Free This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial by Helen Garner Page B

it’s a tragic thing. Your children in the car—what are their names?’
    Jai. Tyler. Bailey. Farquharson intones them, spacing them out in a solemn hush.
    Courtis breaks it. His voice is soft. ‘Did the car just go away from under you? How
far under the water did your car go? Did you have to put your head under water? How
many times did you have to duck under the water?’
    ‘Oh, several. Several times, probably about three or four or something.’ Stammering
and chattering, Farquharson tells the story for the third time. Then he lets out
a hard panting sound, and puts again his urgent question: ‘I mean, I mean, what sort
of thing’s going to happen to me , now?’
    ‘Well,’ says one of the cops.
    ‘You don’t know, do you.’ Again the little nasal out-breath of laughter, the striving
for a casual tone, making light of his need to know.
    ‘We haven’t even been to the crash site yet. We’re on our way down there now.’
    Farquharson tries once more. ‘What’s the scenario? Got no idea?’
    Courtis answers vaguely, dreamily. ‘We’ll go to the scene and have a look, and we’ll
come back and let you know what’s going on.’
    …
    I took a quick look at Farquharson. He was sitting quite still, staring straight
ahead. Were his sisters’ hearts in their boots? I remembered Cindy Gambino’s account
of the way he had stood in front of the car at the dam while would-be rescuers desperately
rushed about. ‘There was no movement. He wasn’t doing anything. He was like in a
trance.’
    He didn’t sound entranced on that tape. He sounded…something else, something not
quite right. Too quick to answer? Too eager to please? A nose dive, in foot-deep
water? And when they pulled the car out of the dam, wasn’t the heater off? My head
was full of a very loud clanging. Nothing expert, nothing trained or intellectual.
Just a shit-detector going off, that was all. The alarm bells of a woman who had
been in the world for more than sixty years, knowing men, sometimes hearing them
say true things, sometimes being told lies.
    What had passed through Farquharson’s mind, that night, on the dark country road
where there was nothing to distract a driver from his wild thoughts? Were the boys
squabbling? Was there a painful mention of their mother’s new man? Or did they just
sit quietly in their harnesses as the old car rolled along, making their father’s
heart ache that once more he had to give them back and say goodbye? Did a casual
word, a rush of despair cause everything that he had shored up against his ruins
to buckle and give way?
    And could it be that, underneath it all, naked on that hospital gurney, he was not
yet grieving, but seething instead with incredulous vitality? Was a fresh force
surging through this dull, lonely, broken-hearted man, deafening him, obliterating
without shame or mercy everything but the astonishing fact that he was still alive?

CHAPTER 5
    Wheels leave different traces as they pass over the surface of the earth. A skid
mark happens when all four wheels lock and are dragged along the ground by the vehicle’s
momentum. A yaw mark occurs typically when a car is over-steered, and front and back
tyres track separately, leaving four tyre marks instead of two. And a rolling print
is simply the impression left by a cleanly rotating wheel: a raised pattern of tyre
tread in gravel or dirt; grass pushed down in the direction of the vehicle’s travel.
In the paddock between the road and the dam, Farquharson’s car had left rolling prints.
This undisputed fact was something we—and no doubt the jury—had to hang on to grimly,
during Mr Morrissey’s blistering cross-examinations of the police.
    …
    Mr Rapke began with Senior Constable Courtis of Major Collision. After the unsettling
interview with Farquharson at Geelong Emergency, Courtis drove on to the dam. It
was a clear night and the road was dry, but by the time Courtis came down the overpass
at about 11 p.m., he noticed the odd patch of