Dangerous to Know Read online

  Frank sat down next her, scratching his head and avoiding eye contact. ‘I didn’t mean…’ He sighed. ‘Sorry that was stupid, wasn’t it? But there aren’t too many people I can talk to right now.’ His eyes, now resting on her, said the rest.

  ‘How about Alison?’ Natalie probably sounded harsher than she intended, as she broke eye contact. Married men? Not again. Particularly since she already owed this man’s wife.

  ‘Not a good idea at the moment.’ Frank’s expression now was bordering on plaintive Labrador.

  He’d piqued her interest. Why not at the moment? Natalie closed down the computer. It wasn’t as if Bob and the cockatoo contingent were missing her. Anyway, this was work. Her supervisor: a colleague. And she owed Alison: she’d lend Frank a sympathetic ear and direct him back to his wife. ‘One drink.’

  The bar was nondescript, wedged between a pub and an upmarket steak restaurant. Probably aiming for clientele that no longer existed in a town hit with business closures and high unemployment. The after-work crowd was thin, the guy behind the bar periodically checking out his Twitter feed, and the female server was disengaged. From Natalie anyway. Frank rated a double-take and a smile.

  Natalie watched her supervisor struggle to start and felt as though she was with a psychotherapy patient.

  ‘Do you know about Reeva?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I know there’s no reason to be anxious, that it was all just one of those random things, but…’

  ‘You’d better back up. I know she was your wife, and a researcher, and that she died.’

  ‘A brilliant researcher.’ The light was dim but Natalie was sure his eyes were glistening. No wonder he couldn’t talk about this with Alison. He was still grieving. Maybe this was how she could make it up to Alison; help him move on.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. One moment she was fine, a bit tired of course, went to bed early and then never woke up.’

  ‘Why of course?’

  Frank looked puzzled. ‘Tired you mean? Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the pregnancy.’

  Natalie stared at him. Pregnancy? ‘How many weeks?’

  ‘Thirty-nine.’ Frank was looking down into his glass of wine.

  ‘So the baby?’ Natalie’s voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘We lost him too.’ Frank looked up so slowly it was as if there was physical pain in the action. ‘He was…I’d felt him move right before she went to bed.’

  ‘Oh Frank, that must have been…’ Been what? There were no words for this.

  ‘Both being doctors, I think makes it worse. Like we…I… should have been able to do something.’

  ‘It’s hard to sit with the feeling you’ve failed.’ Natalie knew this all too well. She’d spent months wanting to go back and tell Eoin not to get on the bike that last time.

  ‘And now Alison thinks I’m neurotic.’

  ‘It’s natural for you to be worried.’

  ‘Yes, but it isn’t just me. She thinks we’re all neurotic. But my…mother had lots of miscarriages and…we just want this baby…and Alison…to be well.’

  ‘How many weeks is she, Frank?’

  ‘Thirty-six.’

  Natalie automatically put her hand over his. ‘Only a month, Frank. It isn’t the nineteenth century, maternal mortality’s around one in ten thousand.’

  ‘Talking with you helps. I appreciate it.’

  In his look she read more, but dismissed it. The shock treatment; she still wasn’t herself.

  Georgia Latimer arrived on time at Natalie’s Punt Road rooms. Furious.

  ‘You want me to go to prison, don’t you?’ Georgia, fully made up, looked younger than her thirty-eight years. Blonde hair brushed the collar of her white cashmere top. Her jeans were tucked into long brown boots. She made an unlikely defendant to three murder charges.

  She’d read Natalie’s report.

  ‘It’s not up to me Georgia. I think you are very troubled, but—’

  ‘But you think I killed my children, don’t you?’

  Natalie pondered this. There was still doubt. Georgia continued to deny it. The pathology wasn’t conclusive. And Georgia’s self-harm, the cutting, had happened before the first of her children died: it could have been the only outlet for her anger.

  ‘I’m neither jury nor judge,’ Natalie hedged.

  ‘I’ll never agreed to a guilty plea.’

