Feeding the Demons (19 page)

‘A most dreadful injustice has happened,’ said Gemma. ‘That’s what’s happened. And we must do everything in our power to clear our father’s name.’ She stood up. ‘And to sue for compensation.’

Kit leaned over the sink as the enormity of this new information started to become clear to her. ‘But for thirty years, I’ve believed that he did it. I’ve hated him for it.’ She straightened up and looked at her younger sister. ‘This is too much for me to take in just at the moment.’

‘I’m going for compensation,’ said Gemma. ‘How could you calculate a leading psychiatrist’s earning capacity? And more importantly, how do you possibly recompense a man for half of his lifetime? What amount of money could make up for that? Five million dollars? Ten million dollars? A hundred million?’ Gemma picked her coffee up then put it straight down again, unable to drink it.

‘It was interesting,’ she said after a pause, ‘to look through the notes made by the original investigating detective, Philip Hawker. He must have been quite a thorough man. He interviewed one of our father’s patients. A fellow called Arik Kreutzvalt.’

Kit frowned then blinked. ‘I think I can even remember that name.’ She turned away, thinking. ‘I think he came to the house once,’ she said, again looking at Gemma. ‘And I think there was some drama about it.’

‘There might have been,’ said Gemma. ‘Because our father even made a house call to him the day of our mother’s death.’ She stood up. ‘Hell,’ she said. ‘It’s all so long ago now. Let’s come back to the present. Hey, Kit. Let’s ring him,’ she said. ‘Let’s tell him the good news. We’ll tell him that we’re going to do whatever it takes to get him pardoned. Recompensed. Whatever. We’ll write a book called
Justice Nightmares
. Come on, let’s ring him.’

But Kit shook her head. ‘Not just now, Gemma. I need some time to digest this. Let it percolate in me for a while. Can we leave it till tomorrow morning?’

Gemma sipped her coffee. ‘What’s another night after thirty years?’ she laughed.

Kit turned and looked at her, leaning against the counter, her arms folded. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘the awful thing for me is that I still don’t really want to see him. Innocent and all. I remember too much.’

•

After Gemma had gone home, Kit was too agitated to sleep. She sat outside in the garden for a while, but couldn’t settle. The moon was bright so she opened the gate in the back wall and stepped down onto the pathway that led around to Gordon’s Bay, smelling the salt from the dim surf rolling in beneath her. In the moonlight, she could see the outlines of the fishing boats drawn up on racks above the tiny beach as she walked a little way along the path to where it became timber decking. She wasn’t entirely comfortable about this moonlit ramble, thinking of the intruder of the other night and the fact that this pathway used to be a well-known beat before it was subsumed by the more domestic traffic of couples, kids and dogs.

She leaned over the railings of the walkway, watching the endless pulsing of the Pacific against the edge of Australia. Out at sea, the long, dark shape of a container ship lit with lights slid along the horizon, discernible because of the molten effect of moonlight on water. It seemed that her whole world had gone through a hundred and eighty degree turn. The darkness of a solar eclipse had now given way to the brilliance of the noonday sun. Her father was transformed from murderer to victim, all because of some thirty-year-old photographs and the experienced eyes of an expert in the behaviour of liquid and drying blood. How am I going to approach him now? she wondered. What can I possibly say?

Even now, with him seeming to have been the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice, I still have no feeling of love for him, she thought. I still remember the atmosphere of that house. I remember creeping round the place, praying that my mother would stay in her room and not say or do anything to antagonise him. Then the terror of hearing his study door slam open against the wall and the crash of his angry feet on the stairs because someone or something had disturbed him in his work. But surely my father has paid a terrible price already for his lack of fathering and husbanding skills?

A sound in the dark bushes closer to the water spooked her, and she walked quickly back to the gate in the back wall, sliding the bolt behind her, locking the windows and doors of her house, sitting in meditation for a while before going to bed.

•

Next morning, Gemma picked her up. They’d chatted on the phone over their separate breakfasts and decided to visit their father together. Kit had gathered a little bunch of flowers from her garden and had an airtight container of scones in a bag. As they drove through the traffic, Kit wondered what she’d say and do when she saw her father. ‘You’d better go in first,’ she said to Gemma, ‘and let him know I’m here, too. It’s possible he may not want to see me.’

