Free Death Delights by Gabrielle Lord Page A

Ron, referring to the old gaol at Long Bay whose high sandstone wall I drove past every day. ‘They’ve got an old sex offender due for release in a few days. He’s really starting to worry. When two old rock spiders get castrated and killed within days of going outside, it gives the others something to think about, even in different gaols.’
    I was immediately interested and turned back. ‘Who is he?’ I asked.
    ‘Don’t know the name off the top of my head,’ said Ron, ‘but I can certainly find out for you.’ I shook hands with the assistant superintendent and as I stepped from the steel cage out into the sterile area, another voice yelled obscenities down at us. Abuse me all you like, you poor bastard, I thought, as I walked into freedom. You’ve got to stand on a table and squint sideways through bars. I’m walking out into the late evening sunshine and the scent of roses.
    Before driving back to Sydney, I took a styrofoam cup of very bad coffee into the municipal gardens and sat on a green park seat. You can’t grow roses in Sydney the way you can grow them here. The deep clay soils, the cool nights and the dry inland air all combine to make Goulburn a heaven for rose-growers. A magpie picked over the soil to feed its two noisy, grey-collared offspring and I could hear the whispering of wrens in the dense hedges that ran along one side of the park. For a moment, I had a stupid fantasy that I could just leave my life, the mess, Genevieve’s hostility, my lost daughter, perhaps even the past, and settle into a country cottage in a town like this. Just turn my back on the whole sad mess, breed roses and improve my watercolour skills. But as I stood up, throwing the rest of the coffee away and headed back to my car, I knew that would never work. Wherever there was a deep green garden, or a camphor laurel tree, and enough empty time to just sit and be, there was always the chance that a little figure from the past might slip through in her yellow sundress, whispering my name. Reminding me of a promise.
    •
    When I got home, I dug out my easel, brushes and tubes of watercolour, taking them and a seat from the kitchen out onto the paved area. I set up and quickly, in the remaining light, I started wetting the paper, blocking in the dense green shadows of the cypresses down one side of the paper, and the brighter green and occasional red leaf of the camphor laurel tree. I worked quickly and stood back, examining the composition. Using a touch of black in the greens, I washed a background in and found a soft brown stain for the foreground. When this dried, I’d overlay another, darker one. But the light had gone and I left my easel and the damp painting there, going inside to make a bit more order in the stacked folders and the packed boxes until I looked at my watch and saw it was nearly eleven o’clock.
    Before going to bed I took out the anonymous letter again, holding it with tweezers. There was a moment when I almost threw it out, but both my policing and my scientific training got the better of me. Instead, I copied out the words on a slip of paper and put that in my wallet, replacing the anonymous missive in its drawer.
    My bedroom is at the back of the house, its window looking out over the back garden. It took me a long time to go to sleep and I kept waking, thinking I could hear someone walking around outside. Once I even got up and looked out the window. But I could see nothing except the line of tall cypresses that divided my eastern side from my neighbours.
    •
    Next day, Ron Herring faxed me the necessary information. I picked up the mug shot of the convicted pedophile with his dropped eyelids and compressed mouth from my in-tray and studied the details of his convictions and sentencing. Frank John Carmody, I read, fifty-one, due to be released next Wednesday after serving the minimum seven years of a ten year sentence for the killing of an eleven-year-old girl, Suzette Carter, who