The Silent Inheritance Read online

  He needed to win this one, which, as far as he’d been able to ascertain, was unwinnable.

  Swan’s only son, heir to Lady Cynthia’s fortune, raised to expect the best, had been on track to being the best at the age of nineteen. At twenty-three, Michael Swan was charged with the murder of his girlfriend’s infant son, who according to the accused had received his fatal injuries in a fall from the kitchen table.

  At a pinch, it was possible. Male infants were adventurous. Freddy’s son had spent a few months of his life with a bruised head. He’d never broken his arm, been black and blue with bruises. The deceased infant, fourteen-month-old Cory Martin, had sustained a broken arm, multiple bruises and a crushed skull. The arm may have been the result of a desperate grasp, an attempt to break the infant’s fall. The crushed skull?

  The infant sleeping peacefully in his cot when the mother returned from work, the couple had gone to bed and slept late. Very late. Cory Martin had been dead for fifteen hours before an ambulance was called.

  Freddy had lined up several of the upper echelon who were willing to swear to Michael’s lack of violence. He’d found a paediatrician willing to state on oath that the infant’s injuries could have been sustained in a fall from a table and a failed attempt to break the fall.

  The prosecution had big Ross Hunter, the arresting officer. They had Cory’s maternal grandparents’ home videos, one in particular, taken at the infant’s first birthday party, with a damn sight more on it than the chocolate cake – which Freddy had to keep out of court or he’d have a jury baying for Swan blood.

  Out of the lift and walking, fat thighs rubbing, trousers bunching at the crotch, fat Freddy toddled towards the courthouse. He had his suits hand-tailored, and his tailor did a stellar job of camouflage – when his customer wasn’t moving. Freddy allowed his trousers to bunch until approaching the place of his greatest substance, where he slowed his pace, adjusted his trousers and forced his trio of chins to lift in a smile for the cameras.

  His wig offered him an extra inch of height, which this morning wasn’t enough. John Swan had hit the six-foot mark at sixteen and Michael topped his father by an inch.

  He looked innocent. They’d decked him out in a dark suit, a white shirt and grey tie – eye candy for the female jurists. Freddy may have been eye candy for his mother; he’d been Freddo Frog to his siblings.

  Hop to it, Freddo.

  Jump to it, Froggie.

  The year he’d started at the university, determined to disassociate himself from the brothers, Freddy had added the hyphen between his middle name and the too common Jones. He’d determined, too, to buy and sell the lot of them before he was done. He could have done it today, but received better returns from other investments.

  You can add a hyphen. You can shed your past. You can live in a 2.2 million dollar property in Camberwell. You can’t escape your genetics. He’d seen himself at his mother’s funeral, seen his gut, his round water-green frog’s eyes looking back at him.

  ‘All stand.’

  The jury rose faster than Freddy, most of them wearing their serious first-day faces, a few looking pleased to have been chosen. If you had to do your lawful duty, the Swan trial was the one to do it on.

  By eleven o’clock on Saint Valentine’s Day the jurists were listening to the prosecutor’s opening narrative, and Freddy was leaning on an elbow, watching their faces. He’d ended up with four women. No young mothers amongst them; two grannies, one in her late sixties, the other a few years younger who looked moneyed, who may relate to Lady Cynthia – though few could.

  ‘… expert witnesses will describe to you the details of the infant’s injuries. You’ll be shown photographs that will disturb you. You will hear how fourteen-month-old Cory’s tiny skull was fractured, how his arm was bruised and broken, how he lay dead in his cot for fifteen hours …’

  As the litany of veiled accusations droned on, Freddy cleared his throat, and he set off a chain reaction. One juror first, then two more caught his tickle, relieved perhaps to know that they were allowed to cough in court. Always on their best behaviour on day one, always ultra-attentive. By the end of Freddy’s last case, a long one, an elderly chap had spent his days nodding off in one of the rear chairs.

  Bore ’em deaf, Freddy urged silently, turning his frog eyes on the judge, studying his face. He could be a fly in the ointment. Judge Blackwood, a long, lean coot of a man who would have looked at home in a Dickens novel, though relatively new to the bench, was gaining a tough reputation.