‘Oh don’t be silly, Kit. Of course he’ll want to see you.’ Gemma turned into Glebe Point Road and made her way down past St John’s Road until she came to the street where their father had his flat. She parked opposite the old house and got out of the car. ‘I’ll wait here,’ said Kit, getting out of the car and leaning against it, the flowers in her hand. ‘You take the scones.’

Gemma did so, walking down the side of the house, through the waist-high gate that opened onto the back garden and onto the patio. Her father was sitting at a table, writing in a book, the newspaper folded next to him, sunlight shining on his silver hair. He looked up from what he was writing and closed the book, as if caught in the act of doing something naughty, and his face lit with pleasure to see her. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘what a lovely surprise.’ He stood up and came over to her.

‘There’s another surprise,’ she said. ‘Kit’s with me. And we have something to tell you.’

‘Oh?’ His tone sounded unsure, as if he was expecting bad news. He’s been in a bloody prison so long, Gemma thought as tears pricked her eyes, that he works on the principle that all news is bad news. ‘Just a moment,’ she said, dropping the container of scones on the table next to him and running back up the side of the house to bring Kit back. When they both returned, their father was sitting waiting.

Kit hesitated a moment, then stepped forward. She struggled. She couldn’t say ‘Dad’. She couldn’t say ‘Father’. She took a deep breath. ‘I want to apologise to you,’ she said, looking directly into his eyes. ‘It appears I’ve been wrong in my opinion all these years. Gemma had a bloodstain expert look at the crime scene photographs and, according to her, your account of what happened that night is accurate.’

Their father waited, immobile, sitting like a statue with the morning sun gleaming on his hair and forehead. ‘That’s what I’ve always said,’ he snapped. He was not gracious in victory, Kit couldn’t help but notice.

‘That’s what we’ve both come over to tell you,’ Gemma raced on, not noticing her father’s manner. ‘It’s wonderful news. I’m going to apply for a Section 475 inquiry and submit Dr Firestone’s new findings.’

The shocked stiffness that seemed to freeze their father’s body held him for a few more seconds, then Kit noticed the thaw. ‘Oh that,’ he said uneasily.

Gemma looked at Kit. ‘What do you mean “that”?’ she asked. It was then that she noticed how he slumped in the chair like an old man.

‘We’ve got sufficient grounds here for your case to be re-opened, for you to clear your name,’ Gemma said. ‘Quite apart from that, you’re looking at a possible settlement of millions of dollars. It’s the least the state can do for you. And you said on the phone just how much it would mean to you, that you could—’ Her voice trailed off. It seemed foolish and sad to believe that he’d once said he’d like to leave them money like a good father does. It was foolish of
her.
She blinked furiously, aware that her eyes had filled.

Their father sat looking down at the closed book he’d been writing in. He coughed and cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said, slowly getting up from the table, and Kit noted how stiff he’d become. ‘You should know that I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about that.’

There was a flatness in his voice that alerted Kit. ‘Please be clear,’ she said, ‘and tell us what your change of heart is all about.’

He stood there with the table in front of him, like a defence, looking first at one then the other. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure any more whether that’s the right way to go. To go back into all that again.’

Gemma stared in disbelief. She looked around at her sister with eyes that were as big as Kit’s had been the night before. ‘All that again!’ she repeated in disbelief. ‘What are you talking about? We talked about this only a little while ago. You were passionate about it! What’s happened? Something must have happened to change you so completely.’ She felt Kit put a hand softly on her arm.

‘Nothing’s happened,’ he said, querulous. ‘It’s a lot of work, a lot to do at my age. A lot of raking over old coals.’

‘At your age indeed! And what raking? You don’t have to do anything,’ said Gemma. ‘I’ll do it all. I’m already doing it all!’ Her eyes blazed with anger and disappointment and she felt Kit’s hand tighten on her.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about it, about the past,’ their father said, looking down and fiddling with the corner of the book he’d been reading. ‘I don’t want it all dragged up again. Everyone’s forgotten about it. No one remembers. No one cares. I’m just an anonymous man of nearly seventy these days. If we push for an inquiry, the story will be all over the papers again. I’ll be photographed, hunted by the press. You know what they’re like. I just realised that it was a good dream while I was in gaol. It kept me going. But now that I’m out, I don’t want to go through it all again. Besides, I want to write up my research papers. I’ve been saving all this stuff for thirty years in storage.’ He indicated the open door of the flat and Gemma looked in. She could see boxes and cartons piled up in the hallway; more of them were just visible through the opened curtains of her father’s bedroom window.

