The Astrologer's Daughter (14 page)

As the detective clatters away back down the stairs, Hugh says, almost like he’s
thinking out loud, ‘I could have that man
seriously
inconvenienced.’

It takes a good second for the meaning of his words to filter in. I swing on him,
revolted. ‘What did you pay her?’ I demand, stepping around him and heading straight
for the meals table covered in its plasticky, faux lace.

But he doesn’t answer. I am simultaneously drawn to Hugh and terrified by him, and
that makes me angry. I pull out a chair and wave a hand at it before hurrying into
my bedroom for my laptop and Mum’s almanacs, some paper and my pencil case and protractor.
When I come out, Hugh is still standing in the same spot, looking around with that
faintly sneering lip. ‘I didn’t imagine it,’ he adds for no one’s benefit. ‘This
place
is
an unrelieved dump. How did Rosso talk me into
doing
this?’

I drop the whole teetering mess I’m cradling on the table and pull out my own chair
at the head, exactly where Mum would have sat, banging it down. ‘
What did you pay
her?
’ I repeat. It would give me some idea of how much time I would lawfully have
to spend with this bozo.

Hugh’s dark eyes snap to mine and he stalks over before sprawling in the chair opposite,
the whole length of the table away. ‘Enough,’ he snaps. ‘Rosso’s mother is an incredibly
superstitious woman who swears by these things. I lost a bet.’ Hugh’s voice suddenly
hardens, as does his face. ‘So here I am.
Hit me
.’

I glare at him over the collapsed mound of books and paper between us. ‘Don’t tempt
me,’ I reply. ‘Hugh Athelrede de Crespigny?’ He inclines his head curtly. ‘Birthdate:
19 October, 1992. Birthplace: London, United Kingdom. Time?’

The time of his birth hadn’t been in Mum’s journal or
on the back of that envelope
he’d left me. Without it, the chart I was about to draw for him would read like a
greeting card:
Hugh has lovely people skills; is a great self-starter and party
host.
I swallow down a snort of derision. Jerk.

‘What?’ Hugh replies, gaze challenging, sensing my amusement. ‘Why do you need to
know
that
?’

‘
Time
,’ I repeat, like he’s the slow one. ‘It’s quite vital.’

Hugh eyes me coolly then leans down and draws a slender mobile phone out of a pocket
of his designer bag. He hits a pre-programmed number while he studies me across the
table.

‘How’d you get that scar?’ he says before suddenly drawling in a completely different
voice, ‘Mother, dear, at what exact moment was I
born
?’ He laughs, and it is a warm
and natural sound.

There is a muffled flurry of surprised noise at the other end, then silence. My colour
rises again as Hugh says, the phone still held to his ear, ‘What sort of name is
Avicenna
, anyway?’ before bending in to hear her response.

As he slides the phone back into the front pocket of his shirt, he purrs, ‘4.52am,
darling. Take it away. Do your worst.’

He knows I want to. Dislike and suspicion hang over the table like warring storm
fronts. According to Mum’s notes, all Hugh asked for was a simple radix. Emphasis:
wealth, health, love
. No progressions were required, no
answers to specific questions.
Just platitudes and generalisations. Cake.

But I can’t stop my scalp from prickling as I start charting. Every time I look
up, Hugh is watching me intently
.
He’s a looker: one of those people with so much
confidence and entitlement that he is without shame, without embarrassment. There
is a cool and absolute stillness about his indolent frame that’s almost preternatural.
He’s a big guy—all legs and arms and hard shoulders—but while I consult books and
websites, shuffling pieces of paper and rulers around nervously, he doesn’t fidget.
It’s like he’s breaking me down into little pieces, just with his eyes, as I try
to do my worst.