  Natalie nodded. This had always been the dilemma for Georgia and her barrister: try to convince the jury that all the children died of natural causes, an improbability that might be explained by an undiagnosed genetic problem. Or try for a lesser sentence by agreeing to plead guilty to infanticide. In which case they needed to use mental illness as a defence strategy.

  Seemed like the Office of Public Prosecution—Liam’s office—wasn’t playing ball on the latter. And her mental illness would not be enough to defend a murder charge.

  ‘Do you believe Paul influenced me?’

  ‘I know you tried to make me think that.’

  ‘Because he did!’ Georgia banged the window hard, the wooden frame shaking. She was crying.

  After she had reined in her fury, Georgia started again. ‘I’ve been having this dream,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t ever quite remember it. Just that I’d wake up and feel…’

  The silence stretched out and finally Natalie, looking at the time, prompted her. ‘Feel what?’

  ‘Ashamed,’ said Georgia, so softly that Natalie couldn’t be sure she hadn’t missed something.

  ‘Ashamed of what, Georgia?’

  ‘I remembered then, you see.’ Georgia turned around, leaned back against the window frame, pressing her flushed cheek against its cool glass. ‘It was before Genevieve was born. Before I was pregnant. Just a look, nothing more.’

  Natalie waited and as Georgia described the scenario, she tried to picture a younger Georgia and Paul. She had met Georgia’s husband once.

  ‘I was having lots of problems with my periods. Cramps and bleeding. The doctor had started me on another pill to see if that helped. But Paul walked into the bathroom and I hadn’t disposed of the pads. The look…’ She shuddered and looked at Natalie. ‘I didn’t want to ever, not ever, see that look again. I felt so…ashamed.’ Georgia smiled suddenly. ‘But why on earth should I have been?’

  ___________________

  ‘Did you suggest formal psychotherapy?’ Declan was pouring tea again. At least it wasn’t Morning Dew, a herbal brew the organic food shop in Lorne had foisted upon her. They said it would improve her morning meditation and in a roundabout way it had. She chose meditation as a way to avoid drinking tea that smelled of dog piss on cut grass. Neither had yet led to spiritual enlightenment.

  ‘It’s only a month.’ She caught Declan’s look. ‘Anyway, Frank’s far too narcissistic to ever admit he needs real help.’ ‘So it’s informal?’

  ‘Absolutely. Like…like peer support, I guess. Frank’s got a lot on his shoulders. He’s trying for a new grant, a big one, and without Reeva, Wei thinks they have at best a fifty-fifty chance. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll lose his one researcher at the end of the year.’ And her, if she was to stay even that long. It seemed unlikely. Her Monday patients made her feel more alive than at any time in the empty research lab.

  ‘Peer review has its own rules and obligations. Being vulnerable in front of your colleagues creates its own issues. Have you thought about why he’s chosen you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Natalie took a sip of tea and grimaced. ‘No chance of a dash of bourbon I suppose? Okay, I was joking. Just all this healthy living is…’

  ‘Natalie.’

  ‘I said yes and I meant it. I mean I really thought about it. Have you ever known me not to take your wise counsel?’

  She put the cup down. ‘This is how I see it. Frank is your average narcissistic academic; better looking than most and knows how to use it. He’s also a little fragile, defences low because he’s been skating on t
he skirt tails of wife number one and isn’t sure he’s up to the task by himself.

  On top of this, he lost her and his son and remarried almost immediately after. It fits with his take on the world—that is, he needs to be adored. Alison would be good at that. She got her second-year registrar position despite a screw-up with a patient, because she burst into tears. The surgeon was probably afraid she’d go him for harassment, but she followed him around like a puppy for the rest of the rotation.’

  Natalie paused, checking Declan was following. ‘Trouble is, now Alison’s pregnant and needing Frank. And he’s still traumatised by Reeva’s death.’

  Declan smiled tightly, lining his pens up on the desk. She tried to interpret the obsessional defence but couldn’t see what his issue was. Her own mental health? Okay, she rated her mood as about four out of ten most days, but that wasn’t zero.