  ‘… Cory Martin’s death was no accident. We may never know the true circumstances. What we do know is that tiny Cory Andrew Martin died slowly, died painfully, and died alone …’

  And Michael John Swan may well have been guilty of his murder, but the prosecution done, Frederick Adam-Jones rose to wash his client lily white. That’s what he did, and he was the best at what he did, though maybe today he was pleased his old mother was dead.

  THE SUMMONS

  The summons to Crow’s office didn’t come that Thursday, but at five minutes to two on the Friday, Sarah received an inter-office email. It set her pulse racing, sent her racing to the Ladies’ to tuck in her blouse, to tidy her dark, wildly curling hair. She wore it short, the sides combed forward to cover her ears. She added a swipe of lipstick and at two o’clock on the dot she entered the lion’s den, where she learned that her summons hadn’t been a personal invitation. They were all there, a dozen of them, standing bunched together on the far side of Crow’s desk.

  Barbara Lane, a recent part-timer who’d transferred down from the Sydney office was there, but not standing with the crowd. She was seated, between David Crow and Bob Webb, where Annette, the previous payroll/accounts officer used to sit at office meetings, and without needing to hear Crow’s words, Sarah knew. She knew too why Bob Webb had been dodging this morning.

  Sand-dumped, the breath sucked out of her, her racing heartbeat pumping every litre of blood in her body to her face, she turned to Jackie – Jacqueline Jefferson, who liked to say, She who expects nothing is never disappointed.

  Sarah had expected and Bob had allowed her to expect, and if preening, smiling Barbara Lane hadn’t been looking at her, Sarah might have howled with disappointment. Instead, she looked over Barbara’s head to that wall of windows and the white heat of the sky.

  Forests were burning out there. There was a big fire out near Gramp’s farm. People were losing their homes to it. That was worse than not getting a job.

  Couldn’t buy the Toyota she and Marni had been watching on eBay. Didn’t have her licence anyway. If she’d stayed with Gramp for two more weeks she would have.

  Jackie’s middle finger drew her mind back to this place. She scratched Sarah’s sleeve with it, and, having gained her attention, scratched her own chin. Jackie liked that middle finger. She loathed David Crow. Had names for him and Bob Webb. Sleazebag and his briefcase. Every week she’d said she was leaving. Like Sarah, she couldn’t. She had four kids to feed, not one, and she had a huge bank loan to repay.

  Some people didn’t spend their lives worrying about money. Bob Webb didn’t. He’d bought a brand new car before Christmas then flown to New Zealand for three weeks.

  Dimples and his dwarf, Jackie called them. Bob wasn’t a dwarf, just shorter than average. Crow had dimples, in his cheeks, in his chin. He had four kids and a wife who owned half of his business. Until ten years ago, she’d worked here. Twelve years ago, when Sarah had come in for her interview, Maureen Crow had been sitting in Barbara Lane’s chair. She’d had a third daughter and a son since. He hid her now, with his kids on a ten-acre property at Pakenham. The staff only saw her at Christmas parties.

  Shane, the IT boy, knew someone at the Sydney office who’d told him that Crow had been on with Barbara Lane in Sydney. She was older than his usual blonde. Eve, from HR, had been twenty-three. Barbara was thirty-six.

  Sarah glanced at her, just briefly. Cool, beautiful, perfect nails and hair. She knew how to use
a computer well enough to check her emails and Facebook. She’d need training.

  And Crow was looking at Sarah, speaking at her. ‘… your supreme effort during these last disruptive months,’ he said.

  Her supreme effort? These last disruptive months? There were better words to describe what had gone on in this office since December. Sarah had worked back with Bob Webb until ten o’clock, three nights in a row, to get the payroll done – so he wouldn’t have to cancel his New Zealand holiday. And while he was away she’d been acting payroll officer and general workhorse.

  Knew every facet of Crow’s office. Her computer gave her access to information she didn’t want to have – like Jackie’s loan, like how every month, half of her wage went to repay the bank, which didn’t leave her enough to live on.

