Medea's Curse Read online

  Natalie arrived at the pub early after a short walk in fine rain through the backstreets, her neighbourhood of factories closing down for the night as she passed. Liam had suggested a city bar, likely to be full of lawyers and stockbrokers, but she had insisted on her local. She could free up her mind talking to the bar staff and be ready for Liam when he arrived.

  The Halfpenny was one of those Collingwood classics named for an old-school union leader. In contrast to the tapas bars and cocktail lounges of Smith and Gertrude streets only a block away, it was a seventies throwback with faded floral carpets, walls crowded with photos and a No thongs or shorts notice over the doorway.

  Vince, the owner, wasn’t there. His son Benny, with his red Mohawk reverting to frizz in the damp air, nodded in acknowledgment. Maggie behind the bar had opened a Corona and put a lime wedge in place before Natalie had even made it across the room.

  ‘He’s waiting for you in the corner,’ said Maggie, tilting her head to her left.

  Natalie took the beer. ‘Come again?’

  Maggie shrugged with a smile that suggested approval. Vince wouldn’t have been as easily persuaded, Natalie thought as she glanced where Maggie had indicated. The lighting was dim but she could make out Liam in the corner watching her, sitting in front of a picture of Vince with a footballer in Collingwood black and white.

  ‘Casing the joint?’ Natalie asked as she joined him.

  ‘I like to be knowing the lie of the land.’ He was drinking a Guinness. Of course.

  ‘Does the leprechaun impression usually work for you?’ she asked, trying not to grin as she sat down at the table. She put her feet up on the third chair and took a slug of the Corona, looking him over as she did. With his curling black hair, only slightly grey at the temples, and an open-neck shirt and leather jacket, Liam could have passed as something other than a lawyer. Almost. ‘So tell me about Travis.’

  ‘Over dinner.’ He took a sip from his glass, eyes never leaving her. ‘Do you live around here?’

  Natalie pushed the lime into the bottle. ‘I like Collingwood.’ Was he testing her out or trying to show he hadn’t done a background check? ‘I thought there was a lot to talk about. The case. Now seems a good time to start.’

  Liam waved for another drink. ‘Winding down from a hard day at the office first. Helps focus my attention.’

  Yeah, right. Focus it on what?

  ‘So how did someone like you end up a forensic shrink?’

  ‘Someone like me? What does that mean?’ Natalie inwardly cursed herself. She’d let him draw her away from the main issue.

  ‘Well…’ Liam lay back against the picture of Nathan Buckley and finished his drink as Maggie brought another. ‘Not—shall we say—mainstream?’

  ‘That good or bad?’

  ‘More earrings than I can count? Motorbike that’s too big for you? I’d lay bets on a tattoo somewhere. Right? Interesting.’

  He was right. Annoyingly. Safer to answer his original question. ‘Why forensic psych? Amber’s case, in part. Plus a run-in with a motorcycle club; their psychopathology intrigued me.’

  ‘I’m guessing that all makes you too tough for relationships?’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to talk about your wife. Same goes for men in my life, okay?’

  ‘Not after specifics. Just wondering if you spit them out after one night or whether they occasionally last a few.’

  ‘One’s a lot more fun.’

  ‘No care, no responsibility?’

  Natalie grinned despite her best intentions. ‘Something like that. Now, back to Travis—’

  Liam stood up. ‘Do you know what you want to eat?’

  Natalie wondered if the sudden need for food was to avoid talking about Travis and Chloe because he didn’t actually have any need for her input, or to streamline the pathway to the after-dinner possibilities. She went with him to the window into the kitchen and ordered her usual: steak, salad and chips.

  ‘Same,’ said Liam. ‘Rare.’

  ‘I ended up in the Office of the Public Prosecutor because I couldn’t shake the idealised view of justice I’d had as kid,’ Liam told her as they waited for dinner. She’d agreed to listen if he’d get to Travis as soon as the food arrived. The truth was, he was good company.

  ‘And what was that about?’

  ‘My da’. I guess you’d tell me that it was because I couldn’t stop him beating up my ma, right? That I’m compensating now for what I couldn’t do then, by going after the bad guys. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Do you think it does?’ Natalie grinned. One point to her.

  ‘Well it’s working; little while ago I put a drug boss behind bars for a ten-year minimum. Ice was scarce on the street for weeks. I have to confess that felt good. I’d have done anything to get his brother as well.’

  ‘Anything?’ It sounded flirtatious and Natalie cursed herself silently. It wasn’t as if he needed encouragement.

  ‘Almost. As long as no one innocent gets hurt.’

  Natalie looked at him sceptically.