But glyph after glyph, the building picture tells the same story: excellent general
prospects for money and success, love and physical health, no adverse aspects or
major afflictions involving either of the luminaries, his midheaven or his ascendant
sign. In all probability, throughout his life he’ll be loved and have children, friends,
community; every material thing he could wish for. These are good stars; you would
want to have been born under stars like these. Without going beyond Mum’s brief,
without progressing his chart forwards, I will not find
the twist
: the one that could
unmake him; derail his assured and munificent future.

So in a monotone I tell Hugh that the universe was
both kind and bountiful when he
was born, that he will have love, wealth, health, in spades—
The signs in your fifth
house regarding offspring are particularly fruitful
, I find myself droning—but I
don’t pull any punches as I go, overcome by the desire to hurt, but also by desire
itself.

‘You’re a perfectionist who can’t stand to be alone,’ I say gravely, hands on my
knees under the table so he won’t see them shaking. ‘This may stem from issues with
your father, who may be cold or distant? Absent?’

Hugh actually shifts in his chair when I say that, but he doesn’t speak. There’s
something troubling about the stars in his fourth house signifying the male parent,
but nothing definitive. Lots of people are raised by a single parent; I mean, look
at me, no biggie, right? Hugh’s face has tightened but he doesn’t ask me to elaborate,
so I continue with: ‘You’re highly sociable, hypercritical, judgmental, intelligent.
Analytical, touchy. Vain.’

I let that word linger a little before adding: ‘And you’re also a hedonist with a
constant craving to be needed, desired, loved, which—thankfully for you—is largely
reciprocated by all who meet you—though you have a strong tendency to be overly possessive,
obsessive, jealous. You don’t so much love people as smother them. And if you don’t
like someone? Then they are dead to you.

‘You abhor everything that is ugly or mundane,’ I say finally, knowing that I must
fall somewhere into this
sub-category of
ugly things
with all my surface flaws. ‘And
the indications are that you will always have your wealth.’ I can’t resist finishing
with, ‘So, congratulations, yeah?’

Hugh is silent as I scribble all this down beneath his roughed-out astrological chart.
And he is still silent as I date and sign it the way Mum always did.

A good astrologer
, I remember her saying once, as she autographed someone’s chart
with a flourish,
always takes pride in, and stands by, her work
.
Those with the knowledge
are here to be tested.

But I go against Crowe protocol and don’t bother keeping a copy of the radix for
myself because I don’t expect this prick to ever darken my doorstep again. The thought
of it actually hurts me—that this is the only time our two lives will ever intersect—but
there it is.

I push the piece of paper over the table to him and get to my feet, marching across
the room and throwing open the front door.
Awareness
—of him, the shabbiness of the
room, the unfairness of it all—is making it hard to breathe. Still, job done, right?
Easy money.

Suddenly I find myself blinking away tears, actually tilting my head back against
the door to hold them in; a feeling in the back of my throat like razor blades that
I can’t swallow down. If the year at Collegiate High never ended up panning out,
I could always become the fortuneteller Sergeant Docherty accused Mum of being.
Maybe
she’d been onto something, my mother. Maybe she’d always meant for this to
be some kind of lucrative fallback for her plain, ungainly daughter: because people
are always going to be credulous slobs, having ‘the knowledge’ would mean I’d never
starve.

Good one, Mum. Thanks. Always thinking about me.

Hugh hasn’t moved. He just stares down blindly at the piece of paper I gave him like
it’s toxic. For a second I feel almost guilty because I’ve seen that look before.
Somehow every word I uttered has seemed to him to have held some essential truth.

It’s the nature of our art
, I almost tell him.
To raise hopes, or destroy them. Don’t
let it affect you too badly.
But there’s no duty to offer comfort, so I don’t.

I look on silently as Hugh finally rises from the reading table, knotting his elegant
scarf around his neck before shrugging into his jacket and slinging his leather satchel
over his head. He hesitates above the piece of annotated paper, then folds it in
half, then into quarters, before shoving the small square into a pocket.
Why is it
,
I find myself thinking,
that the worst arseholes have faces like angels?