  ‘So no way in hell is his ego going to survive scrutiny by someone like you, Declan. In me, he sees someone younger and less experienced and he’s used to charming women. He thinks I’m a pushover and you can’t blame him.’ She gestured at her bland top and navy skirt. ‘I’m dressing like Miss Krabappel these days.’

  ‘And are you a pushover, Natalie?’

  ‘For a charming older married man?’ Natalie’s eyes glinted. ‘Now that ain’t any mistake I’m going to make twice. I’ll get him through until he’s a new dad and then relinquish the responsibility with pleasure.’

  Declan looked down. If she thought there was doubt there, it was trumped by her certainty that she had Frank in hand.

  6

  Reeva was pregnant almost immediately. I was not enthusiastic. We had decided to wait, at least until after the American conference where our preliminary data was to be presented.

  ‘I’m as shocked as you,’ said Reeva, the brilliant physician. She pointed out that she had been on the pill since she was eighteen. ‘I thought it would take months just to start having periods.’

  It hadn’t.

  I didn’t lose my temper. But I ended up going to the USA alone—she was in the third trimester and there had been some complications—and the meeting was not the same without her. She had the flair and warmth that the Americans seem to like. She also had a great mind. At least until her hormones rendered it little better than gorgonzola cheese in the heat.

  I missed her, too, the core of her that was mine. I missed her from the moment she turned inward to focus on the baby, however natural that might have been.

  And of course I knew the ripples the pregnancy had set in motion. How could I not? I felt the ghosts from my nursery like a cold breeze over my skin. They insinuated themselves into my life as if greedy to take hold and score points. They were there when I caught myself criticising Reeva again for being unduly anxious, when I heard the lilt of my grandfather, Antonije, in my voice and when I felt the safety in the remoteness of my father as I pulled away from her.

  When Reeva died, I cried. I missed her and all we could have been. I wanted her back, if only for a moment, to say I wished I had done things differently.

  ‘You have impossible standards,’ she had said and she was right. But by then we were estranged and she no longer confided in me.

  I cried for the loss. I wondered, as I looked at Natalie, head bent over the articles piled on her desk and spilling onto the floor, what would help me heal.

  7

  The house had no television or landline, but it did have reasonable mobile reception, and Natalie was able to use the internet. There were two mentions of Reeva Osbourne’s death, both in the Geelong paper. One, a paragraph at the time it occurred, reported ‘no suspicious circumstances’. The other was a half-page about her life, as celebrated at the funeral. There was a picture of Frank turning towards Reeva’s grief-stricken parents. Two women to his other side, faces away from the camera, were not named. Neither of them was Alison.

  Just one of those terrible tragedies. It was unusual, in the first world, for a woman to die late in pregnancy. The dangers tended to be very early, with an ectopic, or during and after labour. Had Reeva gone into early labour and not been able to call anyone? Unlikely.

  Natalie kept googling, whether from boredom or morbid curiosity she wasn’t sure.

  Frank lived outside of Lorne. Quite a way out. A rural property called Mount Malosevic that had its own website. The gardens were featured on the home page, full of sculptures by local artist Antonije Malosevic. She was pretty sure her school, years ago, had organised an outing to it; she’d wagged to go off with Eoin instead. In the small print she found Antonije Malosevic was Frank’s grandfather, deceased five years ago. A year before Frank married Reeva. Two years before she died.

  So Alison, as second wife—second pregnant wife—was also living in the house Frank had shared with Reeva. Natalie squashed a sense of unease. She was being ridiculous. If you had a grand family house worth millions, why wouldn’t you live in it? Alison would adore being lady of the manor. In her intern year she’d talked more about where she and Oliver were house-hunting than about her patients.

