under his care. He remembered her being hospitalised with severe depression and in spite of having a family history of heart problems, she had stressed her body for many years with excessive food and alcohol. Andrew had been working as a consultant psychiatrist for over eleven years at that stage, having commenced private practice in 1966, and his thoughts revisited the scene of the patient dying suddenly from a cardiac arrest and failing to be resuscitated, in spite of frantic efforts by himself and several other doctors in the hospital. Her death had upset him greatly and he felt for her family, but the cardiac arrest had been so sudden that nothing could be done to save her.
He recalled supporting her family in their grieving and having some family members coming to him as patients in the years that followed. His relationship with the family continued to be good and it baffled him how the coroner would be investigating her death eleven years after it occurred, and why the patient’s family were pushing for an inquest now. Having planted the seeds of anxiety, the journalist chose to say nothing further.
Andrew then found it difficult to explain to Karen what the call had been about, as he was struggling to make sense of it himself. The sunny day had now turned grey for him, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out, and he didn't feel inclined to continue their outing. He regretted buying his walkabout mobile phone the year before. It was relatively new technology, and it certainly made him more accessible should emergencies arise. It cost him a packet, over $4000, if his memory served him right, and it meant that not only could he be reached for urgent patient care, but it also allowed intrusion from people whose calls could have waited. However, he knew the journalist would have made contact one way or another.
As Karen and he walked rapidly to their car, they were shrouded in silence.
CHAPTER THREE
Brett's family had migrated from Ireland several years before he was born. He was the second of eight children, two girls and six boys. Unlike some large families, the siblings did not fend for each other, and each child struggled to survive as best they could. Brett’s two sisters lived in England, and his five younger brothers lived in Australia, but as far as Brett was concerned, they could have lived on Mars. He had minimal contact with his family and both his parents had died in 1981, about five months apart. It didn’t feel like a loss to Brett, as for him they had barely existed before then.
Brett's father had worked as a labourer in Australia and was an aggressive man, prone to excessive drinking. Most of the money he earned was lost at the local pub or with the illegal SP bookie down the road. Brett’s mother had been a pretty girl in her youth with many friends, he'd been told, but life had sucked her dry, and like her children, she lived in fear of her husband's anger.
Brett was not overly concerned about the death of the prostitute as the investigation appeared to be petering out. However, he was prone to periodic black moods where he would sit alone at the kitchen table nursing his beer, immersed in troubled thoughts of the past. Jenny knew to avoid intruding at these times, as she feared his blistering rage.
Whilst misery loves company, his did not seek the company of other people. During these down times, Brett's thoughts would drift through a range of bitter moments in his life, of which there were many.
Recollections would surface of his alcoholic father beating the daylights out of their mother, and treating his children with the same brutality.
Brett recalled the time when he felt his own body had grown big enough to take his father on. He relived the vivid images and sounds of the day he heard muffled screams escaping from his parent’s bedroom, and the whimpering that greeted him as he pushed open their bedroom door and then wished that he hadn't.
The light that he flicked on revealed the punching bag of misery that was his mother, her body deflated by her husband's blows.
‘Get the fuck out of here, you little turd!’
Brett now had a man's body – a young man's body – though he still trembled as his anger fought to douse the flames of his fear. He moved forward as his father leapt out of bed dressed as the day he was born. Somehow a naked man looks more beatable and vulnerable.
They stood less than a metre apart, glaring at each other, one body giving in to the ravages of age, gravity and lifestyle. A junkyard of wasted souls and missed opportunities. Brett looked down and his right foot connected with his father's testicles, the way his father had taught him to drop kick a football. As the older man doubled over, Brett smashed his fist into the balding head. His mother stayed on after that, whilst his younger brothers were too young to break away.
That night, Brett slept under a bridge and ceased going to school. He did a range of labouring jobs over the following months and survived, but the emotional scars remained, covered with a veneer of aggression and at times his own brand of brutality. No one ever dared suggest to Brett that he resembled his father in any way. He never spoke to his father again.
Before the year was out, Brett came to share an apartment with another young labourer, who introduced him to Deborah and The Union. The Union was a sect led by Deborah Duval and was housed on a 10 acre wooded property in the outreaches of Warrandyte. Brett was ripe for the picking, lacking a family structure and immersed in self-doubts. Deborah's group became his family and he lived with them for a while and resumed his schooling, taught by a number of sect members. About two years later, Brett left The Union after commencing a cadetship with the Victorian Police Force. The schooling he received whilst living with Deborah’s group, and the connections she provided within the Victorian Police Force, helped to ensure that his cadetship application was successful.
Brett took to the structure of the force as if it was the last missing piece of his life's jigsaw puzzle. He particularly enjoyed what he saw as the legitimisation of his urge to wield power and exert physical force.
Brett married Jenny when he was twenty-five. She came from a similar violent background, which left her damaged and needy, but not tarnished with the same anger that polluted Brett's life. She initially mistook his sexual demands for caring and they married soon after, when she became pregnant.
Brett did well in the Victorian Police Force, rising to the rank of detective sergeant in the vice squad and then homicide squad, at the relatively young age of thirty-two. He maintained contact with Deborah, and she had decided he was of more value to her outside the sect, as his position gave her a measure of protection. He chose to move to the homicide squad feeling he would be subjected to less scrutiny than in the vice squad.
For a long time Brett had puzzled over Deborah's past and his inability to decipher it. Then, several years ago he struck gold.
His name was Matt – a petty criminal who had been picked up for alleged armed theft. Brett had become involved with his case after the elderly man, who Matt had robbed at knifepoint, died from a severe heart attack during the robbery. The details poured out of Matt in response to Brett’s interrogation, and he described his failed marriage to a sixteen-year-old girl. Matt dramatically drew a picture of life repeatedly letting him down – including his young wife deserting him after only two years of marriage. He explained with an air of disbelief that his ex-wife was now fabulously wealthy and ran a sect up in the hills.
Brett’s interest was suddenly piqued and he learnt that Deborah had reinvented herself, where in spite of her limited schooling she had become a Guru to hundreds of people, many of them with tertiary education. Brett’s features revealed nothing of the excitement that now tingled his body, but he filed the information away for future use. He well knew that the dirt of the past can become the poison of the present.
Matt described Deborah as a ‘pretty young thing’ that he and others thought was somewhat empty headed, referring to her as ‘Nancy’, which was her birth