But if that were really true, it would make me one of the kindest people on the planet,
and I’m not. I know the reading I just gave was deliberately harsh, mean-spirited.
There were so many other ways I could have phrased
things, but I chose the low road.
Mum would be appalled.

Hugh draws alongside, muttering, ‘Looks like you have me all worked out. I haven’t
turned out to be a very nice person, have I?’

There is that
awareness
. I don’t know if he can feel it, but it’s almost an atmosphere
in the room, stifling.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say vaguely, crossing my arms, staring at a point past the
guy’s broad shoulder; wanting my dinner, wanting to cry, wanting him over with and
crossed off, just like Wurbik’s crossed him off. Really pretty people have this effect
on me—something goes wrong with the muscles in my neck and I can’t hold my head up
properly or look them in the eye for any length of time. It’s a defensive reflex
I’ve developed against the possibility of judgment, or hurt.

With Hugh, I think it is the worst it’s ever been. He’s both magnetic and intensely
repellent. Very push-pull. And I have to remind myself that the only reason he’s
in my life in the first place is because Mum isn’t.

He’s standing so close now, I almost have to lean backward or we’ll touch. But there’s
nowhere to go and even the air I’m breathing smells of him. ‘You forgot one thing,
though,’ he says.

That makes me look at him, stung. ‘I don’t forget,’ I say hotly. ‘I don’t
forget
anything. You got what you paid for and, buddy, it’s
accurate
. You know it is.’ Hugh’s
gaze on
me is watchful; his irises so dark I can’t see into his soul. And I want,
desperately, to look away. But I can’t. Instead I flick my fingers in the direction
of his pocket to distract and confuse because I’m good at deflection, at attack.
At the heart of all attack is defence. I live by that credo.

I jabber, ‘That radix is you in a nutshell, right? Am I right?’

I
know
I’m right, but my left hand slips up nervously into the loose ends of my hair
anyway, pulling it into a thick rope that I tug down tightly over my ruined ear.
Around him, I am a bag of nervous tics, and it’s disgusting.

Hugh is staring at me like he could melt me with his eyes. Maybe it’s the ugliness
thing, and I offend him.
Snake and mouse, mouse and snake
, I think.

Then Hugh gives me a sudden, crooked smile that does something painful to the muscles
of my diaphragm. As I flush beneath his steady scrutiny, his smile broadens, actually
reaching his eyes, making all the interesting lines of his face more prominent.

‘You
forgot
to say,’ Hugh emphasises quietly, ‘that I hate mysteries; that I won’t
leave them alone until I get bored…’ He steps forward until I’m pressed into the
grain of the door, trying to keep some air between us. ‘Or I get answers. You’ve
given me a lot to think about, Avicenna. I think I was wrong about you, and I
hate
being wrong. You missed that, too.’

Then he laughs—a laugh of genuine amusement—and says, ‘Later,’ in the kind of light,
Prince Charming voice that only serves to remind me of our last encounter before
this one; the innate violence of him, drunk, beating at my door.

My hands are still shaking as I draw the safety chain across. And I listen with my
good ear pressed up against the wood, not breathing out until I hear the door at
the bottom of the stairs slam shut behind him.

15

I wake with a start to a room bathed in red-gold light, and to Mum bending and whispering
in my ear, her long hair hanging down, all red-gold, too.
All readings, like all
people
,
are inherently contradictory. But find the pattern? And you will find the
person. You will know them absolutely.

For a second, I’m paralysed by joy and relief; that she came back.

But then I wake in earnest to a pitch-black bedroom and panic makes me lash out for
the lamp switch, sending the whole thing crashing to the floor off the bedside table.
My mobile phone begins to shrill.

