Feeding the Demons (18 page)

Dr Firestone answered her electronic door buzzer and unlocked the security gate at the foyer in Liverpool Street, letting the two women in. The entrance was small with a fake Louis Quinze mirror and table against the highly polished granite walls. They took the lift up to the seventh floor and stepped out to find Dr Firestone in slinky green satin lounge pyjamas, waiting to lead them to her apartment down the hall. Her coppery blonde hair tumbled to her shoulders. Inside her cream and beige rooms, she offered them drinks. A plate of Japanese rice savouries and peanuts waited on the low coffee table.

‘It’s very good of you to see me,’ said Gemma. ‘These are the photographs I mentioned on the phone to you.’

‘I like to examine photographs,’ the woman said, pouring three glasses of mineral water. ‘Far less messy than crime scenes. Although I used to do a lot of them when I was younger.’ She sat down on a cream lounge with Gemma and Angie opposite her. ‘Are these from a recent police case?’ she asked with a frown on her attractive face. ‘They look somehow dated to me.’ She turned them over but there was nothing on the back.

‘They’re thirty years old,’ said Gemma, noticing that without the make-up and vivid red lips, the glasses that the doctor reached to put on as she examined the pictures made her look like a stern headmistress.

Gemma looked at her friend and at the expert. ‘They are photographs of the crime scene concerning the death of my mother. She was beaten to death with a hammer when I was five. My father has spent nearly thirty years in prison for her murder. He says he is innocent.’

Because both women were death professionals there was no comment, but the atmosphere was suddenly charged and yet there was a softness, a deference in the way Dr Firestone handled the photos that would not have been there had these been pictures of an anonymous victim.

‘Thirty years is a very long sentence,’ said Dr Firestone.

‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘He collected an extra fifteen for being part of an attempted break-out in which a prison warden was nearly killed.’

‘A very hard karma your father seems to have,’ said the American, slowly studying each photograph.

‘He was a doctor,’ Gemma said, ‘a psychiatrist.’

Dr Firestone went methodically through all the photographs, sometimes pulling one back to compare it with another, until they were all laid out in front of her. Gemma looked at her mother’s upside-down and battered face, the black pools and splashes surrounding her hair still glossy in sections.

‘What was the prosecution’s case based on?’ Dr Firestone asked.

‘Bloodstain pattern interpretation,’ Gemma replied. ‘All circumstantial. My mother was dying when my father arrived home. But the police didn’t believe him. The academic experts and the government analyst all agreed that the impact splatter was damning.’

‘So your father was largely convicted on the evidence of these pictures?’ Dr Firestone asked.

Gemma nodded. ‘Yes. Almost entirely. The Crown witnesses argued that the bloodstain patterns on his clothes and on the walls near where my mother was struck were impact splatter.’

‘What was your father’s account?’

‘He said that he came home at about eleven o’clock that night and found her lying on the floor. She’d been badly beaten with a hammer that was never found. The french doors onto the back garden were opened. They’d been forced with a gemmy. My father said he held her in his arms while the ambulance came and that she coughed blood onto him.’ Gemma’s voice faltered.

Zelda Firestone looked slowly at the pictures again, one after another. Then she started again, gathering them all up, lying them down in sequence on the table. She stood up and went to the small white kitchen that ran off the lounge room. The smell of November lilies suddenly filled the room, and Gemma turned round to see an extravagant arrangement of them in a large blue vase behind her. They reminded her of the arrangement she’d given to the Ratbag. Dr Firestone came back into the room, bringing more ice for the mineral water in a bowl. Again, she sat opposite the two younger women, sifting through the pictures. From a drawer, the expert drew out an elegant magnifying glass on a long gold chain. Gemma became aware of how hard her heart was beating as the woman continued to study the crime scene photographs, sometimes with the glass, sometimes without.

‘I can’t believe this,’ Dr Firestone finally said. ‘I can’t believe that no one has noticed. And it doesn’t even need magnification to be observed.’ She put the gold-rimmed glass down.

‘Believe what?’ Gemma asked. ‘Notice what?’

Dr Firestone looked her straight in the eye.