  ‘I had a case when I was green,’ he said. ‘Guy named Tim Hadden; alcoholic, wife beater, record as long as your arm. He always maintained his innocence.’

  ‘Don’t they all?’

  ‘Mostly, but in this case he was. DNA testing came in and we had another look. And I’ll never be sure that when I first prosecuted him I didn’t let my dislike of the man interfere with the facts.’

  ‘He got out?’

  Liam paused, and she found she couldn’t read him. Anger? Regret?

  ‘He was killed in gaol while they stuffed around with the paperwork.’

  It shed light on why he was open to reviewing Amber’s case.

  ‘My da’,’ he concluded, ‘was a walking Irish stereotype; the bad one, unfortunately.’

  ‘You think your father got in the way of your objectivity when you prosecuted Tim Hadden?’ Natalie had put her observation into words before she remembered she was out socially, not in her office.

  Liam drained his glass. ‘Same again?’ he asked as he headed to the bar. He returned just as the food arrived. Natalie brought him back to the reason for the dinner.

  ‘So what happened to Travis’s daughter, this one with the new girlfriend?’

  ‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be asking for your help. Not that there aren’t other attractions…’

  It occurred to Natalie that he worked his sex appeal without thinking. A habit. ‘You think I can help because…?’

  ‘The first priority is finding the child. We wouldn’t normally be involved this early in a case but ever since the Leskie debacle we want to make sure we get everything right from the beginning. They may not find the child. The police don’t have enough points of proof for a charge. No forensic evidence, all hearsay. No one’s talking, probably everyone’s lying about something and the obvious answer isn’t falling into our laps.’

  ‘You make it sound like a Mafia hit rather than a missing child.’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Nothing that well organised. Stupid eejits behaving badly.’
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  ‘Smart enough to keep you guys running in circles.’

  ‘Which is why I’d be wantin’ you running around with me.’

  Was it her imagination or did the brogue thicken when he was spinning a line?

  ‘So take me back to the beginning.’

  Liam cut his steak and it bled on the plate. ‘Travis and Amber broke up straight after the plea hearing. Poor hard-done-by man: tries to stand by the bitch who murdered his daughter, but in the end he has to put the love of his surviving child first.’

  Natalie tried picturing Travis in the role of hero. Some women found him cute. But the poor-me attitude that appeared by the second interview had alienated her long before Amber had started to reveal the level of domestic abuse. Which was more psychological than physical, but every bit as effective. Travis had been a clear factor in Amber’s depression. Had he been supportive, their daughter would probably still be alive. Which was the primary reason for Natalie’s avenging-angel moment on the Supreme Court steps.

  The memory of putting Liam on his backside was still sweet. She suppressed a grin.

  ‘What’s she like?’ she said. ‘Travis’s new woman?’

  ‘Tiphanie Murchison. First name spelt T.I.P.H.A.N.I.E.’ His look suggested that the quirky spelling said it all.

  ‘Let me guess. Small, vulnerable and a bit plain. Maybe an abusive background, if not at home then in the schoolyard.’

  Liam looked impressed. ‘Why doesn’t he go for the pretty ones? He’s not a bad looking bloke.’

  ‘Because he needs to dominate and doesn’t want to share the limelight. Pretty girls have too much self-esteem.’ She thought about Amber: ordinary looking, eyes too small, facial features a bit asymmetrical. In the first police video she had been flushed and flustered. Subsequently she had looked bewildered, disappearing into clothes too big for her, hiding behind long, lank brown hair that fell over her eyes. Her family had been supportive but anxious and overprotective.

  Liam rested his cutlery against the plate. ‘Tiphanie looks average in the photo I saw but she’s only nineteen. Police describe her as timid. Not bright, I guess, given who she ended up with. A little dumpy.’ Liam looked directly at her. ‘But then I like my women petite.’

  Natalie stopped herself responding, but couldn’t prevent a flutter rippling through her stomach. Damn it.

  ‘Family?’ So far Tiphanie fitted the profile Natalie had constructed.

  ‘Prior to hooking up with Travis she lived with her parents. Not known to police.’

  Natalie wondered what it was about Tiphanie’s home life that made Travis a better option. ‘Job?’

  ‘She was working on the checkout at the supermarket where Travis was doing some building work.’

  She would have known who he was, that he was married, that his wife had murdered their baby. Welbury wasn’t that big. Had Tiphanie felt sorry for him? Was it a celebrity thing?

  ‘So all seems to be going well,’ Liam continued after another mouthful of steak. ‘Maternal health centre nurse reports she was an exemplary mother.’

  Was. The child would be dead, of course. Missing just sounded better.