Crawling amongst the soft-hard debris on the floor, I finally locate my backpack
near the foot of the bed and
crack open my bedroom door to let in the watery day.
Back against the doorframe, I look down at a number I’ve never seen before and breathe
out my name. The person on the other end inhales shakily, as if they might speak,
then hangs up. Seconds later, I almost drop the phone when it starts ringing again
in my open palm.

It’s Wurbik, crisp, best policeman voice. ‘Just checking you’re still alive, kiddo.
I take this liaising business seriously.’

I give him the upshot of the reading I did for Hugh de Crespigny; though I don’t
tell Wurbik about how mean I was, because I actually care about what he thinks of
me. The act of talking begins to slow my racing heart.

When Wurbik doesn’t respond right away, I tell him I’m planning on calling Don Sturt
later in the day with the results of the horary readings I’m doing on the Bawden
suspects. ‘As far as I can tell, they’re all loaded.’

‘It’s your funeral,’ Wurbik replies, sounding distracted, like he’s suddenly got
someone in his other ear.

‘Has there’—I swallow, wanting to know, but also wanting to hide under my bed with
my hands over my ears forever—‘been, uh, any word, yet, about Mum?’

‘Too early.’ Wurbik’s voice is almost curt. ‘Give us a chance. And you stay away
from that boy’s mob—they all love a recreational drug. All sex addicts, too, the
judge especially; he’s had to work hard to keep it out of the
papers, his weakness
for the rough stuff. Big breeders. Tentacles in politics, law, racing, fashion,
philanthropy
.’
Wurbik’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. ‘Too fast for you; you’ve done your bit. Call
you when I hear. Hang tight.’

Wurbik cuts the connection and it takes me a while to put my phone away and scrape
myself up off the carpet. The apartment is redolent with the bitter smell of burnt
toast, which is what I ate for dinner last night. I’m ashamed by how much I crave
the sound of another human voice. It’s like a sickness.

It is the sameness that gets to me, every day the same; the Mum-shaped hole in the
fabric of things. I wake, and there is a split second of the way life was:
What’s
on for today? What do I have to wear that’s, maybe, clean?
Then it all comes crashing
down—the lack of her, like a rock settling on my chest. And I have to get up and
haul that rock—while I eat, while I brush my teeth, while I interact with the rest
of the human race.

The morning rapidly turns into a re-run of the one before, right down to the choice
of outfit (jeans, runners, polar fleece), the icy, sunny weather, and me taking a
special detour up Little La Trobe Street, past
The Ark of A–Z
.

This time, when I get there and press my forehead up against the glass, there isn’t
a silver-haired giant standing at the counter behind the
Closed
sign. There is nothing
to
see except dust and eclectica inside a faded, empty store. Even the old black
book has been put away. I could have imagined everything.

‘But I know what I saw.’ My breath makes a circle of fog on the dirty upper pane
of the front door as I address the dim glass. ‘And I saw
you
.’

The footsteps of a lone passerby drawing closer cause me to pull my beanie down lower
over my forehead and hurry back the way I came. Everyone I ask looks at me strangely,
but at school no one has seen or heard from Simon Thorn, who has never taken a sick
day in living memory.

But Dalgeish lights up when she spots me going into my form room and hurries over,
leaning into me with a bony elbow. ‘You’re doing the talk with or without him,’ she
hisses through lipstick-stained front teeth. ‘Your situation’s been noted. All you
need to do is stand up and
say something
. I’ve told Ednah Daniels this is the year
one of my kids takes out the Tichborne, not hers, so don’t let me down.’

‘No pressure.’ I find Vicki at my elbow after Dalgeish’s lurid purple and yellow
calf-length sweater-and-skirt set has flounced out of view. ‘Catch you in the Common
Room after first period?’ she says as we slide into our usual places up the back,
for rollcall.

I shake my head, knowing it’ll be too hard to explain
what I’m doing; my reputation’s
bizarre enough as it is. ‘Double spare. Something I need to finish in the library.
Catch you when I catch you.’

The implication is to leave me alone; we both hear it.