  Sarah deducted only superannuation from her own wage. Most months her account at the Commonwealth Bank grew. Had it been larger, she would have walked out. It wasn’t. She couldn’t, or not until she found another job.

  Glanced at Bob Webb, who must have known Crow’s decision this morning, if not yesterday. He could have warned her.

  He was looking at his shoes. Black lace-ups, rubber soles, well polished.

  She couldn’t see Crow’s shoes. She could see Barbara Lane’s. She wore gorgeous shoes, owned a pair to match every outfit.

  Cut Bob Webb out of the frame of those windows and Crow and Barbara looked like actors in a daytime soap opera, too perfect to be real. Bob was a poor match, short, with reddish brown hair. And he must have felt her eyes on him. He looked up, caught her eye and swallowed hard – and he looked like a mullet who’d nibbled around the bait for so long he’d ended up with the barbed hook stuck in his throat.

  ‘Get your application in,’ he’d said before he’d left for his holiday. She’d told him it was no use and why it was no use. She’d told him how Annette had been promoted over her.

  ‘I’ll push it through for you,’ he’d said.

  She’d given up her own holidays for him – or maybe she’d given them up to prove to Crow that she was a team player, and could handle the job.

  Could have handled it two years ago, which made today so much worse. She’d trained Annette, a temp brought in to take over her workstation while she’d had a month off. Before she’d returned, the old payroll officer had walked out and the job had been offered to Annette. Crow didn’t have a lot of luck with his payroll officers.

  And he was done. Dismissed, Sarah, last in, was the first out, Jackie beside her, Rena, fair, fat and fifty beside Jackie.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with his head?’ Rena said.

  ‘It’s in her pants,’ Jackie replied.

  Sarah was seated at her workstation, her hands on the keyboard, when she felt the hairy huntsman on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and turned to face Bob.

  ‘You’re getting a pay rise,’ he said.

  ‘Is he supplying her with a house too?’ Jackie asked.

  ‘The company agreed to provide a house before Mrs Lane moved down from the Sydney office,’ Bob said. ‘And like you, Mrs Jefferson, I’m paid to work, not to question my employer’s decisions.’

  ‘Confucius say, man who stand with foot on both side of barbed-wire fence end up singing soprano,’ Jackie said, and she turned back to her screen.

  ‘You’ll be working with Mrs Lane from Monday,’ Bob said to Sarah. ‘She’ll be coming in five days a week.’

  Then gone, as silently as he’d arrived.

  ‘Take a week of sickies,’ Jackie advised. ‘Let him train her.’

  She could. She had weeks of accumulated sick days, or she could wait until April and get another job. She’d have four weeks in April. She’d find something, and today, cleaning public toilets looked better than this place.

  Four thirty before she could get out – and Barbara Lane was waiting at the lifts, texting on her mobile. With no intention of riding down with her, Sarah stilled her feet while searching her bag for her sunglasses. She found them, then through their darkened lens studied Crow’s new senior payroll/accounts officer, who would have looked more at home on a catwalk than behind a computer. Her white-blonde hair was chin length, cut in a straight bob. Always smooth, as was her complexion – botoxed smooth, Jackie said.

  The lift doors opened. Still texting, Barbara Lane disappeared and Sarah continued on down the corridor.

  She didn’t own a mobile. She paid for a landline which, until two years ago, had provided her with dial-up internet connection for an extra fifteen dollars a month – until Telstra had slowed their dial-up service to such a degree it became unusable and she’d been forced to connect to broadband. She could live without texting but not without the internet.

  Marni wanted a mobile. Last year when she’d been at primary school, half of her classmates had owned their own phones. Since starting high school, she claimed to be the second-last person in the world between the ages of eight and eighty who didn’t own one, and that her mother was the last person.

  Number two lift opened. Sarah rode it down, and was glad of her sunglasses when hit by the full force of the day; it was like walking from a refrigerator into a blast furnace, and that was mystical Melbourne, not shimmering in the clouds, but held to the earth by dazzling white cement and melting black bitumen.

  She walked with the sweating swarm towards Museum Station, telling herself that there were worse things that could happen to people than being passed over for a job – twice. Breast cancer, for one. Annette had breast cancer. She’d had a breast removed and was now having chemo, and she had three little kids and a husband.

