replies, “No, dear, but if you ask the young chap at the reception desk, he’ll be able to tell you.” ’
I laughed at my own joke and was sure Mum did too. I felt the sadness rise up inside me and had to draw a deep breath to keep myself from losing it in front of her.
‘I spent the night with Ella,’ I said after a long break. ‘At the flat in Carlton. Things are going well between us, I think.’
Her right hand came up, touched my arm and squeezed. She groaned and the right side of her lips pulled to a smile. I hugged her then and almost lost it again, choked with pain and guilt.
‘I love you,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been around for you lately. That’s going to change.’
A tear slid down her cheek. As I wiped it away, I decided I didn’t want to be here when Dad and Anthony arrived. I was ashamed and angry and couldn’t face them. What was I going to do – tell them I was sorry? Tell them I’d do more, visit every chance I got? It would mean nothing, not without action.
For a long while I sat beside her, stroking her cheek and waiting for the painkillers and sedatives to take effect. Soon her breathing slowed and I had the strange sensation that this was what it would be like to euthanise a person. I shook off the morbid thought and remembered a question Mum had asked me not long after my return from hospital. Why do you do it? It was about a month before the stroke, and the only time she’d ever questioned my career direction. Sometimes I thought she knew something was on the horizon; that her body was preparing to shut down.
A marriage counsellor had once asked me the exact same question – albeit for different reasons – and instructed me to list my responses, a task I failed to accomplish. Even now, I still couldn’t articulate it. Some detectives I knew – Cassie, for example – described it as a calling, but I wasn’t sure about that. I only knew that if you had a skill, something you were naturally good at doing, then that was a gift, and if you didn’t pursue it then your skill was wasted and so was the gift. To me, that transformed skill into purpose. It was like an ecosystem, in that if everyone ignored their skill, their gift, the world would be worse off. People who depended on you would suffer. People like Dallas Boyd and his sister, Rachel. People like my elderly neighbour, Edgar Burns. People like Chloe. And people like Jacko.
Yet even as I thought all this, I knew I wasn’t being honest. Ella had depended on me too, and I’d let that world fall apart. I’d let her down. What about the rest of my family? Mum was in a nursing home, Dad was a shadow of his former self, and now Anthony needed me. Surely our purpose in life extended well beyond our careers.
I squeezed Mum’s hand and wished I could ask her advice. What would she say to me, I wondered. Give up and go home? Quit and spend all day on the couch? Tell Edgar Burns you’re too tired for it? Tell Anthony you can’t help him? Forget about Dallas Boyd and his little sister? No, I knew what she would say. I knew because she had said it all her life. To get what you want, you have to know what you want.
Right then I made a choice. I would go back to Melbourne and hunt down whoever had killed Dallas Boyd and see to it that both he and Rachel received the justice they deserved. I would embrace my purpose and I would follow it to the end.
20
THE DRIVE BACK TO MELBOURNE took almost an hour less than the drive up. I kept the speedo on one-thirty all the way and the stereo muted. I wasn’t in the mood for love songs or any other music. I just wanted to get back to Melbourne and go to work. I arrived in St Kilda to find most of it had been blocked off for the festival and I had to badge a team of council workers guarding the barricades before they’d let me through. Even then, I had to drive at snail’s pace along the tram tracks.
Thousands of people walked the streets, like a parade