Vicki pouts, her dark eyes suddenly dangerous beneath her curly fringe. ‘I’m still
waiting
,’ she says pointedly.

She means the word game we’re in the middle of playing and how the word
sluts
needs,
urgently, to be addressed. But I also see that she’s asking about when it’s going
to get back to normal: me and her, the big-haired, bosomy twins who get around being
ballsy, loud and notorious; everyone’s favourite general pains-in-the-arse who are
guaranteed to shout out from the back of the room.

I want to tell Vicki that I’ve somehow left
normal
far behind, as if it’s a country
and I’ve stowed away on the wrong boat, and it’s sailed. Instead, I smile tightly
and bellow—
Here!
—in a hearty voice when Clarkey calls out my name. When the bell
rings, I rise to my feet and leave the room without a backward glance, feeling Vicki’s
eyes—all their eyes—doing things to my back.

In the library, there is a round of double takes when I walk in. I invoke the forcefield
so successfully that, when the dust settles, mine is the only table for four without
a single extra person crammed up against it. Everyone leaves me alone near the shelves
dedicated to warfare and catastrophes of the Far East, and this time I’m not
obscurely
hurt. It means I can spread out my workings for Mallory Bloch, Geoffrey Kidston,
Lewis Boardman and Christopher Ferwerder without some sightseeing ghoul trying to
get a handle on what I’m up to.

Putting the finishing touches to the fourth and final chart a moment later, I am
struck by one thing. If the charts are to be believed, none of these four men was
responsible for raping and murdering Fleur Bawden that day.

I look up when the bell goes for recess. But I can’t face the avidity, the questions,
so I go over all of the charts again, house by house, segment by segment, from start
to finish; first checking the radix, then the wheel representing the progressions,
then the outermost wheel, where the triggering, focusing transits are arrayed in
a less-than-perfect circle.

I wasn’t joking when I told Wurbik all four men appear to be loaded. Collectively
and individually, their second house and fourth house stars for wealth and assets
are off the charts and their first house indicators (delineating abilities, looks,
energy) and tenth house stars (professional standing) are uniformly phenomenal.
A couple of them look to have lost and regained their fortunes a few times, but all
seem to be self-made men with money to burn. Jupiter in good aspect is in evidence
in all of the progressions.

But on the day in question there are no squares between
progressed sun and moon in
the men’s charts, no significant afflictions affecting progressed moon and Venus,
or signs of the malefic planets—Mars and Saturn—being in prominence or in harsh opposition
from the angles, or afflicted by the signs of violence—Capricorn, Aries, Scorpio.
Progressed Pluto, signifying death, makes no significant connection with the men’s
progressed moon that day, nor is it transiting the seventh house—which traditionally
indicates
other people
. And none of the charts contain aspects for bereavement, misfortune
or intense violence for the date in question. Even if any of them knew Fleur Bawden,
she meant nothing to them.

The library is empty now, so I pull out my phone, wishing I knew Simon’s number,
or he would maybe call and tell me what had been so urgent he’d just left me standing
there in the street. Then I dial Don Sturt. After two quick rings I get, ‘
Don
.’ His
voice is dry as dust, cautious.

I find myself furtively racing through a summary of the men’s charts before someone
overhears me talking like a witch, in a public place.

‘Okay, so Bloch’s in his late sixties now, and he’s got this explosive temper and
an apparent lifelong dislike of women. But according to his chart, he’s almost pathologically
obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene—I don’t see him messily bludgeoning anyone
to death, wouldn’t want
it on his hands—and he wasn’t even
there
the night Fleur
was killed. According to his stars, he was travelling that day, moving around; because
the man has never been able to stay still. Bloch was born in a situation of transit,
and that pattern has continued throughout his life.’

‘Okay,’ Don says, sounding muffled now because he’s probably struggling to write
all of this down in that tiny private investigator notebook of his.