  Sarah shook her left foot. Her sandal, irritating her instep since midday, was now hurting.

  ‘It’s not fair, Mum,’ Marni would say when she told her about the job. Twelve year olds still believed in a world that was fair, then they turned thirteen.

  The queue was long at the newsagency where each Friday Sarah bought a ticket in Saturday’s TattsLotto. She queued for her turn to waste a little money in the hope of winning a million, and shouldn’t have bothered. She’d been buying those same numbers from this same shop since her first payday, and knew that the first week she failed to buy them, her numbers would come tumbling out.

  A middle-aged Indian man took her money. He’d been taking it for two or three years. Maybe he recognised her. She always handed him the correct money with her registration card. He always said, ‘Good luck.’ She always said, ‘Thank you.’

  Limped on then, to Museum Station, counted the steps down, her mind sifting the contents of her fridge for something for dinner. She and Marni shopped on Saturday mornings and by the end of the week their too-small fridge was bare.

  A parking space wasn’t a part of Barbara’s package. She was at the station, now talking on her mobile.

  The train stopped with its door conveniently placed for the new senior payroll/accounts officer, which of course it would. Old men of ninety would spring to their feet to give her a seat. Sarah limped down to the next carriage, where she clung to what she could until Richmond.

  Train stopping at all stations, a slower train than the morning 7.40 express. She watched for Barbara to step down to a platform. Didn’t see her. Wondered where Crow had bought that company house. Shane, who could ferret information out of a wooden chair, hadn’t found out yet.

  The train stopped at Box Hill. Still no sign of Barbara, nor at Laburnum. Then Blackburn, Sarah’s station. She was stepping down to the platform when she saw that perfect blonde hair above the crowd.

  Tailed it through the tunnel, at a good distance. Tailed it out to South Parade, where she watched that hair swing on its way towards the car park. There was free all-day parking near the station – if you got there early enough. Sarah had been planning to park there, had she bought that car.

  Barbara drove by in a little red hatchback which must have been red hot. She’d wound down its windows and the wind was daring to disturb her perfect hair.

  PEACH-PINK DRAPES

>   Barbara wasn’t thinking about Sarah Carter. She was cursing Maureen Crow, who was being difficult about the divorce. Twelve months ago, David had told her he’d started divorce proceedings. It didn’t take twelve months to get a divorce.

  The splitting of marital assets could take years. She’d paid a solicitor for two before he’d got her not what she’d wanted but enough, and full custody of Danni.

  If her mother had still been alive, she may not have moved to Melbourne, or at least not until she’d had a ring on her finger, but with her dead, there’d been no reason to stay, and she’d been fed up with getting herself out to the airport and flying south every second weekend, and fed up with her father’s complaints about her flying south.

  She hadn’t expected to work five days a week, or to undergo training, which was all about appeasing Maureen. He was ‘appeasing’ her this weekend by taking her kids down to a beach house – and maybe taking her too, because Barbara had told him how Danni was bored to tears and how she loved the beach, and what a good opportunity it would be for her and Danni to meet his kids.

  ‘It’s too soon, my pet,’ he’d said. ‘Let’s wait until everything is settled.’

  He’d bought that townhouse for appearance’s sake. He owned a gorgeous unit at Docklands, overlooking the water but right in the heart of Melbourne. They could have lived there. It had two bedrooms and there must have been a high school somewhere for Danni. Barbara had expected to be living with him but he’d stuck her out in the suburbs, in an enclave of identical townhouses, built wall to wall with their neighbour. They might have been a two-minute walk from the high school but they were over fifteen kilometres from the city.

  The car’s air conditioner finally blowing cold, Barbara wound up her window and braked at yet another traffic light. She’d had it with traffic lights, with Melbourne’s weather – and Melbourne.

  Made a right-hand turn into Mahoneys Road, a narrow road that fed traffic into a three-level shopping centre, a huge school, and a rehabilitation hospital. In Sydney, it would have been a one-way street. Not down here. It had speed humps, was a bus route, and she got stuck behind one at the roundabout.