used to be one of the biggest properties in the area. When the old man died, he left it to his two sons, but Len had been a bit of a black sheep and was more interested in producing quality organic food than maximising profits. His father left him forty-five acres. Len’s entrepreneurial brother got the rest. No surprise, the brother quickly sold his share to an international consortium over at Emerald Vale and made a fortune.’ She blew air across her mug before taking a large sip.

‘Now Len’s is the only property under fifty acres for tens of miles, apart from mine, that is. There are a few interests hoping his business will fail.’

‘Okay, but you have to admit, Len’s an unusual character. Has he just wandered into your house uninvited before?’

‘For Pete’s sake. Of course he’s welcome. He’s my neighbour. You have no idea what he’s been through. He’s no bother. In fact, I enjoy his company and he is a good, honest man.’

Anya was still concerned about his mental state. Coming around with a gun, ready to shoot, wasn’t exactly acceptable behaviour. ‘Are you too close to see that he has some paranoid tendencies? I mean, are those his conspiracy theories in the scrapbook in your room?’

Jocelyn’s face tightened. ‘You went through my room as well?’ She stood up. ‘You had absolutely no right.’

Anya pointed at her heel and tried to explain. ‘I was looking for a Band-Aid to stop bleeding on your floor.’

Len popped his head out the back. ‘Thanks for the tea. Left Ros outside. Didn’t want hair all over your floor.’ He seemed to sense something was wrong. ‘I’ll just show myself out and grab my gun on the way.’

Jocelyn pushed past him and Anya heard the door to her bedroom slam shut.

The two were left standing there. ‘No hard feelings, eh?’ he tried.

Anya didn’t respond. Len’s vest had slipped and she saw a logo on his shirt.

Livelonger Organics.