‘That this blood is already clotting.’ She shook her head. ‘This is basic stuff. Even a non-expert can see this quite clearly.’ She took a close-up photograph of the bloodstains and spots on the left sleeve and shoulder of a man’s jacket and turned it to face Gemma. Gemma’s heart started beating hard.

‘Look at this.’ The varnished red nail indicated a series of bloodstains in the form of spots on the fabric. Gemma frowned, concentrating. All she could see were small greyish circles, each with a black spot in the centre.

‘What does that mean?’ said Gemma, wanting to hear the expert say it, the implication already rising and cheering her racing heart even as she spoke.

‘When fresh blood strikes a fabric like this,’ said the doctor, ‘it is absorbed instantaneously. It sinks into the fabric as it falls on it, and in a uniform way because the red cells are still freely moving in suspension in the blood. But once clotting starts, the cells start grouping together—to flocculate—and you get this.’ She tapped the tiny black nuclei in the centre of each bloodstain. ‘The blood is already starting to separate into plasma and blood solids. That’s what makes those black centres. Fresh blood simply doesn’t behave like this.’

Gemma stared at her.
Fresh blood doesn’t behave like this.
The words filled her mind so that she had to concentrate on paying attention to the American’s voice.

‘I would say,’ said Dr Firestone, ‘from my experience, that this blood has been forming clots for at least twenty minutes—maybe as long as an hour. It was clotted blood your mother coughed up, which proved she must have been attacked before your father arrived.’

A thrilling sense of excitement caused Gemma to press her lips together, frightened she’d unprofessionally laugh out loud or start to sob. My father, my father, she heard herself say silently somewhere deep within. What you have always said is the truth. Someone else had done this to your wife at least twenty minutes before you found her. You are my good father after all. My good father in his Glebe garden flat. All she could hear now was the beating of her own blood in her ears.

Dr Firestone was sorting through the photographs with her red varnished nails, pushing them around like pieces in a game, placing them in different groups on the table. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at Angie and Gemma. ‘And you say your father was convicted on the evidence of these bloodstains?’ she asked in her American drawl.

‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘The police witnesses said the bloodstaining could not have occurred in any other way than during the attack.’

‘You see,’ said the doctor, leaning back in her seat but keeping her eyes on the pictures, and taking a sip of her glass of ice, ‘already I can see that there were at least two, possibly three separate events that caused blood to be laid down. That is, three different times when bleeding occurred. These stains here,’ she indicated a fan-shaped mark on the wall, ‘are consistent with the first arterial splatter, the first blows. The heart pumps very strongly, especially when there is fear and terror involved.’ Her eyes behind the glasses looked straight at Gemma. ‘When there is an injury to an artery, blood spurts in much the same way as when you turn the hose on. But in systolic squirts, not in a steady stream.’ She pointed to the fan-shaped stains against the wall and found more pictures of them among one of the piles into which she’d separated the prints.

‘This is the first event in which bleeding occurred. There are two others that I can see, making three in all. Most of the specialised knowledge of blood dynamics has happened only in the last ten or fifteen years, well after these photographs were taken and conclusions drawn from them. Investigators feel they can comment on evidence like this simply because it’s so visible and familiar. But without specialised training, they should never give testimony. No one should. This is a highly refined area of expertise. Back home, I’ve had country police officers tell me absurd things about bloodstain interpretation. They’d never dream of attempting to interpret other specialist evidence like DNA or ballistics. But because they’re in and out of bloodstained premises all the time, familiarity makes them think they can interpret easily.’

‘So,’ said Gemma when she remembered to breathe and could speak again, ‘what you’re saying suggests that my father was telling the truth.’

‘The patterns I see here certainly back up his version of events. If you look here, you’ll see for yourself once you know what to look for. See these stains on the wall.’ She pointed to one of the photographs and Gemma leaned over to see the bloodstains on the wall whose fanned-out shapes had earlier reminded her of palm trees leaves. ‘You can quite easily see that there has been some overlapping. For that to happen, the first stains must have started drying out before the next layer was laid down. This means at least two events have caused that bleeding. And probably a third.’