  So Reeva had died out of town, but in easy reach of an ambulance. What else could have killed her? Pregnancy puts pressure on blood vessels so if she had a pre-existing weakness there was a much higher risk of rupture. In that case, she probably never knew what happened. A nice way to die, but the timing sucked: it was about forty years too early. And it was rare, so Natalie could confidently reassure Frank that the chance of Alison also having the same problem was infinitesimally low.

  She thought of Georgia suddenly, and how even the experts had misunderstood the stats about the likelihood of more than one child dying in a family. If there was a genetic factor at play, it was more likely a child would be at risk from natural causes rather than less.

  But Alison and Reeva weren’t related. There wasn’t really much risk, just anxiety. Both Frank and Alison must be experiencing understandable, reactive anxiety and it would pass. If Alison didn’t get postnatal depression; she’d have to be at risk, remote from family and with her high expectations of herself.

  They were going to call the child Harry. Frank had let the name slip. Alison had needed to know its sex; she wanted to buy the right colour clothes.

  Natalie should have left it there. She had no reason to ring Damian. But the hours of silence stretched out before her and Tom said that Damian had turned up to one of their gigs asking for her. He’d texted and left messages on her answering machine a few months ago that she never returned. Telling her the results of the Hardy case; letting her know he’d got the promotion to homicide he’d been working towards.

  Homicide wouldn’t have investigated Reeva’s death, she was pretty sure, but Damian would have access to the coroner’s report and the pathology findings. And what the hell, she needed a shag.

  ‘Detective Senior Sergeant McBride.’ He answered on the second ring. The calm voice of reason and stability. The thought made her wince and immediately want to drive the wrong way up a one-way street. Speeding and naked. After the shag, perhaps.

  ‘I’m told this is the line for desperate and dateless.’ There was dead silence. Stupid. Dateless then didn’t mean dateless now.

  ‘Natalie?’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  Damian laughed. She let out her breath, realised only then she’d been holding it. She needed to get a grip. He asked her about the band; she told him she had some gigs coming up in Lorne and Apollo Bay.

  ‘And are you?’ he said.

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Dateless. And or desperate.’

  ‘Right now I’m looking at grey ocean as far as I can see and the only red-blooded males are a fifteen-minute ride away in Lorne, where most of them are underage. If I had better eyesight there might be a tanker out there with a prospect.’

  Damian laughed again. ‘Send me the band dates and I’ll try to come.’ Solid Australian accent. Nothing like Liam’s brogue.

  ‘Are you married?’

  There was a si
lence. Of course he was married.

  ‘You still seeing O’Shea?’

  They’d never advertised it, because of Liam’s wife. But Damian wasn’t stupid.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m not married. Least not…’ he paused, ‘as of ten days’ time.’

  ‘Divorce coming through?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’ll text you the times. And Damian?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I need a favour.’

  Reeva had died in January three years earlier. The coroner returned an open finding, but not because the pathologist wasn’t able to establish cause of death.

  Reeva was a healthy thirty-nine-year-old Caucasian woman in her first pregnancy. The foetus, a near-term male child, was developmentally normal. When Reeva was found by Frank Moreton, bringing a cup of tea at 8 a.m. as he always did, she was cold and pale. He tried to find a pulse but knew quickly it was too late. She’d been dead at least five hours, too long for the baby to have survived.

  All her organs were in good condition. No placental rupture, no aortic tear, no bleed into her brain. Her protein levels didn’t suggest pre-eclampsia; the cervix was not dilated hence she hadn’t been in labour. Temazepam was present in low levels. In the police notes the prescribing doctor, obstetrician Sam Petersen, confirmed Reeva had a normal pregnancy and that sleep difficulties were common. She had attended all her appointments with her husband and had the standard screens and ultrasounds. The only problem was her blood sugars: Reeva developed gestational diabetes by the time she was twenty-eight weeks. But that was not uncommon, even in someone as slim as Reeva, with no past or family history. For two months prior to her death Reeva had been self-administering insulin. On the night of her death something had gone wrong; post-mortem sugar levels could be unreliable, but it appeared that they had been catastrophically low. Reeva had made a lethal miscalculation with her insulin injection.