She shrugged. ‘I guess that’s what they did.’
‘I know you say your brother would never have committed suicide,’ Harrigan said, ‘but how do you explain the note he left?’
‘I don’t think he wrote it.’
As a police officer, Harrigan had heard this kind of denial from any number of grieving relatives or partners.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It wasn’t handwritten. It came off his computer, or
‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t write it.’
‘If he’d handwritten it, maybe I’d believe it. I just don’t believe Ian would turn on his computer to write a note like that. He would have picked up the nearest sheet of paper. Can I show you something?’
‘Sure.’
She took him outside, to a silky oak that was growing in the back garden. Attached to the trunk was a plaque with a picture of a smiling, forty-something Ian Blackmore set in it. The inscription read:
‘I planted this for him when the police closed the case,’ Liz Brewer said. ‘I’m sure he’s dead, I’ve accepted that. I know if he was alive he would have contacted me. But I just want to know what happened to him and where he is now. I’d give him a proper burial if only I knew where he was.’
She leaned against the tree and wept. Harrigan briefly wondered if he should put his hand on her shoulder, and decided not to. Don’t intrude, it’s her grief. He was back to being the policeman again, watching from a distance because it was the only way to function.
‘Excuse me,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about it. Let’s go inside.’
Inside, she washed her face and then offered him coffee.
‘No, thanks, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Would you let me take this photograph of Joel and his letter away? I promise you, you’ll get them back safe and sound.’
‘Do you think you can find Ian?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I can try. If you’ve got a picture of him as well, that would help.’
‘All right.’ She had more tears in her eyes. ‘If you can find him, that will be enough for me. It’s certainly worth a couple of photographs and a letter.’
These things broke your heart, Harrigan thought. Where would a body be after eight years? Rotting in the bush somewhere? Dumped out at sea? How could he hope to find it?
The second half of his day, after a few phone calls, took him from north to south, to the inner west, Burwood, to Avondale Nursing Home. The sign outside the former late Victorian mansion announced that it was a high care and dementia care nursing home with over thirty years’ experience. He walked inside to the reception desk. The air was warm, almost a little steamy. There was a smell of food and, underneath it, urine and faeces.
‘Can I help?’ the receptionist asked, a middle-aged woman with glasses.
‘I rang earlier,’ he said. ‘About a Mrs Griffin. The director of nursing agreed to see me.’
‘I’ll just take you through.’
The director greeted him with a handshake. She was a younger, dark-haired woman.
‘I’m Hilary Totaro,’ she said. ‘You were asking about Loretta. Would you like to tell me why?’
‘As you can see from my card, I’m a consultant. If Mrs Griffin is who I think she is, my current assignment has led me to believe that her son may be dead.’
‘I don’t think that news will have much effect on Loretta. What was this son’s name?’
‘Joel.’
‘I’ll take you to meet her. Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.’
Loretta Griffin was a tiny, birdlike woman strapped in her wheelchair. Her hair was white and thin like a child’s, sparse against her pink scalp. She was being fed by a nurse’s aide and looked around vacantly after each mouthful. Her hands bunched and unbunched as she ate and her feet were twisted on the wheelchair’s footrests. There was a terrible scar across her head, clearly visible under her thin hair.
‘Hello, Loretta. How are you today?’ Hilary said.
The woman turned to her with huge staring eyes, still eating but not speaking.
‘She’s got a good appetite today,’ said the nurse’s aide, glancing at Harrigan.
‘That’s good. All right, Loretta. See you later now.’
They walked away.
‘Can she talk?’ Harrigan asked.
‘A little bit. There was no point in introducing you,’ Hilary said. ‘She won’t know who you are.’
‘My information is she’s been here since 1981. What happened to her?’
‘That’s true. She’s seen out three directors of nursing and one change of ownership. Actually she’s been in homes for longer than that. Her story’s on the public record so it won’t matter if I tell you. Her husband took an iron bar to her one night in 1977. She has irreversible brain damage. She’s been like that since she was thirty-five.’
Harrigan almost said, what kind of a life is that, when he thought about his son. Toby had a mind. A mind can take you anywhere.
‘I have a letter from the son dated 1981 where he says he thinks she’s showing signs of improvement,’ he said.
‘That would have been a very vain hope even then. Do you know what this son looks like?’
‘I’ve got one old photograph.’
She looked at it for some moments. ‘I think this is him,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to Loretta’s room. It’s just down here.’
It was a brightly decorated room, with soft toys on the shelves and a television set facing the bed.
‘Does she watch TV?’
‘She seems to. There are things she gets pleasure out of. This is her Joel.’
It was a picture taken at a Christmas party, a younger version of the same woman with her son next to her. The years had been stripped away from her in this photograph but in actuality she appeared no different from the way she was now, still strapped in her chair. A teenage boy, the same one as in Ian Blackmore’s photograph, was sitting beside her and holding her hand. Seated next to him was an attractive, red-haired girl. Harrigan turned the photograph over.
‘Do you know the last time he visited her?’ he asked, knowing the answer.
‘No one I know has seen him here. Loretta hasn’t had any visitors since I’ve been here and that’s five years now. This was a long time ago. For all I know it was the last Christmas he spent with her.’
‘I think it probably was,’ Harrigan replied. ‘Last question. Do you know her husband’s name?’
‘No. But apparently he was tried and convicted of attempted murder so there must be a record of it somewhere. I guess he’s out of gaol by now. You’d have to say he wasn’t the one who got the life sentence.’
‘Thank you for your information. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘I’m sorry to hear her son is dead. He might have been someone to visit her.’
Harrigan, used to the kinds of assumptions people made about Toby, particularly when he had been growing up, could not bring himself to make a judgement on the nature of Loretta Griffin’s life. Maybe the physical comfort and care were enough for her. Who knew? It wasn’t a question he wanted to answer.
He drove home, caught in his thoughts, and went up to his study. There he opened his wallet, took out Joel Griffin’s card and placed it on his desk. Then he googled Griffin’s name, the date of Blackmore’s meeting with him eight years ago and Parramatta Court House. A courtroom was a public place; a trial was always on the public record. The information came up, not from the legal databases but on the national broadcaster, a late night program canvassing the subject of the Sydney crime world. On that date, a small-time thief associated with a particular criminal organisation was being defended by Joel Griffin on a charge of attempted murder. The trial had been complex and had gone on for a number of weeks. The man had been acquitted but later ended up dead as part