‘The actual attack,’ said Gemma excitedly, ‘and then when my father moved her again half an hour later. And then the ambulance officers.’

‘That explanation would be consistent with these stains,’ said Dr Firestone. ‘It looks like arterial spurting in both cases. After the attack, as the victim—’ She hurried on. ‘—as your mother lay unconscious on the floor, the blood could have started clotting and then been disturbed when she was moved, causing it to flow through the clotting and spurt again. I can see evidence of a third event. Possibly when she was being stretchered by the paramedics as you’ve suggested.’

Gemma’s heart was racing. Her mother and father filled her mind, the one bleeding terribly, the other innocent. She covered her mouth with a hand as fierce feelings spun her mind around.

‘If you let me have copies of these pictures,’ said Dr Firestone, ‘I can do a full report when I get home to my records. We can discuss my fee later. It won’t be prohibitive. This is the sort of case I really like to get my teeth into. Too many people are convicted by ignorance.’

‘I want to reopen my father’s case,’ said Gemma. ‘Your opinion will support our application. I’ll courier copies over to you tomorrow,’ she promised. She had to stand up, unable any longer to contain the powerful feelings that surged through her. She wanted to be alone, to go to the gym, to run from Tamarama to Bondi, to shout, to jump up and down and say, ‘He didn’t do it. My father is innocent. He always said he didn’t do it and he didn’t. I am not the child of my mother’s murderer. I am not tainted. I am good, good,
good
and so is he!’

‘Are you all right?’ said Angie, and Gemma realised that tears were running down her face.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘I’m very all right. This is wonderful news.’

Dr Firestone gathered up the photographs and passed them to Gemma. ‘It must come as a great relief,’ she said. ‘To know that your father’s account is supported by these pictures. Physical evidence doesn’t lie. It can’t perjure itself. The only thing that can go wrong is human failure to interpret it.’

Dr Firestone pressed them to stay for coffee, which they could now smell deliciously perking in the white kitchen, but Gemma wanted to go to Kit’s and Angie looked at her watch, thinking of Dreamboat. Gemma pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.

On the way down in the lift, Angie put an arm around her friend. ‘Take it easy, eh?’ she said. ‘Be careful driving home.’

But Gemma didn’t drive home; she went straight to her sister’s place. Kit let her in and Gemma could see she’d been crying.

‘What is it?’ she asked as they sat down at the kitchen table.

‘Gerald was here a while ago. It was difficult. And then it was even more difficult in the silence after he left. I’m glad you came, Gemfish.’

‘I’ll put on the kettle,’ said Gemma and she did, then turned to face her sister. ‘I’ve just come from one of the world’s most renowned experts on bloodstain interpretation. I showed her the photographs of our mother’s crime scene. She said that the stains support our father’s account of what happened that night. She’s taken copies and will fax me a detailed report.’

Behind her, the kettle started to make the white noise of pre-boiling. Kit stared. Her eyes, freshly washed with tears, looked enormous in the clear light of the kitchen.

‘Our father was telling the truth,’ Gemma finally said. ‘All the time he was telling the truth and he’s spent thirty years—wasted thirty years of his life—in a stinking prison for a terrible thing that someone else did. Steve said he’d give a copy of the statement to the Scan expert.’ She stopped. ‘I’ll have to follow that through now,’ she said and Kit didn’t notice the sadness in her voice.

‘But the evidence,’ Kit was saying. ‘The impact splatter. That’s what they all said, the experts.’

Gemma shook her head. ‘Dr Firestone said that she could read three separate events where bleeding had occurred. Three, Kit. It’s not just a case of one impact splatter stain.’

Now the kettle was whistling shrilly and Gemma turned it off, opening cupboards, getting out the instant coffee, the sugar, the milk. It felt as if their roles were suddenly reversed, that she was the competent, older, wiser sister, with Kit the younger and more naive.

‘Don’t you see, Kit? It’s what our father always said. That he got blood on him when he cradled her in his arms. That was the second pattern Dr Firestone could see. She even mentioned a third that may relate to when our mother was stretchered.’

Kit still stared. The colour had drained from her face. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to think.’