Jill got back to her apartment with a headache that felt like sunstroke. She let herself in and went straight to the fridge, opening its stainless steel door and leaning into the cool interior. She grabbed some water, drinking half the bottle as she kicked off her shoes and pulled her socks off. She padded barefoot across the pale granite tiles to the medicine chest over the sink. She reached for the Panadol and downed two capsules with the rest of the water.
She tipped her now warm breakfast smoothie into the sink. The orange pulp of the mango triggered images of the smashed head in the sand. Even the hot, sweet smell was evocative of the death scene on the beach; the effect was disorienting. She placed a sweaty palm on the cool benchtop and directed her attention to the muted colours of her apartment. Her mum said the unit was too plain, that she should add decoration, but Jill loved the all-white and beech interior, colours broken only by cool steel.
After her ritual tour of the unit, she buzzed open the motorised vertical blinds in her loungeroom and let the day-light in. Although the surf could barely be heard through the double-glazed balcony doors, right now its blue brilliance was too bright. She used the remote to shut it out again.
She stripped down to singlet and briefs and entered the laundry, pleased with the shining newness of the German appliances. She sorted clothes to be washed, soothed by putting colours with colours, whites with whites, taking back control. The flashback on her bike had been so real that morning. It had been months since she had felt like she was actually back in the basement. It usually took hours to still her mind after an intrusion that real. Her head still thumped.
What a day. Not what she'd been expecting. The hour with the ME had paid off already; fingerprints identified the body almost immediately. David Carter. He'd done twelve months weekend detention for teaching his seven-year-old stepdaughter how to insert tampons. Just trying to teach her, he'd offered in his defence in his police statement.
The photos on his camera could all pass for innocent if they were of your own kids – children paddling, some of them toddlers, too young even for swimming costumes. Close-ups of their wide smiles, round bellies, short, fat legs. Scotty had taken a call from the cops going through Carter's home, now also a crime scene – they had found a library full of child porn, much of it movies of him with Asian girls under ten.
Jill hadn't seen the movies, but she knew what they'd look like. She'd had her own mental film projector playing for twenty years. Mostly she could keep the curtains drawn, but she was always aware of the tape running.
She felt hatred burning her diaphragm, a metallic taste at the back of her throat. Head throbbing, shoulders knotted, she tried to slow her breathing. She couldn't catch her breath. She tried to focus again on the washing, but felt her throat closing, her chest crushed. Grey spots danced in front of her eyes.
'No, not again,' she moaned. Waves of anxiety rolled over her, washing nausea up from the pit of her stomach. She tried to distract herself, to listen to the front-loader rhythmically turning her clothes, but her heart was pounding louder than the machine.
She stumbled from the laundry as angry tears began. She hadn't had a panic attack in two years. Now, gasping for air, she ran to the balcony, pushing through the blinds, fumbling with the locks, sliding open the doors. She leant on the railing. With nothing in front of her, it felt like she had more access to air. She held on tight, dizzy. A salt-soaked breeze dried the sweat on her forehead and played with her hair. The panic began to subside.
Watch the waves, Jill. Slow your breathing. She tried to match the rhythm of the ocean with her intake of breath. Her vision began to clear. She could breathe again, but her chest felt bruised, like someone had been standing on it for half an hour.
She stepped back into her lounge room, furious with herself. Why am I letting this stuff back in my life? It was the case, she knew. A paedophile with his head caved in. The real-life manifestation of a fantasy she'd had for years had not been as satisfying as she'd thought it would be.
She lay on the sofa for a while with her eyes closed. She would love to sleep, but knew that was never going to happen feeling this way, so she picked up the phone to call home. Talking to her mum usually helped when she felt like this.
Her sister, Cassie, two years younger than Jill, picked up the phone. Great.
'Hey, Cass. It's Jill. What're you doing home?' She kept the tears from her voice.
'Jill. Hi. I'm just back from Morocco. I came home to eat some real food before I'm off again.'
Jill mentally snorted. Her sister was a fashion model, and she knew Cassie ate just enough to keep herself out of an anorexia ward.
'Wow. Morocco. Sounds amazing.'
'It was boring. Horrible food. Dirty,' replied Cassie.
'Yeah? Where to next, then?' Jill felt the distance between herself and her sister more than ever. The effort to find common ground was beyond her right now.
'Just Cairns this trip. Swimwear shoot.'
'Lucky you.' Jill tried to convey enthusiasm.
The conversation faltered, and then Cassie spoke up; it sounded like she was scrambling for something to say. 'So, are you still seeing what's-his-name?' she asked Jill.
'Huh?' Jill paused. 'Oh. Joel. Forgot you met him that night. No. That's history. Listen, Cass, is Mum there?'
Cassie had been ten years old when Jill had been kidnapped. Their family had been transformed by the incident, their best-friend relationship severed forever. For years their father, Robert, had withdrawn into himself, ashamed that he hadn't been able to keep his family safe, unable to look his daughters in the eye. Their mother, Frances, had spent much of her time helping Jill battle the terror that lived inside her like cancer. At first Cassie had been bewildered by Jill's anger, anxiety and nightmares. As time had marched forward she'd become hurt, lost, invisible.
By the time they'd reached high school, Cassie had developed a defensive shell, a sardonic superficiality through which she interacted with the world. Despite her scorching putdowns of almost everyone and everything in their hometown of Camden, people lined up to be looked down upon by the beautiful Cassie Jackson. She'd kept her most scathing opinions for her kickboxing, social-phobe sister. By the time Jill was well enough to mourn the loss of their closeness, her own protective shield had seen her incapable of thawing the ice between them. She had no vocabulary for her feelings any more.
When her mum came on the line, Jill relaxed a little more. Her calm voice had been there through many of the hard times.
'Hi, baby,' she said. 'How was your day?' Jill smiled. No-one else ever called her that.
'Oh, okay. Foul actually, but I don't want to talk about it. What'd you do?'
Eyes closed, she listened as her mum ran through a Tuesday in semi-rural New South Wales; gossip about the neighbours, all of whom Jill knew, and minute details about her immediate family, cousins, nephew and niece. By the time she hung up, she felt exhausted.
She needed rest, and wished she could bypass her gym for once, but she'd never sleep without following all her routines.
She trudged into her spare room, set up as a gymnasium, floor to ceiling in weights and machines. She wrapped the blindfold around her eyes and began kicking the heavy bag suspended from the ceiling. When Mercy Merris had first heard about paedophile rings operating in Sydney, she'd thought the reports far-fetched. She had then been a clinical psychologist for five years, specialising in working with survivors of childhood trauma, and hadn't come across any evidence for such goings-on. However, one afternoon about five years before, a colleague had invited her to a late evening gathering of psychotherapists at a local hospital, where she'd heard tales of satanic cults and organised kiddie-porn groups that had supposedly existed in Australia for years. She'd listened, incredulous, as members of the group spoke about links between these groups and their overseas counterparts, who, they said, had been breeding children for abuse for generations.
The aim of the meeting had been to discuss therapeutic methods to try to counteract brainwashing techniques that these groups were said to use upon some victims to stop them escaping from the cults. At first, she and a couple of other therapists had asked sceptical questions to try to clarify what they were hearing. Finally, one member of the group spoke to silence them.
'Look, it's great that we have new members at this meeting, and everyone's welcome,' the man began in