  ‘Chloe was nearly one when she disappeared. Eleven and a half months. The nurse hadn’t seen her for a while. Tiphanie and her mother had had a falling out, so her parents hadn’t seen them for a couple of months either. Travis’s father left when he was a kid and his mother was in Melbourne.’

  ‘Neighbours? Friends? Was Chloe in childcare?’

  Liam shook his head. ‘Tiphanie was unemployed. She didn’t go back to the supermarket after the birth. The last sighting of the child—other than by Travis and Tiphanie—was earlier the day before. By a neighbour. She only heard her playing in the backyard, she didn’t actually see her.’

  ‘What’s Tiphanie’s story?’

  ‘That she’d got the child breakfast and left her watching cartoons, then went back to bed.’

  ‘As exemplary mothers do.’ Natalie remembered a home visit she’d done in another satellite town, closer to Melbourne. The mother ordered groceries online and never left the house. Her child spent all day in front of the television.

  She didn’t notice Liam leaning forward until his hand brushed her hair out of her eye. She had no time to suppress her sharp intake of breath. They briefly made eye contact and he looked amused. Half-ready to defend himself. She reminded herself of her two vows.

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘When Tiphanie got up at eleven o’clock, Chloe had vanished.’

  Natalie wondered how a child of less than a year old had become accustomed to entertaining herself for that long. Some babies who were left to cry for long periods all but gave up. What looked like compliance was actually depression, or some infant version of it. ‘Travis was at work?’

  ‘Yes. With witnesses. Impossible for him to have got home and back without being noticed.’

  Natalie thought for a moment. ‘What was his reaction, his explanation?’

  ‘Blaming anyone and everyone.’

  ‘Including Tiphanie?’

  ‘Not yet. The cracks have started to show but his anger is still mainly at the police.’

  ‘And the cops think what?’

  ‘At first they thought she might have wandered off but no one’s seen her. They’re on a new estate—bit desolate but it’s not Siberia.’

  ‘Could she have been kidnapped?’

  ‘Possible. Unlikely. This is a small rural town, remember. The police are checking the paedophile registry, but she’s very young. Even if the door was unlocked, how would anyone know unless they’d been watching and planning? Same for those women who kidnap because they’re desperate for a child.’

  ‘So the next theory?’

  ‘An accident that the mother covered up. She looked spaced—vacant—but we haven’t found a body and she hasn’t cracked.’

  ‘Next theory?’

  ‘My favourite.’

  Natalie looked at him expectantly. He leaned closer.

  ‘Travis kills the kid in a fit of rage the night before. He has Tiphanie under his thumb, beats her, threatens her, whatever. He does the cover-up and keeps her in the dark about it so she doesn’t have anything to tell us. Maybe he gave her some pills. Would account for her looking spaced. Maybe she was out of it when he killed Chloe.’

  ‘So if this theory fits—if it’s Travis—you’d have to question the previous child’s death.’

  Liam smiled grimly. ‘Exactly. One child dying might be bad luck, but two, both under suspicious circumstances, to two different women? Travis is the only thing tying it together.’

  ‘Maybe he has poor taste in women.’

  ‘Maybe. Neither woman looks like a killer to me.’

  Nor to Natalie. It didn’t mean they didn’t do it. ‘Amber confessed,’ she reminded Liam, ‘and went to gaol, as you may remember?’

  ‘If Travis had been found guilty he would have gone to gaol for murder. He’d have got a much longer sentence and he wouldn’t have had an easy time. If he survived.’


  ‘Amber hasn’t exactly had it easy,’ said Natalie. ‘She was spending most of her time in isolation last I heard.’

  ‘They might reasonably have expected that she’d get a suspended sentence.’

  ‘They didn’t split until after the hearing,’ Natalie murmured, talking to herself rather than to Liam. Could she have got it wrong? Had Travis been directly to blame for Bella-Kaye’s death and now for Chloe’s, or had he driven two women to the point of infanticide?

  ‘Is it possible? That Travis murdered both his children?’ said Liam.

  ‘Much as I’d like to see him locked up, the circumstances are different.’ Natalie moved around some chips on her plate. ‘Still possible, but the child was nearly a year old for one thing; out of that sleepless-night stage and too young for full-blown tantrums. Men tend to kill children in anger. Where’s the body? Even if he killed her accidentally he’d have to get rid of the body, and Travis isn’t a great planner.’

  ‘Still. Will you take a look at Travis and see what you think?’

  ‘He’d never agree to talk to me,’ said Natalie. To say nothing of the apoplexy Declan would have. She was not going to get involved. She thought of the child in the picture with her soft toy and sparkling eyes.

  Liam looked like he’d expected this answer. ‘He doesn’t have to. He’s being called in for a formal interview next week. Decide what questions you want asked and watch from the other side of the screen.’