‘Kidston—who’s almost fifty now, right?—is an intellectual snob who loves cultivating
friends in high places. He’s got loads of unresolved daddy issues. And he’s really
highly strung, super emotional, so there appear to have been a few mental breakdowns
in his past? But nothing around the date of Fleur’s death. There are no indications
for physical confrontation regarding his ruling sign or progressed ascendant for
that day. At the time Fleur died, Kidston was in the middle of a good period for
physical and mental health.’

‘Go on,’ Don rasps curtly. He’s barely said a word the entire time I’ve been firing
away at him about the predilections of strange men.

‘Boardman—the other Australian-born suspect, now in his mid-fifties—is some kind
of charismatic, smooth operator with a wide circle of friends and great business
sense. His seventh house stars for marriage and long-term relationships are unbelievably
bad—in the sense there’s
heaps of movement, but maybe he likes that, being a
playa
—but
he’s never been seriously ill or suffered any serious form of bad luck, violence
or affliction, whether physical or mental. There are indications for sex and pleasure
on the night that Fleur died, but nothing resembling an accidental or purposeful
involvement in the violent death of another. Maybe he saw her or knew her? But it’s
hard to say, nothing is definite.’

‘Mmmm,’ is all Don says as I look out the window and see people returning to the
main building, flooding in through all the doors off the sodden playing fields. I’m
suddenly talking so fast, I’m almost impossible to understand, my voice dropping
to a whisper because people are filtering back into the library and glancing over
at me in undisguised interest, with all my papers and books spread out everywhere.

‘Ferwerder, the Scottish guy, is nearing ninety now. But on 9 July 1984 he would
have been a man in his late fifties and entirely capable of murdering someone. But
again, I’ve got nothing, Don. Happily partnered-up at the time; though he’s a highly
social, touchy-feely, flirty kind of guy with a short attention span who was likely
to have been in town on the night in question. But the stars indicate no acts of
extreme rage or violence for the time frame you’ve indicated. There’s nothing of
note for that day.
Nothing
.’

Don digests all this in silence. ‘Does it change anything,’
he finally says, ‘if
Kidston, the nervy, high-strung guy, was born at noon? We’re still talking Melbourne,
but 12pm exactly.’

I feel the blood rush up into my face as Wez Ellery wanders right past—close enough
to touch—with his hand shoved down the back pocket of Mila Abramovich’s jeans. Both
of them have no reason to be over here, craning their necks to get a look at what
I’m doing. I actually hiss at them, while I scoop piles of papers together untidily
and start shoving them into my pack.

Don’s tone is apologetic. ‘You were right, the birthtimes for the two Aussies weren’t
the same. Transposition error on my part, sorry. Don’t know how it happened. Does
that change anything?’

Of course it does, you idiot. It changes the entire thing
, I almost say, knowing
I’ll have to start Kidston’s chart all over again from scratch.

‘It will,’ I murmur tightly as Ozzie Palomares and his massive fro approach my table.
I look up as he levers his vast frame unapologetically into the seat opposite mine,
nylon-clad arse cheeks squeaking against the vinyl. He raises his monobrow at me
as if to say:
This okay?
I shrug, trying to seem cool with it.

‘Look,’ I say tightly, ‘if I re-run Kidston’s again, am I off the hook? I’m not a
public service, you know. It has to end somewhere.’

‘Look,’ Don counters right back, and I hear a faint
swish
of passing cars down the
line and realise he’s actually driving, he’s on the road. ‘Eleanor will want to
hear all of this in person. Can you rejig the Kidston reading and I’ll…’ There’s
a long pause. ‘
I’ll
pick you up outside your school at, what,
three
? And take you
straight to her. I’m coming back from her place up country at the moment—she wanted
me to fetch a few things from the vineyard—but I’ll try and make it across town so
that she gets the wash-up straight from you. El’s going to be disappointed. But at
least now she knows we’ve tried… everything.’