‘But Dad!’ Gemma almost stamped a foot. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Think what it would mean to us!’ She turned away, not wanting to even look at him right now.

Kit stepped forward. ‘Here,’ she said to him. ‘I brought you these from my garden.’

‘That’s very good of you, Kit,’ he said and she came right up close to him and looked him in the face while she gave him the tiny colourful nosegay.

‘They’re pansies,’ she said, ‘and the very last of the snowdrops and that wonderful scarlet geranium. You can put them in a little vase or a jar if you haven’t got a vase.’ Behind her, she was aware of Gemma, standing in shock. She turned round to her sister. ‘Come on, Gems,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. We’ve got things to do.’

‘Um, I wonder,’ their father said, pausing as they turned back to him. For a second, a high and youthful hope filled Gemma’s heart. It was going to be all right. He was about to say, ‘I wonder if I’m not making a terrible mistake, dropping my case like this.’ Instead, what he said was shocking. ‘Would you two, between you, be able to come up with a sum of money? A thousand dollars? I hate having to ask.’

Gemma was stunned, and it was Kit who answered. ‘Yes, I think we could do that. We’ll sort it out somehow.’

They left their father still standing awkwardly near the table and Kit steered Gemma back to the car. ‘I can’t believe this,’ Gemma kept saying as she got into the car. Kit slid in on the other side. Gemma banged on the steering wheel. ‘Damn him! He can’t just do this now. What’s made him change his mind?’ she said, almost crying in frustration. ‘And then he’s got the nerve to put the fucking bite on us!’

Her sister looked across at her. ‘Gems,’ she said, ‘you’ve got to let it go. It’s his business. His life, after all.’

Gemma started up the car. ‘But I’ve already started working on it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got new evidence. I’ve got an internationally renowned expert who will say that the blood was already clotting when my father got it on his clothes. This can only mean that his story is true. He’ll be pardoned. He’ll be an honourable man again.’ She turned back onto Glebe Point Road, heading south, narrowly missing a young woman in purple and black velvet whose ears, eyebrows and lips were adorned with silver rings. ‘Not to mention,’ she said angrily, ‘a bloody fortune in compensation. He could be rich
and
clear his name.’

‘Maybe,’ Kit said, ‘that’s more important to you, Gemma, than it is to him.’

Gemma drove in angry silence, taking the turns too fast, braking at the last moment, swearing at other unwitting users of the road. ‘He talked to me about leaving us a lot of money,’ Gemma said as they drove along Anzac Parade. ‘As if it was really important to him. That
we
were important to him. He said he wanted to be a decent father to us after all this time. So why does he do this now after all he said?’ She was suddenly furious. ‘It’s still his fucking
work
that’s the important thing. Even now, his bloody ego still wants to be published as the great doctor, humanity’s benevolent helper. He doesn’t want to do the other book. He doesn’t care about his daughters. He doesn’t care about us! And then he’s got the cheek to go and put the bite on us. I haven’t
got
any money. I’m running at a loss at the moment. I’ve had one big deposit cheque in the last month and that’s paying my people’s salaries. After that, I don’t know what’s going to happen unless business picks up. Then he goes and pulls a stunt like he did just then.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Kit. ‘It’s awful. I feel angry too, and I don’t have your investment in the situation.’ She paused as Gemma angrily shifted gears, over-revving the car. ‘I’ll send him the money,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about that. I still have some put away from the sale of the house. I haven’t got anywhere near enough to buy anything so I might as well let him have some. I must owe him some sort of debt after all these years of believing he killed our mother.’ She looked out the window at some children playing on the footpath. ‘Gems, I went up really close to him when I gave him those flowers,’ she said. ‘I looked right into his face, his eyes—’ She stopped.